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New to this, struggling with viewing

Ian F G G

By Ian F G G
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Ian F G G

Ian F G G

Posted
Posted

Hi Guys, have just purchased my first Telescope, Celestron Exploascope 114AZ, as I am totally new to this hobby can I ask a couple of stupid questions.

Do you have to have your eye away from the eyepice to view, if I have my eye next to it I see nothing. If I move my eye away, I can see eyelashes and get a decent view of the moon. Secondly I tried to view Venus tonight, when I found it it seemed to have the reflection of the scope in it (Spider) I understand this was a focus issue , when I got it clear it looked like a pin point of light. Even with a 3 x Barlow lens it didnt appear any better. Any ideas on how to improve my viewing, I am feeling quite cheesed off as I would love to eventually see Saturn and Jupiter. I am not thick honest!!

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D4N

D4N

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Posted

You will need very high magnification to get Venus bigger at the moment, Jupiter will be a better planet to view in the morning.

 

The distance your eye needs to be away from the eyepiece varies between different eyepieces and is called eye relief, it is normally 1-2cm but one aren't strict limits by any means.

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ronin

ronin

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The sort of awful truth is that all the planets are small. They will not fill the eyepiece. Venus is small, it is also inside our orbit so really you do not see it as a disk either. It will be a cresent or section only of a disk.

The scope is 114mm dia that means you should get 100x to 110x magnification out of it without too much trouble. The scope somewhere should give an F number, if you get an eyepiece equal to that then you get 114x. That is easily enough for Jupiter. You could drop down to 60x so Jupiter is not going to be a concern. When viewing planets you really want clarity and sharpness. A blurry planet is of little use.

Saturn needs 100x sort of minimum, 120x is better again sharp to see the rings. Saturn does not really make an appearance until the middle of 2017 so that can wait.

Not sure about the eye position, what is the eyepiece that you are using? If you have bougth say a 32mm plossl then the eye relief is long and you may have to hold your head away - think you can purchase longer rubber eye cups but at this time only think, not sure.

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Floater

Floater

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Hi, Ian. Have a read of 'What can I expect to see' in the Getting Started With Observing section. That may help to put things into perspective as far as how objects will look in your eyepiece.

As others have pointed out, the distance your eye has to be from the lens (eye relief) varies with different eyepieces.

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Stu

Stu

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14 hours ago, Ian F G G said:

Hi Guys, have just purchased my first Telescope, Celestron Exploascope 114AZ, as I am totally new to this hobby can I ask a couple of stupid questions.

Do you have to have your eye away from the eyepice to view, if I have my eye next to it I see nothing. If I move my eye away, I can see eyelashes and get a decent view of the moon. Secondly I tried to view Venus tonight, when I found it it seemed to have the reflection of the scope in it (Spider) I understand this was a focus issue , when I got it clear it looked like a pin point of light. Even with a 3 x Barlow lens it didnt appear any better. Any ideas on how to improve my viewing, I am feeling quite cheesed off as I would love to eventually see Saturn and Jupiter. I am not thick honest!!

Welcome to the forum.

Without wishing to cause any offense, are you sure you had Venus in the field of view? It is actually not so small compared with some other planets, it is currently bigger than the disk of Saturn at opposition.

It is showing a phase of just under 60% currently, so will look like an oval disk at anything more that x30 I should think, certainly x50 and above will show the disk rather that a point. It is extremely bright too, the brightest object in the sky so you really will know when you see it! It is often quite poor to view though as it is low down and dances around, showing multiple colours as the light refracts through the thick atmosphere. It's not a favourite of mine because of that, but have another look to be sure!

IMG_8376.PNG

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