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timd77

By timd77
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timd77

timd77

Posted
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Hi,

As you can see I'm a newbie, not just to this forum but also the world of astronomy and telescopes and eyepieces etc, so go easy!

I started becoming interested after watching brian cox's programmes (like many have I guess), but what really sparked my enthusiasm was when I found out that those 2 stars in the sky outside my front door were actually venus & jupiter, and the orange/yellow star out the back was mars! I'd suddenly gone from thinking this was all something that scientists do, to something that seemed much more accessible and something I could definitely get into.

Fortunately my missus listens to every word I say, I always get bought birthday/xmas presents that I happen to have mentioned in a conversation 6 months previous, so for my birthday last weekend she bought me a refractor telescope. I was like a kid again and have been glued to it ever since (once I'd recovered from the birthday drinks hangover!)

I don't know how to use it properly yet and it took hours to put it all together, but on Saturday night we were both looking at venus, jupiter & mars. Sunday night I tried to find saturn (at 1am!) but to no avail. It was then that I realised that the star I'd been using as a reference point was actually saturn, and so last night I had another go, and was amazed at what I saw. It was only a few millimetres across, but it was perfectly visible.

As yet, I've not worked out how to get the best views and so I've not been able to make out moons or details on jupiter, but it's still early days.

Probably the strangest thing for me so far was when watching venus on Saturday. I noticed that it appeared to be being covered, and gradually it totally disappeared from view. I looked in the sky without my telescope and it was still there! What the? So I looked through the telescope again, and it wasn't there, so looked back to the sky and there it was still shining brightly still! Very weird. I'm guessing this has something to do with the speed at which light travels? However, what was covering Venus?

Anyway, I've gone on enough now, but I dare say I'll be back soon with lots of questions!

Cheers

Tim

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Double Kick Drum

Double Kick Drum

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This might be a stupid question but... were you tracking the planet as its apparent position in the sky was changing?

As the Earth spins the relative positions of the stars and planets move.

Other than that, dew can effect what you see but that is a pretty bright object to lose completely.

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timd77

timd77

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I literally just pointed my telescope in its direction and rotated it to follow Venus. When I first looked at it it was whole but then from the bottom up it was gradually covered, in all it took a few minutes. Then a few minutes later it was back in my telescope but to the naked eye it disappeared for a few minutes?

I was pointing my telescope out of an open window so not sure if it could be dew?

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dtr42

dtr42

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strange:confused:

maybe heat escaping from window caused the scope to temp fog/dew up then when stabilised the mirror cleared [like putting hot air onto cold window initially it goes cloudy till the temprature stabilises then it clears]

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