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Hello from Glasgow

tammclaughlin

By tammclaughlin
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tammclaughlin

tammclaughlin

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Hi,

Tam here and just getting into star gazing.

In fact I have always been interested in the stars but assumed that you had to spend a lot of money to look at the stars so never done anything about it.

However, recently, I had the chance to buy a used Skywatcher 130mm and now i'm hooked.

I was visiting Aviemore a few weeks ago and went up into one of the car parks in the Cairn Gorms (550m) with my telescope.

After getting over how scary it was driving several miles in the darkness and being so quite, dark and alone I found it amazing to see so many starts with my naked eye.

I waited for Saturn to appear and let out a few yells when I saw Saturn and her rings.

I did try to look at M65 (IIRC) using the book "Turn left at Orion" but could not see anything.

I have just been turning whatever levers I can find and using the finderscope to find objects in the sky but now reading up on how to polar align.

What I am not sure of yet is how to find an object after polar aligning. Is it a case that once you polar align, you can then loosen up and turn your telescope around to point to the objects you want to find?

I guess I have a lot of exciting reading ahead of me!

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Mattscar

Mattscar

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Hi Tam and welcome aboard.

If you ask your questions in the 'getting started with observing' section, I'm sure you'll get the answers you need. This place can answer any question from 'which bins should I get' right up to 'how would nuclear fusion actually work in the vacuum of space as a mean of propulsion'.

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi Tam and welcome to the forum. The thing to remember is that you don't have to be too particular about your polar alignment when you are using your scope for observing - it's when you're imaging that you need to be a bit more precise. Polar alignment is concerned with the way the mount is set up which when done correctly, will allowing the scope to track the movement of celestial objects as they make their way across the sky. You will have already noticed that these objects do not move in a straight line but in fact move a cross the sky following a curved trajectory. In fact they appear to move like that because the earth is tilted on its central axis and the polar alignment process is simply a way of counteracting this tilt to make following the stars and other objects a lot easier. You might find this

really useful in how to make the necessary adjustments to achieve a good polar alignment but please come back to us if you get confused! :grin: Hope that helps.

Clear skies and enjoy the forum

James

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tammclaughlin

tammclaughlin

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Thanks for all the replies.

I did not have notifications emabled so just saw all the replies.

I will have a look at the suggested video but did come across a video that gave me a better idea of how to move the telescope around. So I will have a look around the forums as I guess some of my other questions will already have been asked and answered :laugh:

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