SpaceFinatic

3 minutes ago, John said:

I'd be careful about rubbing eyepieces or mirrors with a cloth if they are dewy. Better  let them dry naturally or use a hair dryer on them.

I found that a light shroud produced a number of benefits:

- kept stray light off the secondary and primary mirrors which gave me much better contrast on deep sky object. I have a fair amount of stray light my back garden !

- kept my body heat out of the light path of the scope

- kept dust / debris off the primary mirror of the scope

It made a lot of difference in the performance of the scope in my circumstances.

 

thanks for the heads up! I’ll make sure to let the mirror/lenses dry by themselves from now on. Seeing as a lot of people recommended me to get a light shroud, I’ll look into it! Thanks!

1 hour ago, John said:

That's sounds like the effect you get when one or more of your optical surfaces has become fogged or misted up. Either one of the mirrors or the eye lens of the eyepiece ?

If you keep eyepieces in a cold place, they can fog / mist up really quickly as the warmth of your eye approaches the eye lens.

Do you use a light shroud with your scope ?

I found one more or less essential when I has a Lightbridge 12.

 

 

Yes! That has happend a couple of times. Usually I clean the lens with a glasses cloth and it helps. No I don’t use a light shroud, does it help with viewing?

1 hour ago, Starwatcher2001 said:

It might be that the seeing wasn't very good. I don't know where you're located, but right now in the UK, Saturn and Jupiter are low in the sky meaning the views of them are fairly poor much of the time (lots of atmosphere to look through).

If your 6mm and 8mm eps focus nicely on stars and other objects, that's almost certainly the reason.

Yeah I can easily focus on stars with a different eyepiece, it was just be the atmosphere

I would also like to add that I keep my telescope in my garage which could get a little cold during the night. does that have an effect on the image?

9 hours ago, Spacecake2 said:

You have a 12" telescope which is enough to view anything with any eyepiece, so I don't know what is going on. Maybe you haven't focused your telescope properly?

Nice telescope,

I used my higher mm lens to focus on stars, but then when I switched to my smaller mm eyepiece, it’s just a white planet (Jupiter, Saturn). However, i tried looking at Mars and I was receiving red colour so my thoughts is that I’m just viewing a blurry image.

6 hours ago, Starwatcher2001 said:

Can you get focus on distant objects (say over 1/2 a mile) during the day?

Other than the eyepiece there's no other tubes (barlow or anything else) in the focuser, is there?

Presumably you've moved the focuser all the way from fully in, to fully out, and still can't get a sharp focus?  When you've got the focuser all the way out, try undoing the eyepiece and gently move it outwards whilst looking through the eyepiece. Can you now get focus?  (I'm wondering if there just isn't enough travel on the focuser for some reason).

Do you have any other eyepieces that do give a sharp image?

Cheers,

Mark

 

 

Hey, I haven’t tried to look through the telescope during the day, and I don’t have a Barlow lens attached. I have a higher mm eyepiece which gives me a really sharp image when properly focused. However when I switched to my smaller mm lens (6mm, 8mm) planets seem to be white and blurry.

6 hours ago, banjaxed said:

Have you checked the collimation ?

Yes, It is collimated properly!

Hey, newbie here. I want to thank anyone in  advance for helping me. I recently bought an accessory kit for my 12” telescope, which came with 1.25” eyepieces and filters. However, when I went out to use them, the image I got was very blurry and white. Saturn didn’t show to have rings, and Jupiter was just big and white. My telescope has a focal length of 1500mm and I used the 6, 8, and 13 mm eyepiece, but got fairly the same view. I am old of age, so any one who can help will be appreciated, thanks.

Thank you for all the kind people who’ve helped me understand abetter about eyepieces and the steps I need to take to improve my viewing quality! 

I greatly appreciate it.
 

Yes that helps tremendously, thank you! Would you say a barlow lens is necessary? I’ve heard my pals say it’s great for magnification but I think 190x is more than enough.

Thank you for replying, yes I have collimated my telescope. I have a feeling it’s due to my lens. It’s a 2” one

Recently I’ve bought a Meade Lightbridge 12” plus truss tube. It came with a 2” lens and has a focal length of 300mm. However, when looking at Jupiter, I can’t see it as good as I should be. I see it as if I had a 4 or 6” telescope. I thought it was because of my lens and maybe I need a smaller mm one but am not sure.

I am 62 years old and don’t understand as much as you experienced astronomers do, so any help will be appreciated!