I've got a 4" table top dob (Orion) and I use 8mm/21mm Baader Hyperion eyepieces (got a 4.5mm TMB Planetary on its way too). I find it a far better scope than my larger one, so much easier to just get outside and start viewing immediately, no problems with cool down etc.
With my 8mm I've viewed Saturn (very recognisable), Mars and Jupiter (with four moons plainly visible). On the weekend I went looking for, and found, Neptune with this little scope. My first ever sighting of Neptune and I was over the moon! Apart from lots of star clusters I was able to view the Triffid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula. I'm under light polluted skies and they were fain smudges through the eyepiece, until I popped on my Astronomik UHC filter and they really stood out. They weren't anything like the great colour photos, more like clouds in the sky but the lagoon was large in the eyepiece and I could make out a good amount of shape/structure.
The scope performs great during the day and you can get good views of the moon during daylight hours when its up. There are a lot of interesting things lurking in Scorpius. If you use something like Stellarium you can see what might be up in the evening and set yourself some targets: get some experience in star hopping to reach a target (tricky at first when the view in the eyepiece is upside down/reversed). Or just get outside and point to any part of the sky, look around, find something that looks interesting and sketch/map it out on paper (add some major stars you can see with the naked eye as reference points) then try to work out using Stellarium or a star map what it is you found. There are no rules really, except get outside and observe!
|