My 925 has arrived. What should I look at first?

[evilgeenius]

Hey all

My first venture into astronomy is with my new Celestron CPC 925 that has just arrived in the post. Wohoo!

After reading and asking a few questions in this forum I feel a lot better about it all. So thanks everyone!

All my equipment so far :

* Celestron CPC 925 - with the 40mm eyepiece you get with it

* Dew Shield

* 3 in 1 Jumpstart powerpack from Maplins

* my existing Panasonic GH1 m4/3 camera

Equipment I will buy very soon :

* Star charts

* Binoculars

* Baader Hyperion Zoom 8-24mm

* Baader Hyperion Zoom eyepiece T-Adaptor

* T2 T Lens to Micro 4/3 Adapter

Equipment I will get in the future after my bank balance has recovered :

* Wedge

* Other accessories required for decent astrophotography

This weekend I'll hope to be able to use the scope, and I'm just wondering if anyone can recommend any decent things to look at in the sky at the moment? It's only my first attempt, and I don't have a sky chart yet or anything to guide me, so anything you can recommend for a beginner would be great.

Is it true that I've just missed out on viewing Saturn? :-( I live near Manchester.

Thanks

Chris

[perrin6]

Saturn is still up after sunset but gets low fairly soon and your 9 inch scope will not have enough time to have cooled down to see it well, but it's still well worth a try, see how many moons you can spot and identify them using astro software (Although you'll probably be too amazed at first to do anything but gaze adoringly at the sight !).

After Saturn there's :-

M13 Globular cluster in Hercules

M57 the ring nebula

Albireo (Beta Cygnus) - the double star

M 27 the dumbell nebula in vulpecula

Epsilon Lyra - 'the double double'

M3 globular cluster in Coma Berenices if you can find it (there are no bright stars near it).

M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major (can be diff. to locate for same reasons as M3 above.

Nebulae in Saggitarius eg the triffid and the omega (I forget the messier numbers), if you have a clear view of the low southern sky.

Faint objects like galaxies and nebulae are not best seen at this time of year but the brighter ones are still worth at least a quick glimpse.

Good luck !

[Astro Imp]

Hi Chris,

If you have no star charts etc. I would suggest you download Stellarium, this is a great free planatarium program.

Another great help to selecting objects is Tonight's Sky. With this website you can select the type of objects you want to select and it will give you suggestions using the criteria that you input.

To get your scope ready for action get it set up in daylight and familiarise yourself with the controls, align the finder on a distant pylon, chimney top, TV aerial or similar. While you are fiddling around this also gives your scope time to cool down. Then enjoy.

HTH

[evilgeenius]

Wow, Stellarium is an impressive piece of software!

[Pete Presland]

Wow, Stellarium is an impressive piece of software!

the best thing online money cannot buy

[dweller25]

Hello Evil and welcome to SGL from another Mancunian.

You will defo need a heater band for the C9.25 to stop it from dewing up - in addition to the dew shield !!!!

Saturn is still visible so have a look asap ......

[brantuk]

You can hook the scope up to stellarium then just click on the object you want to view and it will goto and track it for you

[evilgeenius]

I setup my scope just to get to grips with it and everyting went ok, well apart from the seeing - damn clouds!

My eyepiece seems a bit strange though. It has a rubbery bit that sticks out, which presumably is where you're supposed to rest your eye, but when I put my eye into it I can barely see anything and the bit I can see is a small circle with black all around it. I can only see the image if I move my eye about a cm away from it, so im not touching it. I'm wondering what the point of the rubbery eye rest is?

[John]

The rubber part is the eye cup but with 40mm eyepieces the distance you need to hold your eye from the top lens of the eyepiece (known as the eye relief) is often quite long so you have to "hover" your eye above the eye cup.

It will feel more natural when you use the scope to look at astro objects though.

[JohnnyD333]

I would look at the Weather Channel, the clouds seem to follow new telescope shipments. I finally get an autoguider and Ive been sitting through thunderstorms for a week. Seriously though, go with the bright stuff (moon and saturn) and move to globular clusters like m13.

[Essex Stargazer]

I just downloaded the program

Thanks for showing us

Looks good

[Charon]

how do you hook up Stellarium to your telescope

[Telrad]

how do you hook up Stellarium to your telescope

Taffy, guiding your scope with Stellarium..

http://stargazerslounge.com/beginners-help-advice/95445-guiding-telescope-stellarium.html

[Charon]

Cheers Telrad