Trouble viewing

[Mel1969]

I am new to astronomy. I bought a used celestron c8-sgt and tonight was the first time I took it out. I was trying to view Jupiter with a 9mm eye peice and it looked like I was viewing a start at a distance. There was no detail just a white dot in the sky. To my understanding I should be able to see some detail with Jupiter. Right?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

[Qualia]

Mel, I don't want this to sound wrong - but...assuming collimation is okay and the scope had a little cooling, are you sure you were focused on Jupiter? Even under the worse of seeing conditions, it should appear a little bigger and somewhat different to just a star. There should have also been visible little star like objects slowly following the bigger 'blob' about.

Another night, make sure you identify Jupiter just with your naked eye and line up the scope. If it appears like a star, try the other bright object near by (you may have been focusing on Aldebaren ). There are some great free apps for both ipod stuff and android which you just line up with the sky and you can always download Stellarium for free if it helps.

You've got a wonderful 8" telescope reaching out across the universe some 675,000,000 kilometers and I'm sure - on other better evenings - you will be able to see the Great Red Spot, those delicate reddish-brown belts, a darker, greyer hue to the Polar regions, and so on. So, I wouldn't worry . You'll be able to trace the movement of the Jovian moons and observe their play of shadows over Jupiter in times of transit or of their eclipses by Jupiter's own shadow. From time to time, if you want to enhance that colour of the giant maybe a light blue filter will work nicely, around #80a.

If you can, on your next visit, try to sit with Jupiter for a peaceful twenty or thirty minutes or so and I'm certain they'll be moments of great clarity and seeing.

Good luck and hope this helped a weee bit

[nightfisher]

Try using a lower mag eyepiece to start with, and take a little time to get the focus right say a 20 or 25mm ep, as qualia says, with your scope you should see a lot of detail, if correctly lined up on Jupiter