A bit of advice please.....

[bioffman]

I have been looking on a star chart and it said that this month, and apparently according to the bbc website, mars is to the left of Aries in a bit of empty sky. I thought that i found it tonight, but when i looked through my 4mm eyepiece, all i saw was a dot of light. I have tried using the focus to get a clearer image, bit still just a bright dot.

Please can anyone tell me if this is a problem with my Telescope (Telstar 500 x 114, lenses come with set up)

[Greg]

Mars is fairly easy to find - but difficult to observe a it's now moving away from the Earth

If you are using a 4mm EP with that scope it will give you 125x magnification, so you should see it as brown disk.

Are you sure you're on the right target??

Go for saturn instead a much better object for your scope

You'll see the rings!!

Greg

[Greg]

To be honest I had my 8" on Mars tonight with a 6.7mm EP which gave a mag of 150X , even tried a X2 Barlow just made out some colour.

Mars is a bit past i't best.

Go for low powers and Nebulas....

Greg

[bioffman]

Cheers for the map mate, that is a real big help,at lease now i will know what i am looking for !!!!!

[The Warthog]

It would be a good idea to get a basic star map, on paper, even if you have to print one out, and learn the constellations a little. You don't have to know all 88 of them, but about 30 of the brightest out of the ones you can see from England. It saves time, if you are looking for something in Triangulum, to know where Pegasus and Andromeda are. Aries isn't a brilliant constellation, but it's just to the right of Taurus, etc. Knowing the big ones makes it easier to find the lesser ones.

[Greg]

I think you can print off the maps I posted above.

There are several good computerised astro charts available on the web.

Ant posted some good ones in here

http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/index.php?topic=384.0

Greg

[MartinB]

Hi Biof,

If you were looking in the right general direction Mars still stands out as the brightest object in the neighbourhood. Also, it shouldn't twinkle unlike bright stars. It is very likely that you were looking at Mars. The problem is that you are then expecting to see something planet like through the scope and Mars doesn't deliver very well on that score at through small scopes and is only a little bigger than a point.

As Greg says, Saturn is your best planetary target. The Moon is waning now and not in it's most interesting phase but the views will still be exciting. Also point to the middle of Orions sword. You will see a lot of fuzziness which is a very interesting sight. Up and to the R of Orion is a starry smudge called Plaedes. Your telescope will reveal a mass of stars.

Martin

[Astroman]

You don't have to know all 88 of them...

I don't??! Darn! I thought you had to to be an astronomer. Jeez, all that memory space I could use for other things...