complete novice needs advice!

[ToxoLight]

Hi G.K and welcome to the lounge.

[saturn4me]

Hi and welcome to SGL!

[glowjet]

Hi Greyknight and welcome to SGL

John.

[gingergeek]

Hi there to welcome to SGL

[Catweazel]

Hi and welcome to SGL. I have to say that I would follow Badger's advice and go for a 150P - EQ3-2 option as well. This will give you a nice all round (as far as that is possible) scope that will keep you happy for some time to come IMO!

[mcsheffield]

Hi, Welcome to SGL, the best advice is to go join your local astro group, you will be able to try and see through many different scopes. A Dob is good value for money but i suffer with arthritis in my joints, particually knee's so Dobs are not good for me, take a look at the skywatcher 150p, in your price range and gives great views.

Andy

[greyknight]

Hi all. My wife surprised me by bringing home a Celestron astromaster 130 eq today. She'd seen some of the stuff I'd printed off about various scopes, saw it in pc world and bought it for me. Spent ages setting it up and getting it balanced and couldn't see anything. Its going to live indoors but I'll have to take it out every tim to use it. Do I have to align it every time or can I just point and shoot for now until I know what I'm doing?

[todd8137]

hi and welcome

[dag123]

Hi greyknight,

It would seems the choice of scope was simplified somewhat for you.

Getting the scope setup inside is a good way to start, as it is nice and warm and with the lights on you can see what you are doing.

Regarding alignment, yes you can just take the scope outside, point it upwards, and view. However it would be good to start to readup on alignment and the case of your scope Equitorial Alignment as this is the type of mount you have. This will align your scope with the nights sky such that you will only need to adjust the RA control to keep things in view as the world rotates. There are loads of threads on this forum to help with this, but basically involves finding polaris (the pole star) and pointing your scope at it. Perfect aligment is never really possible and is more important for photography rather than casual viewing.

The other thing to worry about is collimination, making sure all the mirrors are aligned. Again, many threads on this forum about that. I have done pretty well with a 35mm film canister although others will advocate proper tools or laser varients. But for now I'd just worry about getting something in view. If you can see a star in the centre of view with your 10mm, de-focus slightly, you should see a pattern of rings round the star. This is called the Airy disk patern (Airy disk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). If what you see is close, there is no need to do anything.

Best of luck with your scope, there are many on here who will be able to offer advice on how to get it all working.

dag123

[pel]

You should be able to point and shoot for the planets.

The very brightest objects you see should be the planets. Early in the evening Venus is clearly visable in the west and Mars in the South.

Download Stellarium for the pc and get a general location for them and have a look. Use the 25mm first to centre the planet in view and then swap to the 10mm. You should see very bright disks. To get a better/larger view you will need a 2 or 3 times barlow.

Rough polar allignment is fairly easy, line up your scope to point at one of the tripos legs, get a compass, and point that north and set your lattitude to your local lat, mine is 51 degrees.

[pel]

I see Dag123 beat me to it. He knows the scope well and helped me out previously.

[ollypenrice]

Welcome. One more for the 200mm Dob. Cheap undersized equatorial mounts are a pain in the beam in my view and quite expensive. With a Dob you pay for optics before all else and get a mount that works intuitively. Armed with nice paper charts of the sky you can soon learn your way around. Don't blind yourself by using a computer in the field. Even with a red cover I find they damage precious night adaptation. Just use a red torch.

If you want to avoid stress, stay well away from astrophotography!!! (Joking apart, I think that losing yourself in the peace of the night sky and reading around a new and vast subject like astronomy is a tremendous way to 'detox' yourself from the hassles and nonsense of modern living. It certainly worked for me.)

Olly

Olly's Favourites. - ollypenrice's Photos

[dag123]

To be honest I don't bother with the numbers on the lattitude scale.

My garden is on a slight slope and due to obstructions, positioning will depend on what I am looking at. Luckily I have a clear sight north so I always have Polaris to align to. My method is to set the scope so it is roughly pointing at Polaris. The red dot finder is more than adequate for this. I then loosing the lattutite locking control slightly and also (very slightly) the bolt holding the scope on the mount. It is then quite easy to manually drag the scope to get Polaris in the centre of your widest FOV EP. I then tighten down the screws slowly as this in itself moves things. I've now got this procedure down to 5 mins or less. If I am going to attach the webcam, I will then switch to a 10mm or even 5mm and repeat, although at these higher mags things get much more fiddley and it takes considerably longer. In either case I'll still switch to a higher magnification and defocus slightly to check collimation in case something has got knocked. This is done more out of paranoia then because something has got knocked. I have not found the collimation of my scope to drift. I only had to do a proper collination once a few months after getting the scope when I invested in the EP kit and the high-magnifations showed a slight error. It was easily fixed with a film canister, sheet of A4 and a blob of blutac!

But for a complete beginner with a new scope, perhaps best to just get out and see some planets, point the scope roughly north, then swing round and enjoy Venus, Mars and Saturn, all easily visible now. Venus you will see a crescent shape, other than that it is just very bright. Mars will be an obviously red disk. Saturn will show clear rings and if your light polution is not bad you will almost certainly see a very small dot neaby which is Titan.

Obviously there is a lot more to look at, some possible with what you have now, some will need better EPs/barlows, most will need more understanding on how your scope works and how to direct it to the correct part of the sky. Stellarium is invaluable in helping to locate objects that are at the limit of the scope. You will be able to recognise star patterns in the EP that match what you see on the PC screen so you know you are looking at a galaxy, even if you can't actually see it due to light pollution!

dag123

[ScubaMike]

Hi GreyKnight,

Welcome to the forums

[greyknight]

Hi all thanks for the continuing help, you are so helpful I'm really grateful. I've got it all set up and balanced and it's colliminated (is that right!?) which was easier than I tought. It wasn't such a clear night last night but I aimed it at what I'm sure was Venus (very bright object) and was treated to a slightly larger version of the same thing which was a little dissappointing to be honset. I think though it was just me not really using it properly, just running outside excited instead of doing some learning first. I think a Barlow or two from what you guys have told me might be a good idea and anything else you can suggest to 'beef it up' a bit.

Thanks guys

[pel]

If you can stay up for Saturn, that would be better (Venus is a bit boring, but worth seeing). I think you will need a barlow (Tal's are cheap(ish) but good).

[dag123]

Venus can be a bit of a let-down. It is very bright and won't show any detail other than the crescent shape. If you are really keen I think you can use the change in crescent shape watched over a series of nights, plus some maths to work out the relative distances in orbits. Or something like that???

Rather than the barlow you might be better off with better EPs. The EPs with the scope are fine for starting out, but there are a lot more out there. I did not know what to get so I went for the Celestron EP kit which has a wide range of EPs and a 2x barlow and filters. These are better than what you have but again not amazing. What I learnt from playing with the combinations was that I always started off with the 32mm and then for planets I went straight to 10mm. I did end up getting a 5mm X-Cel, but this is getting towards the limit of the scope, especially with the barlow, and clear focus is hard. However I did manage to split the double-double in Lyra with it!

So perhaps if you do not want to go through the same learning curve, ending up with EPs you don't use much, you could perhaps invest in a nice 32mm EP, a 2xbarlow that then takes the 32mm down to 16mm. And maybe a better 10mm (although you already have one with the scope), to show the differences between a cheap and not-so-cheap EP, the barlow taking this down to 5mm.

I am sure others might have different ideas.

dag123

[greyknight]

Hi guys. Had a good couple of hours last night and although it wasn't very clear I did to get to see some stars and venus. Couldn't for the life of me find Saturn but I'm pretty sure that was just me still stumbling around, I'll get there. The 10mm seems ok but maybe because the 20mm is so bad! I don't know telescopes very well yet but I've been into photography for twenty years and i know a poor lens when I see one. Will definately take your advice and invest in a 2 x Barlow and 32mm EP. Amazon here I come!

Thanks again guys

[dag123]

You might want to have a quick search for threads discussing EPs before you buy. You can pay an awful lot for some EPs! Although the quality of these expensive ones might be lost on the Astromaster, which is an entry level scope, you can always reuse EPs on your next scope should you get one.

dag123

[greyknight]

Hi all,

The motor drive has snapped on the scope and they've offered me a full refund or a swap. Should I take the refund and get a different scope? Or am I good with the one I've got (providing I get a barlow and/or EP's)?

[pel]

Greyknight ,

I'd personally bin it and get a different one.

Pel.

[Hawksmoor]

Hi and welcome to SGL. Lots of sound advice from others so far. I would add and suggest that whatever scope you buy you purchase a copy of "Turn Left at Orion". For less than £20 you get a book that provides good advice on using a telescope, helps you find interesting astro delights that you might otherwise struggle to find and gives you some idea what you are likely to see through a telescope of the size and type you are going to buy. Before I retired, "The stressful years", I found an hour stargazing before bed a tremendous help. Looking back I realise that I used my binoculars much more often than my telescope probably because after a very long day at work getting out a pair of binoculars was easier and quicker than setting up my scope. So ease of set up and use can be a big consideration when buying a scope. Hope helpful.

[Double Kick Drum]

Hi and welcome!

[todd8137]

hi and welcome from me

[Spikey]

Hello and Welcome to SGL !