Telescopes?

[CrunchBerries]

Great advice in this thread from Ry and Ajax..

I had my first viewing yesterday night: I was able to see Saturn's accretion disk and Jupiter w/4 moons, using my used telescope (Meade Autostar, 130mm primary mirror with 1000mm focal length). I was surprised to see that using a 25mm objective, which gives me about 40x magnification with my telescope.

My telescope is sort of like a newtonian but instead it has a spherical primary mirror, making it a bird jones design.. which seems to be something a lot of people want to avoid. My telescope seems similar to the Celesteon Powerseeker 127EQ, but has a few key differences like a motorized mount, spring adjustable primary, air intake behind primary, and red dot sight. Currently looking for eyepieces.

[ajaxlepinski]

Red Dot sights ROCK!!!

Wait till you get a 4mm lens. Everything will look way better!

...Pepi lol! That was a Hubble picture.

[CrunchBerries]

4mm objective is on the way! Should be here next week...

[Loop Bizkit]

4mm objective is on the way! Should be here next week...

congrats dude!


I'm seriously about to pull the trigger on a Celestron Nexstar 8SE.

[CrunchBerries]

4mm objective is on the way! Should be here next week...

congrats dude!


I'm seriously about to pull the trigger on a Celestron Nexstar 8SE.

Thanks man! Th2 8SE is a SWEET looking scope.. I have no experience with it but it looks to have really good specs. I can only imagine you will see some pretty good detail on everything lol. Do you have a camera you want to use with it?

[Loop Bizkit]

4mm objective is on the way! Should be here next week...

congrats dude!


I'm seriously about to pull the trigger on a Celestron Nexstar 8SE.

Thanks man! Th2 8SE is a SWEET looking scope.. I have no experience with it but it looks to have really good specs. I can only imagine you will see some pretty good detail on everything lol. Do you have a camera you want to use with it?

I have a Canon DSLR, yeah, but I'll probably grab the phone adapter for it and use my iPotato 11 too.

[CrunchBerries]

I found that the earth's rotation causes objects to mive pretty fast across my telescope, and that was at 40x. I havent figured out if my mount will track objects live (move counter to earth at a matching rate) or not. I would assume the Celestron 8SE does though.

[ajaxlepinski]

With a standard tripod, you will have to turn two knobs to keep the object in your field of view.
With a German Equatorial tripod, you only have to turn one knob.
Once you get used to twiddling the two knobs, it will become second nature and you won't need an Equatorial.

Objects will move out of view even faster with a 4mm lens!

With computer guided scopes, you level the scope using the bubble level, enter in your latitude and longitude, focus on a known star and hit enter.
Then, you tell it what you want to look at and the computer moves the scope to the object and tracks it automatically.
My 16" had a computer but, I only used it once or twice because, with a red dot and a sky map, you can find stuff really quick.

[CrunchBerries]

What sort of things should i take a look at tonight? Im in Canada, skies are near pristine right now, moon is huge. Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are all visible. But I am wondering about other celestial objects too. Any ideas? It would be cool to see a galaxy of some kind...

[ajaxlepinski]

Space.com is you new friend!!!
https://www.space.com/16149-night-sky.html
https://www.space.com/skywatching

You can install an astronomy app on your cell phone that shows you what's up and where to find it.
I like SkyTracker - they have a free version that's pretty good.
SkySafari is also a good one.


Andromeda Galaxy is up.

[Pepi]

We also have so much 'light pollution' in our area making it suck watching the stars. Love to have a good scope in the desert

[CrunchBerries]

Ok so the 4mm lens is definitely tougher to dial in. I got a blob instead of saturn lol... I think my focuser is not accurate enough to dial in properly.. there is too much play around where the focus happens, it torques sideways a bit.. i will need to take it out again this week, i kept getting cloud cover.

I may look into an 8-10mm lens, which may work well for jupiter as well.

[ajaxlepinski]

If you got a blob, I think you're turning the focuser the wrong way. Try turning it all the way in the opposite direction, while watching.
The object has to get smaller before it focuses. It's weird because, the object is getting bigger (and you're like, Wow! This is cool!!! Look how big it is!) and it seems like it just needs a few more turns to focus, except the focus won't turn any further.... you have to go all the way in the other direction.
I did the same thing when I broke out my Stellarview after it had been collecting dust few years.