my first look at mars

[Jarvis]

i cant wait for mars to start rising earlier than 1:00 in the morning. i want to try my "department store Telescope" an see what i can get. tried a few years back when it was real close. that was back in the day before i joined the astronomy club. my dad an i found mars in a barlow 2x and a 4 mm eyepiece. looked like **** and went just as soon as we found it.

[asimov (John)]

Hey Jarvis. Welcome to the forum..What sort of "department store" scope have you got?
Using a 4mm eyepiece barlowed, no wonder it looked like ****! Even un-barlowed that 4mm is too high a power. try sumpin a bit longer, like a 10 or a 15mm.

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Jarvis

Firstly to the forum!

Mars is rising about half past nine at the moment. Noticed it sitting in the east about 11pm last night as I was putting the bins out. Over the next 8 or so weeks it will get progressively quicker to rise as we fly past it in our orbit.

[atalas]

Yeah hi Jarvis ! John's right,drop the power down so you can get a sharper image . It will look smaller in the eyepiece but a lot more pleasing to the eye. As your viewing experiance builds you will learn when and how far you can push your scope and on what objects.

Louie

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

Likiewise ... hang around here a while & you will learn everthing you ever wanted to know about telescopes & then some

[dhumpie]

Mars is showing some good detail now in my C6 and will only get better. It will be the largest on the 1st of November. Keep looking at it

Darren

[rmcpb (Rob)]

Drop the power and practice observing. Each time you look at the same object its like you can see more detail, maybe like training your eyes.

What sort of scope do you have?

[ving (David)]

Originally Posted by Jarvis

i cant wait for mars to start rising earlier than 1:00 in the morning. i want to try my "department store Telescope" an see what i can get. tried a few years back when it was real close. that was back in the day before i joined the astronomy club. my dad an i found mars in a barlow 2x and a 4 mm eyepiece. looked like sh&^ and went just as soon as we found it.

\hi jarvis! welcome aboard. the only way to get any real scale visually when looking at anything is to get a really big telescope (really big!). 4mm with a 2x barlow would give you a fuzzy mess probably. the maximum i'd use would be a 6mm (thats pushing it too really).

ps: please dont try and bypass the swear filter

any questions please ask away

[Jarvis]

Originally Posted by asimov

Hey Jarvis. Welcome to the forum..What sort of "department store" scope have you got?
Using a 4mm eyepiece barlowed, no wonder it looked like ****! Even un-barlowed that 4mm is too high a power. try sumpin a bit longer, like a 10 or a 15mm.

the telescope is a Tasco 60mm or something. i think the glass looking mirror thing is actually plastic. the lowest power eyepiece i have which i have only 2 is a 12.5mm one. would that make it look better.