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Night Hawk

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Night Hawk

Night Hawk

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I have just brought my first telescope after many years of thinking about it. I’ve only every looked up to the night sky with my naked eye. I researched as much as I could and brought myself a SW 200p dobsonian. I felt this would give me a good taste of what I wanted to view without breaking the bank.

I first want to say that never owning a telescope or binoculars it was remarkably easy to setup. It took around 40 mins. The only thing I would say is the tools, ie the Alan Key and screw driver aren’t the best so I’d recommend to get your own tools to finish the job.

Once setup I looked down the tube to see if everything look like the pictures I’d seen on the internet about collimating. Nothing looked out of order and looked how it should to the layman’s eye. I never bothered checking with my laser collimator as I read somewhere it should be ok with the factory settings unless it's been mishandled. Also I didn’t want to upset anything being a complete newbie.

Finder scope. How daunting was this? After reading no end of threads. Finders cope vs red dot and problems people have had with the finder scope etc. Again this was very easy to use. First I tried my back garden to set my scope up but there was nothing even roof tops far enough away. (I read a thread where someone setup their scope with the local power station) With that in mind I thought about packing my kit up and going to Holme Pierrepont and setting that up there as it is only down the road from me.

I decided I’ll try from my bedroom before lugging my gear to another location. I general have a good eye for straight line so made sure my finder scope was parallel with my telescope before I then started aligning thing. I spotted at a box attached to TV Ariel some 600 or so meters away with a 25mm eye piece. I got this dead centre. I then stuck in my 10mm ep to fine tune. Easy.

First night I got my scope out I left it in the garden for a few hrs to aclimatise. Late evening after I spotted Jupiter few days afer is opposition. And I was amazed not knowing what I would be able to see. It took my breath away looking at Jupiter and it’s 4 moons. Everything was bright and clear. I could even make out the 2 red bands on the planet. I was basically in awe looking at something through my own telescope and seeing jupiter in real time in my own back yard. Fantastic.

I went out again few days later and started just messing around trying my 10mm and 20mm supplied ep with different filters on Jupiter. I enjoyed this using the blue filter and grey one but nothing compares to at viewing with no filters. I also tried a mid range barlow SW 2x barlow that I purchased. I didn’t really know what to expect using my barlow, but I felt a little disspaointed with this at this it magnified Jupiter, but I saw no other details and the planet seamed to whiz by in my ep a lot quicker.

I downloaded some start charts from free star charts and I have the start chart app which I feel is good. I tried looking for m31 and m32 but I have not luck finding this. I found the triangulam to guide me to where I need to look but maybe 10pm was to early and maybe too low down near the horizon with the earths atmosphere.

I really don’t have time to join any clubs to get with a group of like minded people but any advice for novice like myself would be great?

Thank you reading my thread and giving me any advice.

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi and welcome to the forum. I would certainly endorse Starlight's recommendation of the book Turn Left at Orion which is a great book listing some of the brightest 100 objects that are divided into the four season and you can take a look here to view an example of its layout. In addition, you might want to download a free piece of planetarium software called Stellarium, which is easy to use and has many great features to keep you busy when the clouds come in. It's main advantage is that you can study the sky in real time which will help you find objects of interest in no time at all and it can easily be configured to your exact viewing location to provide you with an identical sky to that which you can see through your scope.

Clear skies and keep us updated on your progress.

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beka

beka

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Welcome to SGL, you seem to be doing very well for a first time telescope owner. Some of the Messier Catalog objects should be good in your scope. If you haven't done so already you like JamesM said you should definately look at stellarium.

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