Help, what is this I can see?

[Catkins]

Ok, total newbie to all of this, I used to know a fair bit about stargazing when I was a child but have forgotten it all now, my eldest daughter who has just turned 6 is really into space & stars & was given a telescope for Christmas.

It is only a basic Tesco one,but the other night after about an hour we managed to get it focused on a star (no idea which one as was fairly cloudy so the constellations kept disappearing, plus my husband was telling me off for shining the torch at the star map I was trying to read because the light was stopping him from being able to focus properly!!

The star we eventually viewed looked like a bright circle with vein type pattern in it, am guessing we focussed ok on the star?

Anyway, for the last few nights we have seen what looks like a really ultra bright star due west. It appears around 9pm & about 20 minutes later it's disappeared. Surely this can't be mars can it? I thought that stayed put all evening?

We've not managed to view it through the telescope as by the time we have got anywhere near focussing it's gone.

Oh & before anyone asks I know it's not a plane!

Anyone got any ideas? We are thinking of setting the telescope up for tomorrow night in advance, but given that we are terrible at actually finding anything in the sky I don't rate our hopes of finding whatever this actually is in time to view it! My daughter will want me to wake her if we find out it's something of particular interest so I need to be sure before I go disturbing her sleep!!

Oh & while I'm here, has anyone been able to view comet tuttle with the naked eye, my daughter is convinced that she saw it a few nights back but I thought it was a telescope only jobby?

Thanks in advance for any help

Catkins (rapidly discovering that we have bought a house in an area with far too much light pollution & facing completely the wrong direction for any decent star gazing)

[John]

Hi,

Anything that comes, remains visable for 20 mins and then goes on a regular basis like the object you saw in the west is not an astronomical object - it must be man-made. You are quite right, Mars rises and stays in the sky for most of the night (it's high in the sky right now as it happens.)

A bright star, when in focus should be a small dot of light possibly surounded by one or 2 faint rings of light if seeing conditions are good and you are using a magnification of around 100x.

My advice to you would be to visit your local library and find a book which shows astro objects for small telescopes and see what that offers up. The moon is the best bet for starters as it's impressive in any scope. Mars will show as a very small orange disk.

Don't worry - usint a scope for the 1st time is often rather a frustating experience - working out how it works in daylight (NOT BY LOOKING AT THE SUN !) is always worthwhile.

Hope that helps a bit.

John

[thing]

You might want to look at this http://www.stellarium.org/. It should give you a good idea whats you are seeing from your location.

[BG]

.

[John]

Just thinking out loud here... could it have been the ISS? I'm not sure that it hangs there for 20 mins, though.

HSF Orbital Tracking website

It could have been the ISS - it's often very bright and moves quite quickly across the sky (in a few minutes) then appears to vanish as it goes into the Earths shadow.

John

[Astroman]

Wouldn't be the ISS. ISS moves west to east and travels from horizon to horizon in no more than 4 minutes.

All I can think of is Vega, but Vega is northwest, but it is bright and "sets", (or drops below the muck) just after 9 pm from London.

[The Warthog]

If you are using a reflector, and the vanes are dark and there is a central spot, the star is out of focus, and you are seeing the shadow of the secondary mirror and spider. If the star is sharp, and the vanes are bright spikes about the star, in the same number as you have vanes on your spider, then you are in focus, and the vanes are normal diffraction spikes caused by the spider. A star should be as tight as you can get it. Once you have achieved this with a star, don't focus again until you change eyepieces, unless you accidentally move the focuser. You can now look at the Moon or planets without refocusing, because all the blur you see is caused by atmospheric currents or local air currents.

[cygnusx1]

Lovely to have such a young child too share the fascination with

Sound like your'e having na ball anyway, it'll all come together in time, get yourself a constellation +starmap and download Stellarium for starters.

Keep us posted!

[Sam]

Catkins,

When I first got a telescope the biggest problem I had was finding something to look at. I simply had no idea what to point at. Luckily the moon was quite prominent in the sky at the time that helped working out how to focus and what the different eyepieces could do.

I think, with the moon not around during the early evening, it might be worth learning how to find Pleiades (seven sisters) which is quite prominent at the moment, stellarium would help you find it. Through the telescope it is quite a view. The stars should be points when focused properly. Looking through a telescope is much like looking through a straw and can be quite tricky getting something in the field of the view.

cheers

Sam

[jgs001]

Catkins,

Something else to bear in mind, and I keep hitting this one, when you look through Binoculars or a telescope you are able to see a lot of stars that you cannot see with the eye. This can cause confusion when you're trying to find an object you chose on a map or Stellarium. Keep at it though, it's there somewhere. I agree with Sam, the Pleiades are a great target and quite easy to fine and personally, I find a very pleasant object to look at. Good luck and keep at it.

[Catkins]

Thanks to everyone who's replied, it's lovely to get so many helpful replies & the warm welcome too Am going to get my husband to read all that you've said as he's the one that knows more about how to use the telescope. Sounds though like we may have had the star out of focus, am not sure as I only got a brief glimsp before the children knocked the scope & we struggled to find it again after that!

When trying to view a constellation are we meant to be focussing on one star or the whole constellation - we've been doing it on just one star at the moment.

Am going to try & work out how to best use stellarium later, have got it downloaded now - thanks for that tip

We do have a problem viewing anything that's not in the west though as there is so much light pollution in all other directions - hopefully we'll get there in the end though, it's something that I'm really pleased my eldest is interested in, so want us to be able to get the hang of viewing things!!

[Sam]

Catkins,

Viewing the constellations is best down without the telescope as they are so big they won't fit in the field of view. Constellations are just a way of breaking the sky up into a kind of map that lets you find the smaller things that are harder to see. Orion is a good constellation to start with as it is so easy to see with it's very distinctive three stars in a row (Orions belt). Have a look at this post http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,20960.msg216221.html#msg216221, it shows a shot of the sky with a couple of attempts at applying a "map" to it which then helps to find the more interesting objects.

cheers

Sam

[themos]

Everything in the sky is effectively at the same distance as far as your telescope is concerned. Planes are at about 10 kilometers, satellites at hundreds of kilometers, the Moon at tens of thousands of kilometers, the planets at tens or hundreds of millions kilometers and so on. But anything over a few kilometers is effectively at "infinity" for the telescope and is focused at the same time. You'll find it a lot easier to use and focus the scope when the moon is up, in a week or so.

[Talitha]

...what looks like a really ultra bright star due west. It appears around 9pm & about 20 minutes later it's disappeared.

Oh & while I'm here, has anyone been able to view comet tuttle with the naked eye, my daughter is convinced that she saw it a few nights back but I thought it was a telescope only jobby?

Hi Catkins! Knowing your location would be a great help in trying to guess what star you saw. I'm at 45°N/89°W (the state of Wisconsin in the USA), and at 9pm local, Deneb would be the brightest star in that general direction, but it's in the NW instead of 'due' west. Vega is brighter than Altair, but from my latitude it sets at about 8pm.

Stars rise and set just like the Sun does, and I'm guessing that you saw a brighter star which was setting. If it was setting into a dome of light pollution, it may very well have 'vanished' (been bleached out by the light dome) before it actually set. Can you remember how high above the horizon it was when you saw it? (one fist, two fists..)

From what I've been reading, Tuttle's not a naked-eye object in light polluted areas... did you mean Holmes? Holmes is the one that flared at the end of October, but it's become so large and diffuse that it hasn't been seen naked-eye in light polluted skies for quite a while.

[thing]

Keep at it Catkins, the learning curve is steep but fairly easy. I've only been at this for a couple of months and feel fairly comfortable finding my way around now. Talitha in Wisconsin is the ecliptic higher or lower in the sky than where I am? (Lincoln, UK, 53N, 0E.) It's just that I get poor views south due to my house so anything below about 20 degrees is hidden which stops me from seeing Uranus and Neptune amongst other stuff. I'm guessing that the planets are higher in the sky the further south you go.

[barkis]

Hi. Catkins,

Everyone is trying to help you get the scope doing what it should for you and your family. I will try also to help. It is always difficult trying to fathom a scope out at first. I don't know what scope it is, either a reflector, or a refractor. If the eyepiece focusing mechanism is at the opposite end to the lens, it is a refractor. If it is at the front end of the telescope it is a reflector. If it is a refractor, it will have a star diagonal, a right angled device which must be inserted in the focusing device first. The diagonal is simply a prism, or a mirror , which makes it easier to view through a refracting telescope.

Also, if that star diagonal is not in place, it is unlikely that you will get anything to focus.In daylight, find a target to aim the scope at. It can be a far away chimney, or a telegraph pole. Place the eyepiece with the highest number on it, and after placing it in the focuser, turn the scope and aim it at the target you have selected. Turn the focusing knob slowly , so that the focuser moves outwards from the scope, that is towards your chin. You should eventually get the object you are looking at into a sharp focus.

This applies to either type of scope, except a reflector will not have a separate star diagonal. Once focused, do not move the focuser anymore, leave it as it is. At nightfall, when the stars appear, choose a bright one to look at, and when you have the light of the star in the eyepiece, it will not yet be in focus, so gently turn the focuser slowly clockwise so that it moves slowly in towards the tube, and the star should gradually get small and eventually become a point of bright light. It is then focused properly. You will never see a star other than a point of light because they are much too far away to resolve into an object of any size. At about 10 O'Clock at night, if you stand facing south, and look almost overhead on the side of your left shoulder, you will see a starlike object that looks distinctly red. That is the planet Mars.

You can turn your scope, still with the original eyepiece in, and try and get that red one in the scopes view. If you manage that, take out the eyepiece, and put another in the next lowest number to the one you had in. This will increase the magnification a bit more. You may have to turn the focuser inwards a little more to get a good focus. The thing to bear in mind is, the earth is turning, and the stars and planets seem to move across the sky as a result of that, and you will need to keep moving the scope slightly towards the west to keep any object in the field of view.

This has been a long story to read, but if you follow it, you should manage to get the telescope to work for you.

Good Luck.

Ron.

[AlexG]

Just a note for Catkins and other newcomers who are finding it hard to match constellations to the night sky (as I am), I was looking yesterday at some of the Philip's astronomy books. 'Stargazing with Binoculars' by Robin Scagell costs just 7.99 pounds (only 3.99 on Amazon) and has photographs of the night sky as you would actually see it from a town rather than in a perfect sky.

That helps you to figure out which stars you are seeing and where the constellations are, a big help. The Sky Atlas in the same series has the same sort of thing.

Looking at the western sky in some of the books you will see a couple of hundred stars listed at all grades of magnitude. Recently on a clear evening I looked into the light-polluted western sky outside my house and counted precisely 21 stars with the naked eye - big difference!

AG

[Catkins]

Thanks everyone for the advice & sorry not to have got back here before now.

Probably like everyone else weather has been against us for viewing so we've not really had much luck. Yesterday on the way home from school DD1 noticed that the moon was clearly visible so we took teh telescope outside & she had a look at the moon through that but couldn't see too much detail - not sure if that's because of the telescope only being a cheapy or due to it being a bright day or both. At the moment she is finding it hard to get used to viewing through the scope, but am sure that'll come with practice.

Just wanted to thank people though rather than looking like I'd asked & run!

[dezmaas]

Hi Catkins,

Even through a cheap telescope, you should be able to see good detail in the moon. Perhaps there was a lot of high clouds / haziness which caused the problem.

[The Warthog]

Looking at the Moon in daylight is a neat thing to do, but it does tend to wash out some fine detail. You can do a lot of observing at 100x, which should be a comfortable magnification for your scope. I do a lot of my lunar observing at 90 - 100x.