Newbie And Performing Like One!!! Help!!! :)

[Gazetilludrop]

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction please?

I have just got a Celestron Travel Telescope 70 that I am playing with before I purchase I better scope. It comes with 4mm, 10mm and 20mm eye pieces and a x3 Barlow lens. As the moon and Saturn is out of sight below the horizon to try out at night, I have been trying to look at Jupiter. This is where I am struggling!  I've read posts where people have seen the moons through binoculars and everything but I can't even get it in focus! 

The closest I've got with minuscule focus adjustment is a small dot image of the planet (not much different to the naked eye view) with a halo around it and certainly not in focus, this was using the 20mm. I must be doing something wrong but I'm not sure what. 

Believe me I've tried all sorts of eye piece arrangements including the barlow with some weird results too!!!! 

Thanks

[ronin]

Actually so far so good.

Put the 20mm in and find Jupiter, then get it in the centre.

Then change to the 10mm and refocus. Should be bigger, and doesn't take a genius to realise twice as big. :grin:

You could then do the same and swap to the 4mm, but as the magnification goes up the field of view goes down and Jupiter will amble across the view quickly and disappear off one edge. Also the detail can be lost as the optics have a maximum.

You could try the barlow and the 20mm to give 6.6 mm, but if barlow and 20mm are not reasonable the image could be poor.

Jupiter is bright and unless the magnification gets up it will appear as a bright white disc, as too much light is present.

Next be careful of the sky, what the Met Office calls clear may not be clear for observing. The last 2 nights here stars were visible but there was still a mist/moisture layer that caused detail to be lost, as well as a lot of the dimmer stars..

[Gazetilludrop]

That's great, thanks for the advice. Will a filter help? I've just received 4 colour filters, one orange, a lunar filter, one blue and a green one.

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[ronin]

Not 100% sure what I have said will help, one aspect is I have no idea about the scope.

If you can get a magnification of 50x to 60x on Jupiter it should be small but big enough that you can see some bands. How good and sharp depends on the optics. That is the concern.

If it remains too bright drop in the moon filter, that will simply dim everything so reducing the brightness and hopefully making the image easier to pick detail out.

Not sure what colour filter may help, so try each one and find out. Also it depends on what you "want" to see. At a guess the blue one would display blue/black/blue/black/blue banding. But it would be dimmer and should/might indicate banding.

Think the orange one would be of no relevance, think Jupiter would effectively become an orange ball, no banding, you would end up with orange bands next to orange bands. Subtracting colours means a little thought.

Green, not sure about, maybe give it a go, just suspect not a lot of use. Could be wrong.

I viewed Jupiter with a 70mm refractor, but the eyepiece was fairly good. So easily possible.

[Gazetilludrop]

Must admit, the eyepieces came with the scope so quality may be a little debatable! I'll give it another go and see what happens. Thanks.