New to stargazing

[The BFJ]

Greetings Arun,

Hope you have overcome your focusing problem. If you have not may I suggest :

1. When looking at the moon ( with a 25mm eye piece) you should see the whole moon whether it is full or not. This might make focusing a bit of a challenge because you see " all light" . if you use a 12 mm eyepiece you will be able to adjust the view such that half the moon appears in the view so that you see a definite separation between light and dark. This will make focusing much easier as you will be able to tell what direction to focus.

2. Looking at phone and microwave towers. I do this regularly; every time I setup my gear in the evening before an observation/ imaging session. The tower that I look at is at a range of 13.2km. I actually drove to the location and took the co-ordinates with a GPS radio ( create a way point) and had the machine compute the range from my piers' location. This is a "nice" test as I can see the elements of the yagi antenna and the cable conduits running up the tower and, of course, the microwave dish antennae.

A good test is to take your 'scope to a location where you can see a long and straight section of a major road that has all its lights in a straight line in the field of view. You focus the 'scope on a light in the middle of the field of view then count the number of lights thar are actually in focus?

Good luck

Jeremy

Is it also possible it needs the collimation checking? I'm certainly no expert on these things, especially not with SCT's but can they go out of colli like a newt? If so, maybe worth checking.

[The BFJ]

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

Good luck and clear skies be with you

[gingergeek]

Hi there and welcome to SGL

[HIP3802]

Hi, Arun, and a warm welcome to SGL!

[Arun Suraj]

Thank you all for the wishes and advise, finally i was able to look at the moon, oh man, it took my breath away, never seen the moon like this in my entire life, a quick question, if i change my eyepiece to 10 mm can i see more details in the moon, and by the way i did find a star near the moon, which was just a tiny speck of light, is it possible to see more details of the stars, if so what all eyepiece should i buy. Any thoughts?

[D4N]

Yes the smaller the number on the eyepiece the more magnification you will get. This comes at a cost though as the more you magnify an image the more prone it will become to the effects of poor seeing and optical flaws will become more apparent.

By details in the stars it really depends on what you mean. Any star except our sun is just going to be a speck of light, it is however quite rewarding to find and spilt binary stars. These are solar systems with more than one star in them. At first they appear as a single star but with enough magnification and some good seeing you can see them as separate stars.

Observing the details on our sun can be good fun too but you must have an appropriate solar filter for this. Full aperture filters that cover the end of the scope are available pre-made or you can make them yourself if you buy the film.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JRWASTRO]

Thank you all for the wishes and advise, finally i was able to look at the moon, oh man, it took my breath away, never seen the moon like this in my entire life, a quick question, if i change my eyepiece to 10 mm can i see more details in the moon, and by the way i did find a star near the moon, which was just a tiny speck of light, is it possible to see more details of the stars, if so what all eyepiece should i buy. Any thoughts?

Greetings Arun,

Your moon observing adventures are just beginning!

Changing the eyepieces? OK. The focal length of your 'scope is 1500mm . Now the magnification as you see it is :

1500 / focal length of the eyepiece . So with a 25mm eyepiece the magnification is 1500/25 = x 60

For a 10mm eyepiece the magnification is 1500/10 or x 150 , easy eh?

Will you see more detail as the magnification is made larger?

The answer is quite complex but it is fair to say that the detail you can see is set by the telescope itself. Now if you keep increasing the magnification you will see more and more detail then you will reach a point when the image will not show any more detail and the detail shown will only get bigger and then get blurred as the magnification will be too high so a lower magnification will give a better view.

Can one see detail on a star?

Sadly, other than the Sun, the answer is No. The stars because they are so far away are genuine "point sources" ie points of light.

Now do you actually see these points? The answer is no. so what does one see? Well my friend I'll let you find out!! Choose a clear night and look at a bright star under high magnification and report back to us as to what you actually saw.

Jeremy.

[JRWASTRO]

IMPORTANT:

Under no circumstances look at the sun without a FULL APERTURE FILTER. Observing without these filters means Instant blindness.

Also remove the finder scope when observing the sun with a Full Aperture Filter.

Jeremy.

[Arun Suraj]

Thank you guys for all the valuable advises, is there any way i can see prolly details on the planets in our solar system. By the way it's monsoon season here so the skies are not clear

[Blind Pugh]

Greetings Arun and welcome from Tiree.  I hope that you enjoy this fabulous site as much as I do.

[Scorpius]

Arun, Welcome to SGL!!! Glad you got it worked out to view the moon. There's a lot to see on its surface and the details that can be resolved are amazing thanks to its close proximity to earth. The moon will always be a factor in our observing as it waxes and wanes through its phases and rises and sets at different times in the night sky. Because its details show up so well (especially along the terminator), it often feels as though you could just reach out and touch the mysterious landscape you are viewing. Check out the pic below I took the first week I had my 8SE. It's not a wide field of view (neximage5 is equivalent to a 7mm eyepiece) but look at the shadows cast by the crater's rim and the mountains and how those shadows provide a detailed view of what the terrain I was imaging actually looks like...

Good luck with your new scope and what the others have mentioned is true. The focus knob for the SE turns many revolutions so you just have to get a feel for which way to turn it and how far in that direction to go.