First night

[hansu]

   The alarm goes off at 3.30, I wake up and go to the window to see if the clouds are gone. Yup, they indeed are gone. I put on some warm (not so warm after all..) clothes on and head off.  I go to this grass field about half a kilometer from me and set up everything. In goes the 25mm eyepiece, align the red dot finder to Jupiter, and I see nothing. Well, the RDF was not aligned perfectly with the tube. Eventually I manage to get Jupiter in my field of view. I see four moons: Europa, Kallisto, Io  and Ganymede. The planet itself didn't have any features at this point. So I pop in the 10mm eyepice, only to notice that the planet has drifted out of view. At this point I really started to hope that I had aligned the 'scope correctly to Polaris. I turn the slow motion control and there she was. With the 10mm eyepice I managed to see two dark stripes near the equator, the dark spot wasn't visible unfortunately. But over all the planet as pretty crisp and clear. I finish the session by taking a  few very bad phone photos..

  I didn't realize that these things drift out of view so fast, I pretty much had to use the slow motion control all the time in order to keep up with the planet. I wonder how fast galaxies drift out of view.. Didn't see any this night, though. Next time hopefully. But all in all the view was pretty much what I expected. I didn't expect to see any small tiny details with this SW 102mm tube. (Skywatcher Skymax 102) I can't wait till I get to see the Moon with this thing .

 About the eyepieces. Would I get any benefits from buying a smaller eyepiece than the 10mm I already have? Would it show any more detail than the 10mm?

 Also, the tube is covered in dew at the moment. Should I just let it dry on its own?

[Bart]

Glad you had a good one. Yes, let the scope dry naturally, preferably. Pointing somewhat downwards.

Yes, galaxies travel as fast! Higher the magnification, the faster they try to escape.

You probably could go for a shorter focal length eyepiece, but don't know your scopes focal length. Good luck

Barry

[Stargazer33]

Glad to hear you had a worthwhile session.

Everything will move at the same speed in your ep as it is not the object that is moving but it is you (or rather the ground that you are standing on) that is rotating.

The 102 has a focal length of 1300. Normally it is recommended that the maximum magnification should be twice the objective diameter so for your scope 204x. To get the magnification of the ep you simply divide the focal length by the ep size. So for your 10 mm ep it would give you - 1300/10 = 130x mag. A 7mm ep would give you 1300/7 = 186x and a 6 mm ep would give you 1300/6 = 217x mag.

Using a barlow would of course increase these figures by the magnification value of the barlow. A 2x barlow with your 10 mm ep would give you (1300/10)x2 = 260x

Certainly in the UK, because of our weather, it is not really recommended to push things above twice the objective diameter (but most of us do at some point!  ).

My first scope was a Skymax 102 and the views of the Moon were superb.

[Pig]

Jupiter is a great planet to view especially when you realise they are its moons you can see