Waddensky

That's the reason larger telescopes enable you to see dimmer objects. The surface brightness never changes, but with the same exit pupil the larger scope has a higher magnification, and large objects are more easily detected than small objects with the same surface brightness.

The mask reduces the exit pupil. If you mask the aperture and want to keep the exit pupil the same by reducing the magnification, the image of the Moon has the same surface brightness, only smaller.

Welcome to the Stargazers Lounge! It's wonderful that your daughter is so interested in astronomy, and a telescope is a great gift for her! Luckily, there are some options available for the budget. Here is a list of beginner telescopes that won't break the bank and are great to get started. I've been observing for years and the 8" dobson on that list still is my telescope that gets the most use ;). Used telescopes are another option, but you need to be sure that the optics are alright. Don't hesitate to post a link to an ad here so we can help you out. In any case, stay away from toy store telescopes that are advertising with very high magnifications (> 500x) or colourful pictures. They'll only cause disappointment. Edit: ah, I missed the dollar sign. The scopes in the link are still great, but they are sometimes branded differently in the US.

The Saguaro Astronomy Club Database (current version 8.1) lists a lot of wonderful and bright deep-sky objects. Highly recommended. All Messier objects and therefore the objects on your list are well within reach of your telescope, and so are thousands of other galaxies. M83 may be a struggle from your latitude, it's intrinsically bright but never rises high above the horizon. It took me a while from a comparable latitude to finally catch a glimpse of it. The Virgo Cluster is wonderful because it's large and while cruising it, the field of view is continuously filled with dim patches of light - all seperate galaxies.

I watched the episode linked in the first post. It basically says that the building blocks of life are found in the solar system, and that some lifeforms are able to survive in space - at least for a short time. This does not imply that life is able to come into existence elsewhere in the universe, nor that life exists throughout the universe (the panspermia hypothesis). In my opinion, this is sufficiently put forward by the presenter but he really jumps to some conclusions very quickly, giving the video a kind of incoherent and unscientific feel. Oh, and water bears are cool. But that's not a hypothesis, that's a fact 😏.

Ah, the tears of the Dragon. The Draconids can be spectacular, with the 2018 outburst reaching a ZHR of 150. They are also exceptionally slow. The IMO Meteor Shower Calendar predicted two trail encounters, both happened last night between 1 and 2h UT but I've not seen reports or observations yet. But news reports like this will most likely result in a lot of disappointed aspiring stargazers, unfortunately...

There are a few other versions avaiable too, with USB or Ethernet connection.

This looks like a VIIRS map to me. This measures the light emission from artificial light sources as seen from space, not the effect it has on sky brightness. As far as I know, 2015 is the first and only time the data has been reworked to show real darkness.

This website shows the darkness of the night sky calculated from artificial light emission measured by satellites (use the World Atlas 2015 layer). It's good to get a rough idea of the darkness, but keep in mind that the data is from 2015 and a lot (a LED 😏) has changed since then. Here in The Netherlands, there are a few websites and forums where you can find and share dark sites that are easily accessible - including recent darkness measurements. Not sure about the UK. The SQM is a well-known device to measure darkness yourself, allowing easy comparison with other sites and other observers. I have one - it's very convenient and a good investment in my opinion.

Difficult to see. Most likely a satellite, a bird or a bat. Nice catch!

You're not doing anything wrong. At useful magnifications, planets will always appear as very small disks - nothing like the pictures from astrophotographers or even space telescopes. The trick is to learn to recognise and discern the tiny details and contrast differences. It may take a while (and some nights with steady atmosphere) to get the hang of it, but it's worth it!

I meant the processes on Earth. We don't know what processes cause the phosphine in our own atmosphere, that's what I found really remarkable.

That was interesting. One of the things that struck me was that we don't even know what biological processes cause the abundance of phosphine in the atmosphere on Earth. We're just fairly sure that it's some kind of biological mechanism at work.

Press briefing live now here.

Well, the amount of phosphine found in the Venerian atmosphere cannot be explained by any known non-biological process. So either there are things going on in the extreme conditions on Venus we don't know of, or there's a biological process involved. I think that's interesting. I've read that the oxidation of phosphor-containing iron can produce phosphine in an acidic environment, but the air pressure is way too high to get it from the surface into the atmosphere.

I agree with Steve, the current close proximity of Sirius is a relatively short event. Here's a graphic showing how proper motion of stars change their distance to us over tens of thousands of years (and not millions!) Before the red giant phase, Sirius B was a bright B type star. 240 million years ago the Sirius system wasn't even born yet. B stars have a very short life span.

The heritage models suggested here are great. They will show you lovely details on the Moon and the rings of Saturn with ease. Another good suggestion, slightly over budget, is the Sky-Watcher Skyliner 150P dobson. Here are some other great scopes for every budget. Remember that all scopes in this price range need to be pointed to the right location manually, and need to be 'nudged' from time to time to keep the object centered. Nothing overly complicated, but something you'll need to get the hang of. A more 'grab and go' approach would be a nice pair of binoculars, for example a 7x50, 8x42 or 10x50. No rings of Saturn with these (although at 10x the planet looks slightly elongated), but many, many other nice things to see.

We can achieve quite some resolution with interferometry. Here's an example of the surface of Betelgeuse. Don't need the JWT for that 🙂.

The angular resolution of the James Webb Telescope at a wavelength of 2 micrometers is around 0.1" (source). The angular diameter of Beteulgeuse is about 0.05" (source). So the JWT will not be able to resolve detail on the disk of Betelgeuse.

As said, the 150P really is a great improvement over your current telescope. Much higher resolution and ability to magnify quite a bit higher. Try it on some bright globular clusters (M13, M92), you'll be amazed. Just don't expect field of view filling planets, swirling nebulae and bright spiralling galaxies 🙂

There's a small number of nebulae that really benefit from a H-Beta filter (M43, NGC 1499 and IC 405 for example). On most of these UHC also performs well. So yeah, it's kind of specialised and maybe not really worth the investment.

What kind of objects would you like to observe? Planets, deep-sky, double stars, ...? The scopes comes with a 25 mm eyepiece IIRC so something in the 8-10 mm range would probably be a good addition. You can also just start using the 25 mm and find out what you miss or need.

Hey, and welcome! The link to another topic that Mark shared contains some very good information on what to expect when doing visual astronomy. The Explorer 150P is a step up from your current scope, but the planets will still be very small and most deep-sky objects will still be very, very faint grey smudges, sometimes only visible using averted vision. But don't let this put you off: when you gain experience, you will be able to see incredible amount of detail on the planets and see faint deep-sky objects you never dreamt of. The 2.5 mm eyepiece will most likely give you too much magnification for the scope. Best to keep it under 150x, beef it up to 200x on a really good night. Not familiar with the Norwegian skies, but here in The Netherlands the atmosphere usually limits the magnification to around 200x anyway. A 2" eyepiece has the advantage of giving you a wider field of view. This is nice for some large deep-sky objects or just cruising around the skies. Have fun and let uw know about your experiences with the new telescope!

Great, enjoy! Remember that even at 100x the planets are quite small and need a steady atmosphere and some experience to discern all the subtle details. But you'll gain this experience very fast 😊

Hi, and welcome! Yes, to see details on the planets and the Moon you'll need quite a bit of magnification. The angular resolution of your telescope (smallest details that can be resolved by the scope) is about 1.15 arcseconds. To magnify that so it can be discerned by someone with a decent eyesight, you'll need a magnification of about 100x. In your case, that's an eyepiece of 6 mm. You can always magnify more, but this won't resolve more details - resulting in a larger but more blurry and also darker view. In some cases this is helpful, for example to see some subtle contrast differences or to split very close double stars, but I personally mostly enjoy the sharper, lighter views. I'm not familiar with the Sky-Watcher eyepieces from your link, but I'm pretty sure there are some decent 4-6 mm eyepieces available for your budget. Good luck, and above all, enjoy your views!