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Old 09-05-2012, 09:04 PM
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Shiggy (Shaun)
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Eyepiece for a small child

Hello,
My little boy has been asking about the stars and planets. He often sees me setting up before he goes to bed and I think it is time to open up the skies to him. However I'm not sure what eyepiece to use for a small child.
Last christmas he had a look through my little megrez with a hyperion zoom but he couldn't see much and ending up breathing onto it.
I imagine for a small child (he is 3 1/2 and very interested!) I would want something simply without requiring moving around ones head too much.
Has anyone had experience with small children and telescopes?

Cheers
Shaun
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  #2  
Old 09-05-2012, 09:24 PM
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traveller (Bo)
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Hi Shaun, I have a 6 and half and a 3 and half year old. Their telescope is a 60mm refractor on a AZ mount. As for EPs they use my vixen LVs but I am getting a couple of cheap plossols, you know they type they sell as a package with scopes.
They really like the moon and on a high power piece they can make out the rings of Saturn. Once Jupiter is on show, they can also see the four moons.
I also put the binos on a photo tripod and they seem to like that as well with the added advantage of not having to squint their eyes.
Cheers, Bo
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  #3  
Old 09-05-2012, 10:03 PM
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mental4astro (Alexander)
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Hi Shaun,

Your Hyperion zoom is a fine eyepiece for your son to look into. What your heto do is get the hang of WHERE to look!

I've been to many star parties showing kiddies and oldies alike through my scopes. What I've found works best with kids is to tell them, including my kiddies too:

"look into the glass window"

More often than not they figure out that they need to put the EP to their eye and their nose beside it if they are to look into the peephole. Then ask he what he sees.

The other trick is to tell them "don't touch the telescope". That way they don't rely on the scope to provide the balance for them as it is instinctive to GRAB what is infront of them (heart stopping for ME too!)

Some targets that are good for kids too is the Moon, Saturn (great now too before he goes to bed), and the Jewel Box. With the Jewel Box you ask if he can see the rubies amungst the diamonds, and how many rubies he can see.

I hope this helps you.

Mental.
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  #4  
Old 09-05-2012, 10:33 PM
rally
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Shaun,

Have helped lots of Kids look through telescopes - there are a few things you can do that might help that I have used successfully, not necessarily all original ideas.

I organised for my school to use a bunch of microscopes I borrowed in the preceding days, so the kids aged 4-6 could practice looking at some interesting things (bugs and odd things on slides) first.
The idea was to get them used to looking through an eyepiece with one eye and to develop the art of focussing their eye onto a solid object looking right down the optical axis.
The really young ones have trouble even closing one eye and looking through the other - its surprisingly difficult for them to do if they have never tried it before.
They close both eyes, keep both open, close the wrong eye - its fun to watch them go from not seeing a thing due to simple coordination problems to getting the hang of it and seeing the Moon or Saturn.
The reactions and expressions you can get are absolutely priceless.

I was told a neat trick - tell them to think of it as looking down through a straw, this seems to help them get the idea that they only have a limited circle with which to line up their eye and they need to look down into the EP exactly.
BTW it works with adults too !

Get some straws and let them practice

If you have 100 kids to get through, its best that they have had some practice beforehand rather than using up valuable visual time - remembering that they have to go to bed between the hours of 7 and 10pm - earlier for the little ones. So you cant afford to waste much time if you want everyone to get a chance to look at a number of different objects for any reasonable length of time.

Having a stepup ramp is necessary or they will try to use the EP for balance. Hanging onto them so they don't get vertigo on top of a ladder when looking down an eyepiece is not a bad idea - or having a support rail for that purpose.

Also, at least on my system, the focus position for them didnt seem to be the same as for me (I use glasses most of the time for visual).
So you may want to experiment with the focus knob while they are looking and giving feedback about what is best - once they have the hang of it.

Some kids dont seem to get the hang of it easily, but they wont necessarily tell you that they are seeing nothing at all - no reaction tends to mean nothing was seen.
I have sometimes covered one eye with my hand and that has helped - I guess an eye patch could work too for those that cannot close one eye. But I never tried that.

We adults like faint galaxies, nebulae and clusters - the kids tend to not like those much at all, but really love the moon and our two favourite gas giants and seeing their moons.

Splitting doubles and Messier runs would bore them into another hobby for sure !!

Can I ask why you are getting some cheap plossls for them - let them use your best EPs (under supervision)
They should be getting the best views not the worst - IMHO.
All the kids used my Pentax XW's, it was never a problem.

Cheers

Rally
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  #5  
Old 10-05-2012, 06:07 AM
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Shiggy (Shaun)
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Thanks so much for all the great replies.
Very good advice which I will certainly put into practice.

Regarding which eyepiece, I will give the hyperion zoom another go. Then for a spacewalk I was thinking of the 42mm gso. I also have a nice little 25mm plossol I use for setup as a standby.
I love the straw idea to focus concentration into a small area.
Binos are an interesting suggestion. I have a friend with a binoviewer I could borrow to try out as well.

Very cool ideas.

Cheers
Shaun
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  #6  
Old 10-05-2012, 08:02 AM
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erick (Eric)
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Because it is automatic to me now, it is a bit hard to remember the difficulty people have positioning their head to see the image. With a few people, they have never been able to do it, but we usually get there with patience. My approaches are as follows:

1) usually you are out with a reasonable moon. If you look, the image on the Moon projects on their face. You can gently move them until it hits their pupil (and be ready for the "Wow!") Once they have positioned their head for the Moon, they seem to have the idea for other fainter objects.

2) ask people to pull their head back some cm and move around a little until they see something, then bring their head towards the eyepiece, keeping what they see in sight. This depends a bit on the eyepiece. It is always hard for them if you are in a very faint field, so I do try to stick to bright objects, or have a brightish star in the field so they can concentrate on that until they get their head positioned well.
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  #7  
Old 11-05-2012, 12:02 PM
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The_bluester (Paul)
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I have had my 3YO looking through my scope a number of times. At the time most of my eyepieces were TV Plossls so that was what he used too. Again, the moon is the obvious object and got the startled reaction of "BIG" About time now that is getting dark earlier than his bedtime again to try him out on Saturn. Previously, Jupiter gave some priceless reactions as he would look through the EP, get a glimpse, jerk backwards with a funny look on his face, look where the scope was pointed, look puzzled again and go back to the EP!

The biggest issues I had were getting him not to hold on to the scope for balance and convincing him to look through the EP and not the finder as looking at right angles to where he was seeing was obviously not very intuitive. That is one of the areas where a refractor might do the best.

If he catches fire with it I might get him a secondhand 6-8" dob so he has something easy to use of his own and I get to keep observing while he does it. He has a little tabletop dob that we bought to give him something to peer through if he wanted but I suspect that will pall quickly if her gets keen.
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  #8  
Old 11-05-2012, 12:51 PM
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dannat (Daniel)
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i think short er eyepieces are ok with kids cos they tend to want to put there eye right against it -
my problem at the minute for planetary is the 7mm ortho i have too many have trouble seeing the small piece of glass to look into - big glass is the opposite -there is too much of it..something in the middle for eye lens size & er is a good compromise i reckon
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