First Night, First Scope

[Cypher]

I final bit the bullet and purchased a Skywatcher Explorer 200P + EQ5 which I picked up this afternoon for a local supplier

I spent the afternoon building everything up and familiarising myself with the mount. Thanks to the tips I've read on the forum I also managed to set the finder scope up to the main scope in daylight using the apex of a house roof about a mile or so away. Then it was fingers crossed for clear skies.

Thankfully the Clear Skies came and my first problem of the night was polar aligning and finding Polaris in the polar-scope. I found it impossible to see anything through the polar-scope and sadly my contortionist skills leave a lot to be desired. How are you supposed to use the polar scope ? I'm only 5ft 6in and when setting up the tripod and mount I found I didn't need to extend the legs of the tripod to have the eyepiece at a comfortable height. This however meant the polar-scope was only a few feet off the ground and near impossible for me to look through and my neck is still aching from trying. Is there a knack to doing this ?

In the end I just set the polar alignment to somewhere near, by roughly aligning the mount with polaris. It had took me a while to set things up, levelling the tripod firstly and then mounting the head and fine tuned the levelling. I found fitting the tube assembly to the head is very fiddly on your own, again is there a knack to doing this ? Also how is the tube assembly supposed to line up on the mount. I sometimes had the eyepiece in a position where the counter balance weight was in the way making it difficult to see through the finder scope. Other times I had the eyepiece/focuser & finder in a comfortable position but the RA and Dec fine controls where on the other side of the tube and I had to feel around for them as I could no longer see them due to the tube. Is there a way to set this up ?

Eventually I got everything setup something like and my first viewing target was Jupiter. The finder-scope made this easy thanks to having set it up this afternoon. I found Jupiter slightly disappointing as I couldn't really see any detail. Light pollution seemed really bad in my area tonight for some reason, but I'm not sure that was the reason with Jupiter, as Jupiter was very bright anyway. I did manage to see a view of Jupiter in which I could make out two parallel dark bands running diagonally across the face with the four bright moons all in a line as if they extended from between these bands. I was pretty pleased to see the bands but disappointed with the washed out look and lack of detail. Jupiter was also a lot smaller in the eyepiece than I thought it would be.

The Orion Nebula was next and I could definitely see a large grey smudge with the trapezium inside it. Orion was low in the sky by now and with the light pollution being pretty bad, Orion wasn't as spectacular as I was expecting either.

I than had a look at Mars, but I wasn't expecting much having read how difficult it is to view. It seemed like I was struggling to focus on it with the 10mm eyepiece and couldn't see any detail really. The 25mm seemed to focus ok but I still couldn't make out any detail.

It was at this point the new scope curse hit and the clouds rolled in I left the scope out for a couple of hours in the hope the cloud would disappear but that was my lot

[Mr Q]

Phil - Jupiter looks as you described it in most scopes and with it positioned high in the sky. Visually, the two N/S bands are usually easily seen and a faint, pinkish spot may be seen on the lower band (the Great Red Spot). Otherwise, not much more detail can be seen except (on the clearest nights with the planet high in the sky) some faint coloring in pastels between its features.

The same holds true when viewing M42 - when it's low in the sky, you are viewing it through a lot more atmosphere, which washes out detail and some hint of color compared to when it's high in the sky. With this object, start with a low power EP, then go a few steps up in power while zeroing in on the Trapizium. Each EP power will offer different views of the nebula's structure. On the best viewing nights, people report the colors as a faint pink, green or blue - that is, barely detectable. Of course, a lot of people seeing this nebula for the first time may be disapointed after seeing photos of it in books while others who have'nt, are always amazed at its extent and structure.

Mars, for the most part, will only look like a pinkish-orange small ball with a tiny whitish blob at its pole(s) - the polar ice caps. In the future, when its much closer to the Earth and appears larger, some other features will be seen as large splotches of slightly darker color. Otherwise, Mars is not that spectacular to observe even in the best of conditions. Of course, others may chime in with their own opinions as to what it looks like, as well as Jupiter and M42.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

Handy tip for the polar scope - a lot of people attach a webcam to it, and polar align via that. Other than that, just gotta get on your knees i'm afraid