Heritage 130p first light and Jupiter

[False Dawn]

Had my first light tonight. I only had about 90 minutes out there, but it was a good first experience.
First thing I noticed with the 25mm is just how many damn stars there are that I don't notice with my eyes. It was great just panning the sky, and I got lost a lot, passed one or two clusters, don't know which but one was close to Orion. That's when I focused on my first object, M43, and it wasn't disappointing! Better than I thought, even in the 25mm it was easy to make out its form, with the 10mm it looked fantastic. Yeah, it has no colour like in the many pictures out there, but it looked big and impressive with plenty of detail. I had bought a 6mm wide cheap EP for the planets at last minute TBH, and with that EP, at x108, it looked its best. I think I could even detect an ever so dim faded light green colour around its centre.  

I'd say it looked a lot like this but filled the view more http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/monthly_10_2013/post-21324-0-42294100-1380858155.png

I tried using a barlow with the 10mm and the 6mm just for fun and not only did the image became less and less crisp but M43 didn't seem to really get any bigger. But it was already big enough in the 10mm and I was just screwing around. 

It made me appreciate what everyone says about using mid power on deep sky objects. 

I spent a good 40 minutes with M43 then next I went to Jupiter. In the 25mm I could see a bright disc with ever so dim dark lines across it, but most impressive was the AMAZING sight of four moons spread out in almost perfect uniform with the disc. (anyone else see that tonight!?) With the 6mm I could make out the bands easily and the more I looked the more I could make out a lot of the many colours of the planet.  But Focusing was tough and it took a while for my eyes to focus on it for it was rather bright, and to be honest every time I thought I had got the focusing perfect it would then get brighter and would start to lose detail. 

Here's when things got a little more disappointing, I decided to barlow the 10mm to get 130x and I could not get any focus, Jupiter looked too bright, the moons looked great, little points of light that looked more like discs the longer I studied them, but Jupiter was just a bright disc with dim bands. I went back to 6mm and I got my best view again. Could make out the bands easily and detect the planet's many colours but again it was rather bright. Of course my eyes need training, but I never could really study the planet for long without the brightness overpowering the detail.

I don't particularly want to make Jupiter any bigger in the EP, at 108x it was a fine size, but I would have loved to have seen more detail. 

So I guess my question here for heritage 130p owners who are using it from a suburban back garden, what's the best view of Jupiter you've had for colour and detail, which magnification? How do you deal with the brightness overpowering the detail? 

Overall it was a fun first night with the scope, I wish I could have got more out of Jupiter itself, but seeing the four moons all spread out and lined up perfectly

was worth the price of admission and M43 was outstanding. 

[Qualia]

Lovely report and it's great to hear you got a session in, despite this awful weather we seem to be having throughout Europe.

Briefly, subject to atmospheric conditions, and the knowledge that a 5" f/5 isn't an ideal planetary scope, if you've collimated and cooled your scope well and you use some reasonably decent eyepieces you should be able to up the mag on your scope to around 150x and maybe up to 180x-200x which will be ideal for Jupiter. I have never used your scope but with my 4" f/10 frac, I can manage 150-200x on planets without a problem.

I say this for magnification does a curious thing to the objects brightness. As a general rule of thumb, the brightness of an object will decline as you up the magnification. If I up the mag twofold, I'm reducing the image brightness by a factor of four. Of course, if I keep on doing this eventually details just disappear. However, increasing the mag does make detail more apparent, so we're at a trade-off: will increasing magnification gain more detail even though I'm making the object fainter?

Another thing I've noticed is that it isn't useful to have my viewing eye dark adapted. It seems to work better for me that my Jupiter eye is not dark adapted and I have found the same when viewing the Moon. In this case, every now and then I shine a white light torch and look at its reflection for a few moments and then go back to viewing Jupiter.

But I feel we've got to be a little careful with this term 'brightness'. Sometimes Jupiter can go blurry-bright, it loses its crispness, details soften dramatically and I think this is more due to atmospheric conditions. I raise the issue, for you also mentioned focusing issues.

What makes a big difference to viewing Jupiter are stable seeing conditions and I have found that this 'seeing condition' is a rather ellusive term. Either that or I haven't termed it correctly.

There is, for example, a kind of high altitude turbulence that can give the image a boiling effect. Another night I can have a really solid and steady image of Jupiter but for some reason its features are a little soft, not nearly so pronounced as the night before. Another night, there may be noted a strong glare, a scattering of light around the planet itself that makes viewing tricky. Then another night, there will be a very light mist or fog over the late sky making a mess of everything and then suddenly the image of Jupiter is spectacular.

You'll even find that over a given evening, some of those more annoying seeing conditions will suddenly disappear and the image of Jupiter becomes super steady and sharp only to fall back down again a few moments or minutes later waiting to return again to super sharpness. To add even more madness to the cocktail, for a very brief time just before dawn, the viewing of Jupiter is as good as it was during the night sky! I cannot imagine a bigger light 'pollutant' than the Sun, but there it is - the image of Jupiter remains as good.

These are all certainly great puzzles but from tens of hours viewing Jupiter, I can tentatively conclude that in my own case I do not want dark adaption for the eyes when viewing planets, that light pollution in the form of sky glow makes no difference to me but that seeing is the all too important factor. The trick here is to get the object in focus, and even when it goes out, don't touch the focuser and just wait for those brief moments of clarity. If I end up waiting too long, I just pack up and put the night down to bad seeing. 

Oh, and a light blue filter, something like a Wratten #81A might be of interest. It'll help dim Jupiter but enhances its bands. Some hate filters, others don't mind them. I find them a cheap, handy, non-necessary tool which can aid your viewing session if used wisely and sporadically.

Hope this is of interest and adds room for debate.

[False Dawn]

Qualia, many thanks for your very in depth replay. There's a lot there for me to think about. 

I believe I understand what you are saying about the boiling effect. I did notice that there were brief moments of clarity where I could not only make out the bands quite clearly but detail and colour between them but then it would boil and "brighten" and I would lose the detail, it made me want to retune the focuser even though I knew I didn't need to. 

What you said about dark adaption is very interesting, I wonder if after staring at M43 for a good 30-40 minutes and then moving straight to Jupiter didn't help much.

I left the scope to cool for 25 minutes, I will give it longer next time, but with this bad weather I just wanted to get out there while I had a chance. 

I don't have a laser collimator yet, but the stars looked very sharp in all the eyepieces except when using the barlow. Of course I want to get the scope properly collimated but I was impressed by its performance out of the box, with M43 especially.  

I think tomorrow if the weather permits I will start with Jupiter first and just spend some time with it and see what my experience is over a long period. 

But just being able to see the moons so clearly and knowing I can follow their transits if I have the time is exciting.  

Oh, and it's oh so late here, but I am so tempted to stay up and see if I can catch a glimpse of Saturn... 

[False Dawn]

Sorry I kept saying M43 there where I meant M42, or well of course, both. 

[AndyWB]

I believe I understand what you are saying about the boiling effect. I did notice that there were brief moments of clarity where I could not only make out the bands quite clearly but detail and colour between them but then it would boil and "brighten" and I would lose the detail, it made me want to retune the focuser even though I knew I didn't need to.

I was out last night with my 130p - it wasn't the best view of Jupiter I've had. I wondered if, with all the stormy weather we've had, the seeing was still not that good. I was using my 5mm lens - so same magnification as your 10mm and barlow - and did think it'd be nice to have something around 6.5mm. You are right, sometimes with the magnification, less is more. Last night I found the focus a bit ... variable.

The best views I've had were, as Qualia describes, through some kind of light haze that would make most things worse - but somehow it seems to give a stable, crisp view of Jupiter.

And wait until you see a shadow transit! They're good fun - makes you realise how quickly those moons zip round.

FWIW, I'd recommend a Cheshire collimator over a laser (to begin with) as it can do the whole job of collimation. My 130p holds collimation very well, though.

[Astro Imp]

That's a lovely first light report, its a steep learning curve to start but once you get the basics sorted everything just clicks.

BTW I found that one of the really helpful things when observing was to do it sitting down instead of standing and trying to keep the eye in the right place over the eyepiece.

Good luck and enjoy.