Newbie with scope and questions!

[Matthew B Williams]

Hi, been thinking about buying a telescope for a bit now and as luck would have it someone local was selling a Meade 114 900 eq1-b. picked it up for £60.

It has 3 lenses with it:

a Barlow x2

a 25mm

a 9mm

Unfortunatly no instuction manual.

I have had a little play about with it (moon was visible in the day time sky when I got home so had a look at that as soon as I got home). Then again later at night.

Looking at online pictures since I can see I didn't quite have the Tripod set up right.

My questions are:

Firstly is this a good enugh telescope for looking at the planets?

What are the limits of what I can look at?

What lenses would you recomend I buy?

[Qualia]

Rarely things can ever be of absolute certainty but try these links for manuals:

http://www.meade.com/manuals/TelescopeManuals/Reflectors/062002Jupiter114EQ-D.pdf

If that doesn't seem to fit - more or less - to what your scope is like, try this:

Meade Instruments Corp. - Product Manuals Index

You might want a little gander at this link:

Collimating a Newtonian

You should be fine for planets. If in doubt, point your scope at Saturn with the 9mm, if you think weather conditions are alright, try barlowing that 9mm.

Your limits, I imagine, are planets, the moon, clusters, double stars, and the such.

Before investing in expensive eyepieces (which might be as much or more than the your actual scope) it would be worth trying to get in touch with a local astro society and see if they have a session where you could try some other eyepieces in your scope and see what difference they make.

However, on a personal note, I have found that Baader's Orthos and Celestron's X-Cel series are fine, mid-priced eyepieces.

[Double Kick Drum]

A 4 1/2 inch scope should also be capable of picking up a fair few deep sky objects (galaxies, globular clusters, nebulae etc.)

They won't be as visually impressive as the photgraphs or planets but there's nothing like getting two or three galaxies in one field of view like the Leo triplet, for example.

Happy hunting!

[richbyers]

that should be a perfectly capable scope to get you started

[Matthew B Williams]

Thanks guys.

Next clear night I'll give it a go- shifts allowing.