Compact telescope with decent quality/view

[IWatchStars]

I had the chance to use the telescope today. My experience was as follows:

Alignment

SkyAlign didn't work. I tried it 3 times and everytime it said alignment failed. I used two star alignment method to align the scope, which was very easy to do.

objects observed

There wasn't a lot of interesting things in the sky to observer today, so I only observed the following objects:

1. Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy looked like a very faint and small cloud. Abit like this but even fainter:

Hercules Cluster(M13)

M13 looked bigger and brighter than Andromeda galaxy, which I didn't expect because has a magnitude of 5.90 while Andromeda has a magnitude of 3.50. I couldn't really resolve any stars in M13. It just looked like a fuzzy patch.

3. Albireo

Albireo looked just like the pictures.

Also I wanted to observe the elephant's trunk nebula, but I couldn't find it on the remote.

Dew buildup

I underestimated the dew buildup. It was not only on the telescope lens but literally everywhere. It was on the eyepieces, the outer tube of the scope, the goto and on the mount. I guess a dew shield is necessary.

[BeanerSA]

Those observations are pretty typical of first observations. I have two comments for you;

1) The more you look, the more you will see. Each time you revisit an object, you will notice a little more detail. You are training your brain.

2)Lower your expectations slightly and revel in the knowledge of how far the photons have travelled from the object you are looking at, to your retina. M31 is 2.537 million light years away, and contains an estimated 1 trillion stars.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

It has been very humid in the Netherlands lately. I had severe dew problems on the 19th, fared slightly better yesterday. A home-brew dew shield can fix that quite well (usually made out of an old camping mat). For really bad nights a dew strip is needed. The differences you observed in M31 and M13 can be explained from the fact that the magnitude given is the integrated magnitude. That is the brightness of a star if all the light emitted from the object were concentrated in a single point. The surface brightness (magnitude per square arcsec) is what dictates the visual appearance. In M31 the light is smeared out over an area bigger than the full moon, whereas in M13 the light is far more concentrated. This is also what makes M101 so hard: its integrated magnitude is good, but its surface brightness is very low indeed

[IWatchStars]

I noticed yesterday that the sky had a orange glow near the horizon. This is probably light pollution. I live in a small town in the randstad a few kilometers from greenhouses. Is this orange glow caused by those greenhouses or is it present everywhere in the randstad and other places with high amount of light pollution?

Would m13 also look brighter to the naked eye than m31?

Doesn't the dew buildup cause a risk of damaging the electronic parts of a goto Mount?

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

My mount has been covered in dew many times in the last two decades. I never had an electrical fault caused by it (I have replaced one cable after 14 years, but that was just a break caused by years of (ab)use ).

M31 is a naked-eye object under clear skies, I have never seen M13 with the naked eye

[IWatchStars]

I'm not sure if my telescope needs collimation. If I do the start-test, it's spot on, but according to the manual the collimation should be done like this:

Remove the diagonal and look into the rear opening of the tube keeping your eye centered with respect to the rear opening. If you see a black crescent on any sides then the telescope needs collimation.

I do see a thin crescent to the left if I do this. So the star-test and the manual are contradictory. The cescent is alway on the left every time I look at it, so it can't be because i'm not centered correctly in respect tot the rear opening.

[IWatchStars]

The manual page about collimation:

[BeanerSA]

If it looks okay on the star test, it's probably good enough for visual use.