Hints And Tips

[Chris B]

Hi,

After many years of umming and aaahing, my wife and I have finally taken the plunge and bought our first telescope, a Skywatcher 1145P.

Really impressed for an entry level piece.

After waiting for nearly a week for the clouds to clear, on our first night of trying we found Saturn and marveled at the jaw dropping sight and clarity we got.

We quickly scanned the limited, available sky and views of the moon and other objects were brilliant.

However, we struggled to get a decent image of Mars, trying all the combinations of lenses etc. It appeared only as a large shimmering point of light with no discernable detail or shape.

Could anyone please give us some tips as to how we could improve this.

After years of interest in astronomy armed only with some half decent binoculars, we are so excited being able to see more detailed objects.

Excellent forum as well

Chris

[Mr Spock]

Mars is well past its best and is quite small even in larger apertures.

[Chris B]

Thanks.

Will wait for its next appearance, which judging by this weather, we'll probably miss :-)

[Hals]

Mars can be a difficult object, never very large except at favourable oppositions and to me always seems to be affected by bad seeing and larger air tremors more than the other planets (maybe that's just my luck!).

It takes time and an experienced eye to pick out details on Mars so don't be disheartened, stick at it and when the seeing improves you'll see a little more, you'll have to wait a while but hey, that's astronomy

[John]

Thanks.

Will wait for its next appearance, which judging by this weather, we'll probably miss :-)

Mars next close approach is April 2014 so I hope it's not cloudy from now until then !

[todd8137]

Hi there great scope enjoy

[CFC]

Mars next close approach is April 2014 so I hope it's not cloudy from now until then !

It could be judging by the rate it's going now!

[umadog]

A good tip is to buy a guide book and a star atlas. Turn Left at Orion is a well thought of field guide. The Sky and Telescope pocket atlas will help you on your way as well.