What will you really see?

[Rodstar (Rod)]

Hi Trido!

I heartily recommend you progress straight to the 10 or 12 inch dob (and in so doing echo the remarks of many others who have posted).

You will enjoy a great number of deep sky delights from where you live in that size scope. My first scope was 10 inches, and I spent many, many blissful hours touring the skies sampling many hundreds of beautiful objects from my backyard in relatively light-polluted suburban skies. My favourites with that sort of aperture are open clusters, double stars and globular clusters. With an OIII filter you will also be able to track down many planetary nebulae, which may be of interest to you. I always found galaxies and emission/reflection nebulae rather less noteworthy with 10 inches, but even then, if I travelled out to darker skies, the brighter of these objects would come out into their own as well.

One of the biggest issues will actually be being able to locate the objects in the first place. For that reason, having some sort of go-to functionality would be very useful if you are not likely to have much face-to-face contact with fellow amateur astronomers in your area. If you are getting a dob, you cannot go past getting an Argo Navis computer as an add-on. The maker of the Argo Navis is a member of this forum (Gary), and he could not be more helpful in getting you set up. This will enable you to readily access all of the objects you could ever hope to see in a 10 inch scope (its database is 30,000 objects, including all of the major catalogues, etc). On the other hand, you could get an SCT from Meade or Celestron. Such a unit is more expensive, and objects are not quite as bright as a dob inch for inch, but they are very easy to setup and use and so for a complete newbie like I was, they are fantastic.

Good luck with whatever you end up purchasing. Just make sure you leave enough $$ for some eyepieces!

[Trido (Justin)]

Originally Posted by Rodstar

Hi Trido!

One of the biggest issues will actually be being able to locate the objects in the first place. For that reason, having some sort of go-to functionality would be very useful if you are not likely to have much face-to-face contact with fellow amateur astronomers in your area.

Yeah that was an issue that I was a little worried about. What I did though was to purchase a copy of Starry Night and I had hoped that it would at least give me enough of a guide while I learn my way around the sky becuase Navs are pretty expensive on top of the cost of the scope. I want it, but I would only be able to afford an 8" Dob if I were to invest in a comp nav device at the time of purchase.

[pneuman (Leigh)]

I'd grab a paper sky atlas as well, so that you can use it at your telescope without having to run down your laptop's batteries or ruin your night vision. I find the planetarium software great for finding things to look at and getting a general idea of where they are, but when you're at the telescope, star-hopping across fields of magnitude 7 stars in your finderscope, a paper atlas is invaluable.

I've been using the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas, which is cheap and quite convenient, and it's been very handy. If you have very dark skies, though, you might want to invest in an atlas with even more detail.

[psyche101]

Originally Posted by Trido

Sadly there are none located in the city I live in which is a big shame and what has stopped me from spending my money.

Do you ever come to the coast for the weekend? There are some in Brissy, might be worth the hours drive, or a 2 hour drive away from you, you might find something suitable at this site http://members.optushome.com.au/firs...htm#South-East

I am planning a camp out night at Lake Moogera, that looks like a great dark sky. Half way between you and me. I was coming home a bit over a month ago and stopped at Boonah. Best dark skies I have seen, I was amazed at the number of stars.

[psyche101]

Originally Posted by AlexN

There must be something wrong there??? cant see the GRS or clearly separate the cassini division... I can do both with my 8" from suburbia...
ps. M31 is actually quite nice through a 12" scope.. from a dark site, M31 can be seen with unaided eyes.

Chasing M31, fog has been my enemy the last 4 mornings.......

I have reasonably dark skies, not great, but I am about 10 or 15K out of surburbia in what they call "Park Living" The best view of Jupiter I seem to able to achieve is very similar - the lines a re sharper, but the focus seems to finish something like this?
http://kenpresley.files.wordpress.co...r_autoclub.jpg

and the bright dots of the moons around Jupiter. They are very clear and defined spots.

Originally Posted by ghsmith45

With a 10" you should be able to see a large amount of detail in Jupiter´s cloud belts, not just make them out. However, for observing fine detail, collimation is extremely critical with a scope around f5, which I expect is your case.

I thought that if collimation was an issue that I would find the stars and moon look like streaks? I can get quite some clarity of the moon, and clusters like The Butterfly cluster shine like a brooch in the sky. The images do not seem smeared at all? I admit, I fear collimation and have been hesitant to take it on, but as I said, I find my Celestron 4" to perform quite well next to the 10" Dob, untill I attempt deep sky, and the Dob is a clear winner then. Do you still think my problem might be collimation, or could I be doing something else wrong?

Many thanks to you fellows for answering this. I figured I was expecting too much to begin with? This has quietly been nagging me for a bit, I thought with a 10", 3x Barlow fitted to a 14 or 20mm EP should give me a killer focal combination for some serious close ups? The views are "nice" but not quite the close ups I seem to see everywhere? I was starting to figure a great deal of people owned CCD and liked taking long exposures? Some of the pics in here and on the net dead set look like the person was orbiting Jupiter! I felt a little silly asking thinking I was asking too much of the 'scope.....

Maybe I just need glasses..................

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

There is a group that meet at Leybourne.
I'll see if I can get you in touch with them.

[coldspace]

Come along to our SAS club meets at Pimpama state school. Plenty of members who can help out then you could bring your scope out to our dark sky site at Leybourn. You will see a huge difference then. You will never get results like you see in images at the eyepiece. If you are seeing Jupiter similar to the link you posted then thats doing very,very well and planetary observation is not really affected by light pollution more the "seeing" or atmospheric stability, which could look like focusing issues to you. Also too much power like using a 3x barlow is going to cause you heaps of problems with your viewing, try stepping the power down a little and only use a 2x barlow as too much power only make the unsteady atmosphere look like soup! A smaller, clearer image is far more satisfying than a big blurred image. Those fantastic images you see Mike and others achieve are done at very long focul lengths but they use fast CCD video type cameras running upto 60 frames per second so they can grab some frames of near perfect clarity when the seeing freezes for the split second or so,you can't detect this with your eye. Deep sky "hates" light pollution so dark rural skies are the go there.
Go to www.sas.org.au

Matt.

[astro_south (Andrew)]

You beat me to it Matt

I also belong to the SAS and Matt's suggestion to get along to one of our Dark Sky Camps at Leyburn is the go. The site is just north of Leyburn and directions can be found on the site Matt mentioned ( www.sas.org.au ). I usually travel through Toowoomba on my way out there and from Toowoomba it is only about 45 mins to the site. There is always plenty of experience on hand to give you advice on any aspect of amateur astronomy you need to know about. I am due for some dark skies myself, but I am not sure if I will be heading to Leyburn or heading to Astrofest this month (if I get time for either ). If I go to Leyburn I will be in touch and if you are interested I can show you the way from Toowoomba.

[psyche101]

Originally Posted by coldspace

Come along to our SAS club meets at Pimpama state school. Plenty of members who can help out then you could bring your scope out to our dark sky site at Leybourn. You will see a huge difference then. You will never get results like you see in images at the eyepiece. If you are seeing Jupiter similar to the link you posted then thats doing very,very well and planetary observation is not really affected by light pollution more the "seeing" or atmospheric stability, which could look like focusing issues to you. Also too much power like using a 3x barlow is going to cause you heaps of problems with your viewing, try stepping the power down a little and only use a 2x barlow as too much power only make the unsteady atmosphere look like soup! A smaller, clearer image is far more satisfying than a big blurred image. Those fantastic images you see Mike and others achieve are done at very long focul lengths but they use fast CCD video type cameras running upto 60 frames per second so they can grab some frames of near perfect clarity when the seeing freezes for the split second or so,you can't detect this with your eye. Deep sky "hates" light pollution so dark rural skies are the go there.
Go to www.sas.org.au

Matt.

Thank you very much Matt. Unfortunately it looks like I have missed an opportunity to meet before Leybourne, the site says that is this weekend? Might be a sqeeze to get there on short notice. I have intended to join here (Pimpama) before, as Pimpama is only 15 mins from me, I have been building, pretty much near finished and ready to get more serious about star gazing.
Thanks for clearing up my wonderings about the view of Jupiter, I don't understand how many can "See" the GRS with 6" and 8" scopes, yet my 10" considers the GRS a mystery. Could these members be refering to astrophotography? I do not see as many bands as the picture shows, but the ones I do see appear somewhat sharper, but this is about as close as I could find, and I feel a fair comparison.
Small, tight, sharp, sounds like how I generally view Saturn. Great stuff.
I have been trying to be conservative with using the Barlow, main reason I went 3x was because the fellow I bought it from calculated a 3x would be best suited for my 20m and 14mm EP's. Offering a 4.6 on the 14 and 6.6 on the 20 and with my f5 he reckoned about 4.5 to be about as high a mag as I could go wit that focal length. It seemed to be the best choice to extend ny EP collection as far as I could, I have this Meade EP (in fact, this very one http://www.staroptics.com.au/catalog...roducts_id=126 ) set as well. I did offer that I was very interested in tight planatary viewing, but have since found deep sky to be my passion. I am on Mt Nathan, I seem to get good skies there as the mountain shields the cities a bit. Do you have viewing nights at Pimpima? The site schedule finishes this month, for this month would this be the only meet?
Tuesday 27th: Committee Meeting at 7.30 p.m.
Thanks again Matt. I hope to get along and meet at Pimpama.

[coldspace]

Generally no viewing is done at the meetings at Pimpama unless something special is on or someone brings in a new piece of gear. The meeting is run with minutes etc as the club is a financial one. Most people get together to swap ideas and there usually is some presentations from the more experienced on astro science or tech, and we have some world class imaging guys as well and they sometimes bring in their latest work and do a presentation ( those sort of meetings are what I love)
The site will be updated soon as we are in a new financial year, but generally the meeting are held on the full moon weekend and the new moon weekends are held at Leyburn. The commitee meetings like you mentioned are only for commitee members ie, treasure etc, your best to come along to the general meetings held on Saturday nights. The club is a very active one and I can not keep up with everything that is going on. Contact our membership officer Kevin Dixon. His details are on the SAS web site and he will inform you when the next one is on.

Regards Matt.