A Few Questions From a Beginner

[silverjack100]

Hello! Sadly, I seem to be the only one in my town who cares about astronomy so it's nice to find a community of people who actually share an interest in star gazing. I have some questions about my telescope and the hobby itself that I hope to find answers to. This is my first post of hopefully many that I may contribute to this community. Anyway, on with it then:

• I own a Celestron Omni XLT 150 reflecting telescope. Before I owned this one, I used a cheap refracting telescope I found at a garage sale. The Celestron is clearly superior and I love it. However, just to get aquainted with what I own, I am curious how good of quality is my particular telescope really?
  
• Using my current telescope and the one I had before, I have found that using higher magnification means less light in the image, and it is much harder to focus. Is this just because of my location, atmosperic conditions, light pollution, or is it just something no one can get around? I'd imagine if I went up to a greater altitude or to a light sanctuary I would be better off. This leads me to my next question...
  
• What are the best conditions to see deep space objects? I want to see nebula and the milky way arm of the galaxy but I can never seem to see it as vibrant and beautiful as you sometimes see on TV or in pictures, even when I am in the middle of nowhere. What is a good altitude to get to for good sky conditions?
  
• Can someone explain to me azimuth, altitude and declination on a telescope, or direct me to a guide or something that does? I want to be able to correctly use the guages on my telescope with charts or coordinates. The manual that came with my telescope somewhat explains it but not in depth.
  

I am asking a lot but I must say I deeply appreciate assistance. I hope to in the future make useful contributions just as you are by answering these queries.

[nightfisher]

Regarding less light at higher mag, thats just how it works, for locating deep sky objects, light pollution is a killer, get away from artificial lights and that will help, and keep the magnification right down, remember that dso`s are not as good in the eyepiece as in pictures, camera`s bring out lots more detail and colour, if you have a look in the sketching section on here, this will show what they look like at the ep, your scope is pretty good, worth sticking with

[Mr Q]

Hello Silverjack100 and welcome to the forums.

I'll take a stab at your questions and hope others will put their 2 cents worth in also.

The scope is a good one and far superior to any cheap refractor that sells in a department store, assuming that is what you got at the garage sale.

The higher the magnification on any telescope you use, the fainter the image and the harder it is to focus on it. This learned skill will come quickly as you use the telescope. Too much magnification and the image will be washed out and dim with focusing becoming very hard to achieve. The problem has nothing to do with your location.

The higher you are above sea level, the less atmosphere you have to look through so views of any object will be brighter and clearer. But even at sea level, good views can be had providing the sky is stable (no upper atmosphere turbulents - the effect causes stars to twinkle) - looking at objects nearly overhead reduces this effect greatly. This condition is refered to as "seeing conditions". Being at higher elevations (several thousands of feet) increases the chances of good "transparency" - less particles and haze to dim the object. And being at a dark location with little light polution is a great observing advantage.

What we see in telescopes is a far cry from pictures as you will find out - photos are long exposures that gather more light and detail - though some objects are bright and sharp in a telescope, most are faint and fuzzy at focus.

Finally, when we look up at the night sky, we are looking at a sphere from the inside. Right ascension is the directions from left and right while declanation is the directions up and down from the horizon. Setting circles on EQ mounts are in RA and DEC (RA in hours, minuets and seconds as ploted on all star atlases while DEC is measured in degrees, minuets and seconds from the north star (Polaris) to the horizon in atlases also.

Telescope with RA and DEC setting circles (and movement of the telescope up and down and right and left) are on mounts called "equatorial" ("EQ") while others without setting circles are called azimuth mounts ("ALTs") but can be moved upand down and left to right.

If you plan to find objects with a star atlas (that shows locations of objects to view), you must use an EQ mount, as the atlas coordinates are gridded in RA and DEC.

Well, I hope that answers your questions without getting to technical. Any more questions, feel free to ask. People on here are glad to help out and have lots of fun with your new telescope.

[ronin]

The XLT 150 is a pretty good scope to get going with. The aperture is decent and it will show a lot of objects. It is also a convenient size, which means you are more likely to use it. So no problems there. You will need to maintain collimation so you will need a collimator (small tool that goes in the focuser). In simple terms the image is best if all the optics are aligned. Check out www.astro-baby.com or co.uk for so instructions.

Not sure what magnifications you are trying to get. Refractors especially if long can deliver quite high magnifications. Also as the magnification goes up the image has to get dimmer. You are collecting tha same amount of light then spreading it out over a larger image, so it is dimmer. Getting focus can be the scope is out of collimation. It can also be that the eyepiece is rubbish, or if use the barlow is rubbish (Both could be rubbish), or you are trying for too much magnification. Suggest if you are trying for more then 150x then you will start to get problems sometimes. Possibly consider a new eyepiece ?

To see deep space thingy's and nebula you really need a dark sky, get out of town !! The darker the sky the better they will show up. The images on TV are produced by highly sensative cameras, you will not see the same. You will NOT see colour in any of them. Even images taken by amateurs are taken with cameras and are 2, 3, 4 hour exposures, your eyes do not operate in the same way.

As for no others with scopes, you will be amazed, I keep bumping into people with scopes all the time.

[swamp thing]

When your scope magnifies an object it gets dimmer because your scope can only collect a certain amount of light and you are trying to spread it over a greater area.

Imagine a DSO as a red balloon when deflated (low power) its small but deep red. Now as you inflate it (increase magnification ) it becomes bigger but also starts to become a more anaemic pink. There is still the same amount of colour there's it's just spread out more. This is like magnification the larger we make something the more the light from it is spread out.

[cantab]

I own a Celestron Omni XLT 150 reflecting telescope. Before I owned this one, I used a cheap refracting telescope I found at a garage sale. The Celestron is clearly superior and I love it. However, just to get aquainted with what I own, I am curious how good of quality is my particular telescope really?

I don't know too much about the specific scope, but I believe it's a mid-end model, and the mount should be robust enough for visual observing.

Using my current telescope and the one I had before, I have found that using higher magnification means less light in the image, and it is much harder to focus. Is this just because of my location, atmosperic conditions, light pollution, or is it just something no one can get around? I'd imagine if I went up to a greater altitude or to a light sanctuary I would be better off. This leads me to my next question...

The dimmer image is inevitable and can only be offset by larger aperture. A darker sky will help for seeing deep-sky objects as they'll have more contrast against the sky. As for focussing, a dual-speed focuser will make it easier to make the fine adjustments, while a motorised focuser will let you focus without the image shake you get when touching the scope.

What are the best conditions to see deep space objects? I want to see nebula and the milky way arm of the galaxy but I can never seem to see it as vibrant and beautiful as you sometimes see on TV or in pictures, even when I am in the middle of nowhere. What is a good altitude to get to for good sky conditions?

You can't see colours in DSOs because your eye isn't a camera. The vivid images you've seen are the result of pointing a camera at the object and letting it collect light for several hours, and then some computer editing of the colours afterwards.

[silverjack100]

Thank you everyone for your helpful answers. Too bad you cant see "TV quality" stuff in a scope, but that wont deter me from using it! Further out of town sounds like a good idea. Thanks everyone!

[NGC 1502]

Hello! Sadly, I seem to be the only one in my town who cares about astronomy so it's nice to find a community of people who actually share an interest in star gazing.

Hi & welcome to SGL. Don't know if this helps, but here are some links to astronomy clubs in Alberta -

http://www.skynews.ca/pages/clubs_list.html

You never know, there could be some astronomy buddies nearby. The best move I made was to join an astronomy club about 10 years ago, after being a lone astronomer for a long time.

Regards, Ed.

[4lefts]

there's some good analogies on here - i'm borrowing "looking at a sphere from the inside" (to explain star maps vs other maps), and the blowing up a balloon one.