What's wrong?

[Bolton rob]

As said time and time again, wait till you have an object you cant miss like the moon or a distant landmark in daylight.

I know it's frustrating but I'm sure the scope is fine. It took me ages to get the hang of using one so stick with it.

Your image does definitely show out-of-focus and I am guessing what you thought you were looking at was not Jupiter. Get the finder scope aligned and you will see. Don't worry about collimation yet, for visual work you'll be fine. Do a bit of research first before spending money. My 150P and 200P worked straight out of the box (once the finder was aligned)

Word of advice: once you have the finder aligned, don't remove it!! I did to pack it up after the first nights observing. took hours to get aligned agin the next night in the dark!

HTH

Cheers

Jamie

i will never take it apart but I have to take of the mount at night. Hopefully that affect it when it's aligned.

[JKB]

No taking off the mount is fine, but just be careful not to knock the finder after aligned. If you ever do have to remove it you will have to re-align it before use

Cheers

Jamie

[John]

....the focus tube was half way out. It was weird. The object went bigger if It was all way in or all way out.....

Yes, it would do that. As an object goes out of focus, in either direction, it appears to expand. At the point of focus though that dark central circle will disappear and Jupiter will look like a very small circular spot of light - much smaller than the disk of light that you show in the picture.

Was what you pictured the smallest that the disk would get over the whole range of travel of the focuser, both in and outwards ?

[mrphildog]

it was 25mm

pointed a Jupiter

the focus tube was half way out. It was weird. The object went bigger if It was all way in or all way out

once again I would like thank you all for your time.

It will do that when it is out of focus. You mentioned earlier that when you got it in focus it looks like a star, this does seem to suggest that you weren't looking at Jupiter. In which case your finder scope alignment is probably off.

I agree with Jamie, until you've discounted that as the cause don't be tempted to spend money on this problem. The way you have described it collimation is not likely to be the cause.

If you had a collimation problem you'd not see Jupiter as a small star, if you had a problem getting the telescope to focus you wouldn't see Jupiter as a small star, it would always look like that out of focus image you posted.

[Bolton rob]

Sorry my mistake I should of said I took that picture when the focus tube was fully extended. When it was half way out it was size of a pea but I could see like 3 fainter stars in the background. Bit like looking through the finderscoe but in a smaller area if you get what I mean.

[mrphildog]

Sorry my mistake I should of said I took that picture when the focus tube was fully extended. When it was half way out it was size of a pea but I could see like 3 fainter stars in the background. Bit like looking through the finderscoe but in a smaller area if you get what I mean.

that sounds like Jupiter (the pea) and three of its moons then.

[John]

Sorry my mistake I should of said I took that picture when the focus tube was fully extended. When it was half way out it was size of a pea but I could see like 3 fainter stars in the background. Bit like looking through the finderscoe but in a smaller area if you get what I mean.

Well thats what Jupiter looks like at low power (25mm eyepiece) - a small disk with up to (but not always visible) 4 moons strung out in line with it's equator.

[Bolton rob]

Remember before digital tv. You only had channel 1-5. If you went on channel 6 it was like black and white when it was not tuned tv a station. It was big like that in a way. Sorry it's best I can describe what it looked when I moved the focuser out and in or changed to eyepiece. No colour or anything just fuzzy and black and white.

[freeflyjay]

you havn`t metioned the conditions your viewing from, sounds like you did have jupiter and the moons under low mag(try the 10mm), if light pollution is a problem letting the eye adjust to the dark is even more important, remember your trying to look at the night sky, let your eyes adjust to the dark and take you time and look and remember to move the focuser slow untill you get the smallest clear image....still start with the moon you`ll be stunned with a 10mm eyepiece and prove you can focus and theres nothing wrong with your scope, lots of people expect hubble type images from a small scope but thats not what you get, but with planets even with moderate light polution you should be able to get a faily good view with almost any telescope.

[freeflyjay]

Remember before digital tv. You only had channel 1-5. If you went on channel 6 it was like black and white when it was not tuned tv a station. It was big like that in a way. Sorry it's best I can describe what it looked when I moved the focuser out and in or changed to eyepiece. No colour or anything just fuzzy and black and white.

#

when i was a kid we only had 3 channels and it was black and white cos colour tv`s were expensive, in fact the parents used to send the tv back to the rental man in the summer, the first thing i saw in colour was wonder woman, i`m 41 but my generation saw the first computers, i remember programming a zx81 the first home computer, but science has always been a passion and yet took me untill last year to get my first telescope.

[rory]

as mentioned rob. if you found the bright spot get smaller and some faint stars strung out near by , well.... id say you were looking at jupiter and its moons .

jupiter is a very large planet ,the largest in the solar system. but even under a telescope its not huge to look at ,and the moons even smaller still.

so when its at its smallest/sharpest. sit and look at it for a while you may start to see some lines going across ,jupiters bands are great to look at.

have you down loaded this free software - http://stellarium.org/

its a great bitof kit, you can enetr your telescope aperture and eyepieces , then get pretty much the size of objects as seen with your equipment and field of view.

well worth having.

[rory]

heres something along the lines of low power view of the big planet, the small moons will not always be in the same place though, they are always moving around. but its gives you some idea .

[mrphildog]

Remember before digital tv. You only had channel 1-5. If you went on channel 6 it was like black and white when it was not tuned tv a station. It was big like that in a way. Sorry it's best I can describe what it looked when I moved the focuser out and in or changed to eyepiece. No colour or anything just fuzzy and black and white.

5 channels?! Luxury.

Anyway, I'm a bit puzzled here. Once you managed to get Jupiter focussed (which it sounds like you did having a pea sized object with 3 dots) then moving the focuser will just put it out of focus. Where you trying to zoom in on it? The focuser just makes it sharper, once you had its shape with the moons just tiny movements would be required to get it as sharp as possible. When you want more magnification you use the lower focal length eyepiece.

I.e. it works like this:

1. Get Jupiter it finder scope crosshairs
   
2. Look through low power eyepiece (e.g. 25mm) and get it centred
   
3. Move the focuser until the image is sharp (a disc with some dots). Once you've done this moving the focuser won't do anything except to make it big and blurry (i.e. out of focus)
   
4. If you need more magnification then centre Jupiter and change to a higher power eyepiece (e.g. 10mm)
   
5. If you don't see anything except black then Jupiter is probably just out of your field of view and you need to move the scope very slightly to get it back in view.
   
6. Once it's in view in the high power eyepiece you may need to focus again to get it sharp. At this point you should see some detail on the planet's surface.
   
7. If you need more magnification again you can change the eyepiece again or add a barlow lens. Keep in mind that adding more and more magnification doesn't always add more detail as you can end up limited by atmospheric disturbance.
   

At low power (e.g. 25mm) you probably won't see much colour or detail but you should see some bands on the planet in subtle colour at higher power.

Sorry if this is all too basic but I didn't understand why you were moving the focuser in and out once you had the planet focussed as it appears you had.

[rory]

did you suss it rob ? let us know how you got /get on.