Yipeeee It has arrived.

[ruthie73]

If you havent seen my introduction in the welcome section, my son has just turned 14 and so for his prezzy ( well mine aswell ) I have just taken delivery of a celestron LCM76. My sons gone out for lunch with Granny and Grandad and it has arrived so i have just finished setting it up. He will be impressed when he gets home.

So tonight we shall attempt to use it, Keep everything crossed for clear skys.

It does have the added advvantage of Goto which hopefully will aid us, but as we are somehwat newbies. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to go seeking tonight, where would be a good starting point?

I'm afraid to say don't suggest the moon as owing to the position of our house and all the houses around us we dont get to see the moon over our garden untill  well into the small hours.

Which planets  and stars are good to seek out?

[BrianP]

Hi! What a lucky lad!

Well my son is 25 and came out with me for a viewing session last night. He was very impressed with the view of Jupiter, high in the South West and Mars, high in the South East. You should be able to identify the Big Dipper and hence Polaris, high in the North. Don't sweat too much over accurate Polar Alignment. Polaris is not a very bright star and it's not very necessary (unless you want long exposure astrophotography) and easier said than done. Our viewing time? 10-11pm. Come on Mum, you can let him stay up that late on his Birthday!

I would add: set up can take a while. Even if you've got the telescope assembled allow 15 minutes or so before you are ready to view.

The Moon is an excellent subject. Personally, I'm waiting for the New Moon on 29/04/14 but you might get some good images of the waning crescent before that.

Good Luck! And Many Happy Returns to your son!

Good Viewing. BP.

[ronin]

Give us a bit more detail of your location, just town, and prople can put together a list of the data that you will likely need.

The hope is 4 lots of information all saying the same, not 4 different conflicting sets of data.

[PeterCPC]

You must have a look at Jupiter as it won't be in our skies for much longer this year. The sight of Jupiter and it's moons for the first time is usually quite sensational - see if you can see any stripes.

Peter

[TrixieLoyalist]

Go and download Stellarium it's free and is really good for planning what to look at, using the Oculars plugin you can workout what you'll be able to see using your telescope and eyepieces you have and you can adjust the light pollution to match your local nightsky too. If you have a 64bit PC make sure to download the 64bit version of Stellarium(To find out if your PC is 64bit if it's windows run dxdiag)!

[ruthie73]

Give us a bit more detail of your location, just town, and prople can put together a list of the data that you will likely need.

The hope is 4 lots of information all saying the same, not 4 different conflicting sets of data.

Hi Ronin.

We are in Rugeley, which is in Staffordshire. I suppose i'm just hoping that we can see something that gives him the wow  factor. Now i'm not sure ill be too good at this astronomy malarky, as i havent got a clue which way is north. Ha Ha Ha.

But i have installed a compass oapp on my telephone and because of the houses  the direction that we will be gazing in from our garden will be anywher from south west round to North, if that is of any help.

[Charic]

ruthie......Hi, Firstly, after setup, you need to check that the telescope is collimated. There should be a basic guide in the manual. Then get the telescope outside during the daylight hours and try to focus on something that is literally miles away. Lock the telescope onto this position, then set-up the finder scope onto the same target(without moving the telescope) once this is done, the telescope is then said to be "aligned to the finder scope" Start off using your largest numbered eyepiece. this task is easiest during the Day, but if you do it at night, find the Pole star and align to that. Which brings in the next task?

Next learn about polar alignment. This is a must and critical to your setup. If eveything is ok, then you need to program your location into the system. Again follow  your instrcutions to the "T"?

If all that has been achieved, your GoTo should work correctly, and you should be able view whatever you want, weather and seeing conditiojns permitting.

I wish you well with all that setting up.......clear skies. (who said this was easy?)

[ronin]

Just to record for later:

Longitude: -1.95, think it will be 001  57 W(est) - watch that the scope has the correct number of leading zeros and value before moving on, easy to get 015  7 by mistake.

Latitude: 52.75 N, think it will be 52  45 N(orth)

DST is On or Yes, not sure if the answer On or Yes.

Use the time as per your watch.

I put Longitude first as I think the scope asks for Longitude first, and people can still give Latitude first. Poor scope ends up thinking it is in Brazil.

For the timezone it is 0, have read it comes out up UTC.

Date will be the US format, think it is obvious but they have Month first so today is 04/19/2014.

You should be OK as there are not 19 months in a year.

Watch the time, it can be either a 12 hour time using AM and PM, or it can be in 24 hour format.

Concern is you end up with 8:00AM not 8:00PM.

That is the basics, read the manual for the start position, there may be a couple of options.

[acey]

I'm afraid to say don't suggest the moon as owing to the position of our house and all the houses around us we dont get to see the moon over our garden untill  well into the small hours.

The moon is the best thing to look at first with any telescope, but it's presently heading towards new moon, which means it rises very late at night. You'll be able to get views of it in the early evening from around the start of May (it's full at mid-month).

Meanwhile the best thing to view is Jupiter - easily found as it's the brightest "star" in the sky.

Clear skies!

[BrianP]

Hi! What a lucky lad!

Well my son is 25 and came out with me for a viewing session last night. He was very impressed with the view of Jupiter, high in the South West and Mars, high in the South East. You should be able to identify the Big Dipper and hence Polaris, high in the North. Don't sweat too much over accurate Polar Alignment. Polaris is not a very bright star and it's not very necessary (unless you want long exposure astrophotography) and easier said than done. Our viewing time? 10-11pm. Come on Mum, you can let him stay up that late on his Birthday!

I would add: set up can take a while. Even if you've got the telescope assembled allow 15 minutes or so before you are ready to view.

The Moon is an excellent subject. Personally, I'm waiting for the New Moon on 29/04/14 but you might get some good images of the waning crescent before that.

Edit 16:40. If you're going to use GoTo you will need accurate Polar alignment. But Jupiter and Mars you should be able to just "Point'n'Shoot". Let us know how it goes. Astronomy can take a bit of patience.

Good Luck! And Many Happy Returns to your son!

Good Viewing. BP.

[proflight2000]

If you get it all set up ok and it is going where you ask etc etc, for a bit of wow as such, go through the handset and find M81, ( Messier 81 ) also known as the Bodes galaxy. From what you say about houses around you etc, this is a nice pick in that it is basically as such above your head so you wont have to worry about fences etc. Right now it is a pretty nice sight, dont forget, you wont see things as you do in magazines, on the TV etc, you will see basically in black and white and what looks like a rather larger mist in the view finder. The wow, well, this galaxy is 12 million light years from earth, so what you are seeing is in effect 12 million years old, it left there before humanity existed. Cannot get more wow than that. Have a great times.

[Wolfgangwand]

Great Gift for your Son's birthday . Wishing you both many happy hours searching the heavens

[ruthie73]

Just thought I would update you all. Son came home and was thrilled with his prezzy, so then from 8 oclock onwards last night all I get from him is can we go and look at stars now. He has autism so really can go on sometimes. Anyway by 9 we went outside and set up and then watched the sky get darker. Oh at this point the alarm went off on my phone to alert us to the first pass of ISS. So we tracked that with our binoculars. Anyway back to the scope, I picked us 3 brightish stars for us to use for yhe sky align. Well trying to get them in the finders cope and the red dot bits of it was the first game we had but worked it out kind of and then found them in the eyepiece. So we finally finished star 3. By which time son was rambling on about how much longer, he has no patience. Success sky align had worked so where did we head to first that will be Jupiter. So off we go our little scope is doing its own thitnh and is off to locate Jupiter for us. Hmmm well this is the part where the laugh or cry moment happened. There we both were super excited by what we might see and also mesmerised by the cleverness of our little device as it moved around the night sky, we noticed the screen flickering and him getting slower. Would you believe it the batteries were dying as he slowly ground to a halt. So new batteries installed and to the fidpleasure

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[ruthie73]

Just thought I would update you all. Son came home and was thrilled with his prezzy, so then from 8 oclock onwards last night all I get from him is can we go and look at stars now. He has autism so really can go on sometimes. Anyway by 9 we went outside and set up and then watched the sky get darker. Oh at this point the alarm went off on my phone to alert us to the first pass of ISS. So we tracked that with our binoculars. Anyway back to the scope, I picked us 3 brightish stars for us to use for yhe sky align. Well trying to get them in the finders cope and the red dot bits of it was the first game we had but worked it out kind of and then found them in the eyepiece. So we finally finished star 3. By which time son was rambling on about how much longer, he has no patience. Success sky align had worked so where did we head to first that will be Jupiter. So off we go our little scope is doing its own thitnh and is off to locate Jupiter for us. Hmmm well this is the part where the laugh or cry moment happened. There we both were super excited by what we might see and also mesmerised by the cleverness of our little device as it moved around the night sky, we noticed the screen flickering and him getting slower. Would you believe it the batteries were dying as he slowly ground to a halt. So new batteries installed and to the displeasure of son we started all over again, well tried to and thrn some rather large cloud passed over our bright star obscuring it so that was it. We gave in and decided that I need to find some form of power supply for our scope.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[ruthie73]

Oops sorry for the double post I was trying out using the forum on my telephone and clicked the wrong button so posted before I had finished. Gosh me and technology dont really mix well

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[PeterCPC]

If you can do a Solar system align it will save a lot of time and trouble. Not sure if yours does but, if it does, you can just align on Jupiter (easy to find) and start observing. The GOTO accuracy will not be as good but at least you will be observing quicker. You should be able to find Mars as it's very bright as well.

Peter

[ruthie73]

The option for solar system alignment is available so we shall try that next time and see how we get on then. Thank you.

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[RichM63]

Congratulations ruthie and son. A great gift that could spark a real lifetime interest.

Just remember that we can't see everything all of the time.

LOL on you watching the scope do it's thing. I have my big scope right in front of me as I type this and I'm trying to slew to the 'spider' in the top right corner of a kitchen rafter by dialing in NGC coordinates!

I'm somewhere in the area of M81 - NGC 3031 Bode's nebulae.

I just hope it doesn't decide to wander away before I get it on target.

Hey, its raining outside, what's a bloke to do?

Cheers,

Rich