Focusing on the moon

[Wully]

Hello,

First of all thank you to all the members for the wealth of information here!

I have tried to search for this problem but I couldn't find anything.

I have a Skywatcher Skyhawk 1145P, it is my first telescope.

I have used it a few times when the sky has been clear here in Scotland, I've managed to work out aligning it to polaris and I've seen Jupiter and its moons and been blown away at the collection of stars at M45/Alcyone.

I used it to look at the crescent moon a couple of weeks back.

But when I tried to look at the moon tonight, in a clear sky, no clouds, the moon high above the horizon at about 7:30pm. The moon was a white blurry line going across the field of view, I tried with my only two eye pieces, a 25mm and 10mm. I could still see Jupiter and its moons fine using a 25mm and 10mm EP tonight.

I tried focusing it and adjusting everything to make sure I was directly looking at it. But I can only describe it as a blurry white line, not a blurry white blob (which I would of expected if the moon was out of focus) Is this due to the moon being too bright? Or something else?

Thanks in advance of any advice!

[NGC 1502]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

I've read your post several times, looking for how to sort this.

Seems that you can polar align then find and focus ok as you have seen Jupiter, Pleiades and the Crescent moon a while back.

Perhaps, with your most recent attempt at viewing the moon, your scope wasn't actually pointing at it ?

When the moon is just out of the field of view, sometimes the glow of the moon can be seen, or perhaps the "blurry white line" you saw could have been a thin bit of cloud or an aircraft contrail being lit up by the moon ?

You could try the scope in daylight at some distant objects, rooftops etc to make sure all is ok with the scope. I think that the scope must be ok, because during the attempt to view the moon, when you had problems, you were ok looking at Jupiter.

So best guess - you were looking at a bit of thin cloud or aircraft contrail being illuminated by the nearby moon.

HTH, Ed.

[Pig]

I had one of these scopes as my first scope and i had this issue, I wasnt actually looking at the moon as ED stated above.

Are you sure the eypieces are not 25X and 10X not 25mm &10mm ?

If your sure its the moon your pointing at make sure you go through the whole range of your focus adjustment, its surprising the difference in travel required between focusing on jupiter and the moon.

(use the lower nagnification eyepiece to start 10x or 25mm)

[Guest]

use the lower nagnification eyepiece

Is that a marriage thing?

[Wully]

Thanks for the help so far everyone!

The eye pieces I have are the ones that came with the telescope http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-skyhawk-1145p.html

• Eyepieces Supplied (1.25"): 10mm & 25mm
  
• x2 Barlow Lens
  

From reading previously I have learned to use the 25mm as it has a wider FOV to look for objects before switching to a different EP. I didn't use the barlow lens at all tonight.

It may be I have actually been looking at something completely out of the way from the moon, In all honesty I forgot to turn off the red dot finder scope from using it previously and the battery ran dry so I was just going by Ascension/Declination for the moon using Stellerium for the current data.

I could find Jupiter of course, but perhaps it was just a spot of bad luck that I didn't have it exactly on the moon. I thought it might have been something to do with the moon being too bright and it was washed out; then I started looking up what moon filters were, but I agree it very well could have been the light from the moon on a cloud or something else.

I'll attempt again on thursday, weather permitting of course, as I have an exam tomorrow and shall report back if the problem has been resolved.

Thanks for the advice!

[Wully]

Hello again,

It's been a while since I've been able to go out again, the weather has been horrible.

Everything seems fine now with the scope. I was also able to get some nice pictures of the moon tonight with my Desire HD phone and a 10mm EP, albeit holding the camera in the cold was a bit shaky without a proper mount for the phone.

[Neil_F]

Well done on some nice images, impressive.