A (cheapish) scope for my husband

[The Mrs]

Thanks for thinking of us!

He was very surprised!!

Whilst we had clear skies last night, my husband was a little, errr, "under the weather" from a fun Christmas day!

We put it all together this morning (and had a laugh at the instructions that said, "bolt the tube rings to the mount using the wench provided"). PMSL.

We then set out the back to get the finder scope aligned but we ran out of time because we had some boxing day celebrations to attend.

We'll definitely finish it off tomorrow.

I couldn't get Astronomy 2009 anywhere (Borders even had some astro 2007 book! ) so we'll just get it from the website. I ended up getting some pack from AG that has maps, planesphere and a red light torch.

So excited to start looking at the sky!

My husband is... over the moon! BOOM-TISH!

P.S. Hope you all had a great Christmas!

[Davros (Lauren)]

Very nice, get him to poke his nose in here. Hope he has a lot of fun with it. Never be afraid to ask questions either. Weve all been there.

[Coen]

Curious whether it has all worked out with "first light" etc.

[The Mrs]

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great Christmas and holiday season. We've had a great time, although this heat can bugger off now!

Originally Posted by Coen

Curious whether it has all worked out with "first light" etc.

Errrr, well, it's been a little difficult! We just cannot work out how to polar align it correctly and also getting the guidescope aligned properly. It seems we always have to re-adjust it every time!

We have had a good look at the moon it was amazing!

We think we know where Jupiter is (the brightest star in the western sky?) but we have to be quick for it because we have some big trees in our neighbour's yard that are blocking the view, and it's out pretty early, right? By about 9pm it has started to go down behind the trees. I did find it in the scope but it was all blurry?

So that's another problem, when we have a look it seems really blurry. I'm not sure what we're doing wrong!

What eyepiece do you use for what sort of viewing? We have a 10mm and 25mm wide angle plus the 2x barlow. These should be okay for now, right?

We've ordered the Astronomy 2009 book so just waiting on that!

Oh another (probably silly!) question... there's 3 removable parts on the end of the scope (that points to the sky). The little lens cap, the bigger lens cap that's the width of the scope and then also a piece that's like a cup that fits over the scope comes off too.

Are there times when all you do is remove the small lens cap? Or do you always take off the two lens cap pieces? What about the cup type cap?

As you can see, we're COMPLETE beginners!

Oh, need to invest in some roll-on Aeroguard too!

[erick (Eric)]

Great! You are under way!

Polar aligning - let's fix a few more things first, then get that sorted.

Is the Moon not coming into good focus. Depending how stable the air is it may be moving around like jelly, but you should be able to get the focus to a fairly sharp spot and it goes out of focus if you wind further in or further out. Use the 25mm eyepiece for this. If not, we'll have to solve that problem first.

End caps (sky end). Yes there are probably caps over both ends of the finderscope. They need to come off. Then for the main scope, take the whole end cover off. Yes, most have a removable cap that allows a much smaller aperture (just the diameter of the open hole, rather than the entire diameter. Forget about that - you won't be using it. You want the whole end open.

I'm fairly sure you are looking at Venus. Jupiter is too close to the Sun now. Venus will always look like a bright white object with no features in our small scopes. You are looking at highly reflective clouds. Given it is never very high and that you are looking at it soon after sunset, the "seeing" is seldom good so it may wobble around. However, you should now see that it is in a crescent form, like the shape of a crescent Moon. Watch it change over the next month or two. You may find it helpful to put the "moon filter" on the eyepiece, if you have one. Venus can be very bright through the eyepieces.

Getting the guidescope aligned. I expect you mean the finderscope? It can be easiest to do that during the late day on a distant TV antenna or tree - so the object doesn't move in the eyepiece like everything in the sky does. Get the object centred in the scope with the 25mm eyepiece. Adjust the finderscope adjustment screws until the object is on the cross hairs. Change to the 10mm eyepiece and repeat. Is the view through the finderscope in focus - sometimes that needs an adjustment. We can tell you how.

Cheers
Eric

[renormalised (Carl)]

And another piece of good advice....join your local astronomical society. The members there will help you out tremendously and get you up and running in no time flat.

[Coen]

There is a section here on setting up a GEM that might also be of help.

Otherwise, as I have a similar scope, I could possibly put together a series of snapshots and arrows, just can not do it until a little later.

A trip to a local astronomy club, as renormalised said, will get you started pretty quick and also help find a few things to look at too.

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Hi all!

I finally decided to sign up here after a somewhat rocky start with the scope that my lovely wife (The Mrs) bought me for Christmas. Yes I know I've taken my time however I was more than a little intimidated by it all as I've only ever used binoculars for stargazing. We managed to set aside a few evenings looking at the Moon, Crux, Alpha Centauri (and what we thought was Jupiter! ) but I wasn't very confident as there is a hell of a lot of stuff to learn. So after attending an open night for the Macarthur Astronomical society my interest was peaked and my trepidation washed away. I believe that the catalyst was seeing Saturn for the first time that night. All I could think was how fantastic it was that I was seeing this other world. Amazing! My wife and I had a really great night speaking to the extemely friendly members of the club and decided to put more time into the scope and Astronomy in general so here I am! Hopefully I won't ask too many stupid questions but I am quite new to this (I didn't even realise that Myzar was only visible from the Northern hemisphere up until the Mac Astro night!)

Cheers
Wade

[erick (Eric)]

Good move Wade! Bless your Missus for the present! Tell us what scope you have, what you are doing with it and ask all the questions you want. And do a lot of reading on this site - check out the "Projects & Articles" to the left.

[Davros (Lauren)]

Welcome Wade
Its a steep but very rewarding learning curve. There is some amazing stuff up there. Very good move going to the local club. Best of luck with the scope. I well remember my first Saturn.
cheers
Mick

[WadeH (Wade)]

Welcome to a whole new world Wade. LOL. Lots of great people here and no such thing as stupid questions just an interesting learning curve!!

Look forward to hearing how you both progress and about your observations, looks like a nice scope.

Wade

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Cheers for the warm welcome fellas! Wow, another Wade! That doesn't happen too often (twice in my life, in fact)!

I've got a Skywatcher 70x900, it's an equatorial mount (not sure which kind though). I haven't polar aligned it because I don't use it to track, I'm just basically pointing it at what I want to see for now. I've been looking at the moon at lot lately but since I went to the Macarthur Astro night last Saturday I've wanted to have a look at Saturn through my scope. I got to see the M42 nebula the other night which still looked great in my little scope even after I viewed it for the first time through an 8" dob at the open night! Hoping to point the scope toward Saturn tonight. I also plan to get up pretty early one morning in the hope of seeing Jupiter before dawn.

My first question I guess would be about eyepieces. I have a 10x and a 25x as well as a barlow lens. The 10x is good for what I've been viewing but the 25x is really disappointing. Each viewing seems to be a trial-and-error affair involving much swapping of eyepieces and gnashing of teeth. Where should I go from here? I'm still iffy on magnification so I'm not sure what I should do next.

Cheers
Wade

[WadeH (Wade)]

Sounds like you are off to a good start Wade but dont fall into the trap of expecting to see through your scope everything as big or as bright as the bigger scopes. eg: look at this site for comparison for Saturn through different size scopes.

http://astronomy.concreteairship.com...turnseeing.htm

With the eyepieces I expect you mean 10mm and 25mm (not X) these no's should be on the barrel. That would give you: 36X for the 25mm and 90X for the 10mm and 2X these figures with the barlow (72X and 180X respectivly). eg: focal lenght/eyepiece mm. X2 with barlow.

Most of my viewing is done in these magnification ranges, the differance is that my 200mm mirror gathers much more light. The 25mm is good for objects needing a wider field of view (FOV) such as star clusters, nebular and galaxies, wereas the 10mm and barlow would be better for planets and the moon. Also dont forget comets with the 25mm.

Have a go at Omega centauri, globular and the Eta carina nebula both in the region of Crux. They will blow you away and are naked eye from darker sites!

Play around with the eyepieces and barlow in different combanations and above all HAVE FUN!!

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Woops, I did mean 10mm/25mm! Newbie mistake!

It's strange, the Barlow lens doesn't really prove itself useful for anything I've viewed so far. I was looking at Saturn last night with the 10mm and once I focussed the scope it was magic. I took the 10mm out, put in the barlow and the 10mm on top and all I could get was a blurry little ball of light no matter what I tried with the focus. The same goes for looking at stars, I pointed the scope at M42 last week and tried the barlow to no avail. I tried to see Alpha Centauri with it last night, nothing but black. Could there be something wrong with it? Am I using it the wrong way?

Also wihile I think of it, how do I work out the magnification for each eyepiece (I know how you got 90x for the 10mm eyepiece, but why is the magnification only 36x for the 25mm)?

Cheers
Wade

[erick (Eric)]

900mm focal length / 10mm focal length = 90x
900mm focal length / 25mm focal length = 36x

If I understand correctly, Wade, the main effect of a barlow lenses is to optically change the focal length of the telescope. A 2x barlow makes yours a 1800mm focal length so the magnification obtained with an eyepiece doubles. If a 3x or 5x barlow, you can work it out. I expect you have a 2x barlow?

So the 10mm focal length eyepiece now gives 180x and the 25mm eyepiece now gives 72x.

Start experimenting with the 25mm and the barlow first. That should give you an idea of how it is performing without pushing the overall magnification up to far.

I suspect that 180x was maybe pushing the scope and conditions when you tried it. In my experience magnification is a bit like falling off a cliff. At some point it just goes plain ugly. On nights of great seeing I have pushed up to 450x. On other nights I leave the 2x and 3x barlows in the case! Nothing but mush!

Keep experimenting with Alpha Centauri until you can cleanly split the two close stars A & B. On nights of poor seeing, this can be difficult - their jelly blobs overlap too far. Also remember to wait until the star is well up in the sky. Around midnight at the moment. Then you are looking through a shorter column of horrible air.

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Thanks Eric, that clears it up! I really appreciate everybody's help. Will have a go at Alpha Centauri tonight... after a little more Saturn viewing, of course!

Cheers
Wade