viewing celestial bodies

[shyam]

hi

After buying the telescope i hv started to view moon and Jupiter till now ie almost 1 month over . And in one month due to rainy season most of the time its cloudy. and when not cloudy still i am aiming the sky blindly i mean no systematic approach , because i dont know.  To catch a glimpse of Jupiter i struggle for more than 45 to 1 hr some times lucky some times not lucky.

regards

shyam menon

[brantuk]

Hi Shyam - have you tried downloading Stellarium to your computer? It will show you where all the objects are in the sky at your location live - and it's free. It also helps if you have a knowledge of current constellations which act as guide stars for positional information to help with star hopping the telescope to find specific objects. Hth

(You can also google specific finding instructions if you know which object you are after)

[shyam]

1 minute ago, brantuk said:

Hi Shyam - have you tried downloading Stellarium to your computer? It will show you where all the objects are in the sky at your location live - and it's free. It also helps if you have a knowledge of current constellations which act as guide stars for positional information to help with star hopping the telescope to find specific objects. Hth

(You can also google specific finding instructions if you know which object you are after)

stellarium need good graphic card and my PC doesnt have ...every time i try to lauch the programme , it evantually terminates with a no graphic card message.

[brantuk]

Ahh I see - try skyviewcafe - it's a little different but carries similar information only with simpler graphics. It works well on older machines.

[John]

You could try an older version of Stellarium. Here is a download link to version 10.6 which was released in 2005:

https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.10/0.10.6

If your PC is really old then Skyglobe 3.6 might be OK:

http://adamhome.com/skyglobe.htm

[shyam]

59 minutes ago, John said:

You could try an older version of Stellarium. Here is a download link to version 10.6 which was released in 2005:

https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.10/0.10.6

If your PC is really old then Skyglobe 3.6 might be OK:

http://adamhome.com/skyglobe.htm

thanks for the update, i have a ubuntu 16.04

[JOC]

I've taken a look at Stellarium for roughly your location (I could find Coimbator - Jupiter is high in the sky early in your evening (around 5pm-6pm) if it's any direction it looks slightly south of west, but it does seem high - getting lower and moving more towards the west and then toward the north as the evening progresses - if your view of it is similar to mine its the socking great big bright 'star' with another bright one slightly higher and to the left and a further bright one up and to the right, but that one is a bit further away - I find its the brightest thing up there at the moment.  I am dreadful at knowing what's up there, but once I spotted it Jupiter was unmistakable.

[shyam]

On 28/5/2017 at 18:17, JOC said:

I've taken a look at Stellarium for roughly your location (I could find Coimbator - Jupiter is high in the sky early in your evening (around 5pm-6pm) if it's any direction it looks slightly south of west, but it does seem high - getting lower and moving more towards the west and then toward the north as the evening progresses - if your view of it is similar to mine its the socking great big bright 'star' with another bright one slightly higher and to the left and a further bright one up and to the right, but that one is a bit further away - I find its the brightest thing up there at the moment.  I am dreadful at knowing what's up there, but once I spotted it Jupiter was unmistakable.

after 7 pm jupiter rises from south east and moves towards south west ...

[JOC]

So what do I know? LOL.  

I'd obviously pressed something wrong in stellarium.  In fact it sounds like it behaves the same with you as it does over here.  However, the fact that you can tell me I was wrong means that it sounds like you have solved finding her which I guess is what you were trying to do.  So it sounds like problem solved :-)

[shyam]

57 minutes ago, JOC said:

So what do I know? LOL.  

I'd obviously pressed something wrong in stellarium.  In fact it sounds like it behaves the same with you as it does over here.  However, the fact that you can tell me I was wrong means that it sounds like you have solved finding her which I guess is what you were trying to do.  So it sounds like problem solved :-)

The problem is i reach from office by 9 pm night and by this time the jupiter is some what overhead of me and then with the reflector telescope just moving around the sky bindly as  i dont know the basics some times lucky some times tired and i loose and jupiter wins ... hahaha ... so my point is the telescope beaming to sky is wrong i think because its so tiresome and moving around blindly right?

[JOC]

I find my reflector is distinctly unweildy when it looks more straight up.  It is less easy to prsuade it to shift left and right as that agle becomes shorter.  I sometimes find it helps to grab hold of the Dobson base and try shifting that.  Presumably you have a finderscope?  Is ut a straight through one.  A right angled optical finder (RACI) is a less neck cricking option, but even then I fiund this difficult to aim.  I have recently had huge success (and I mean HUGE success by adding in a cheap dual red dot finder (RDF) I got from SGL classifieds.  I got a dual mount (there is someone in Poland on ebay 3D printing them for <£10) and put both RDF  and RACI and now I can find anything in 30 seconds.  I line it up in the RDF (which is just a touch beyond to align perfectly with the telescope without adding a shim which I haven't got) and then centre it with the crosshairs in the RACI which I align spot-on with the telescope during the daytime or or a night with a distant bright object or light.  With this combo I can reliably find in the scope anything I can see with my eye.  Hope this helps.

[shyam]

17 hours ago, JOC said:

I find my reflector is distinctly unweildy when it looks more straight up.  It is less easy to prsuade it to shift left and right as that agle becomes shorter.  I sometimes find it helps to grab hold of the Dobson base and try shifting that.  Presumably you have a finderscope?  Is ut a straight through one.  A right angled optical finder (RACI) is a less neck cricking option, but even then I fiund this difficult to aim.  I have recently had huge success (and I mean HUGE success by adding in a cheap dual red dot finder (RDF) I got from SGL classifieds.  I got a dual mount (there is someone in Poland on ebay 3D printing them for <£10) and put both RDF  and RACI and now I can find anything in 30 seconds.  I line it up in the RDF (which is just a touch beyond to align perfectly with the telescope without adding a shim which I haven't got) and then centre it with the crosshairs in the RACI which I align spot-on with the telescope during the daytime or or a night with a distant bright object or light.  With this combo I can reliably find in the scope anything I can see with my eye.  Hope this helps.

i will also try RDF  dual red dot , celestron has a single red led and its just not happening .. i will try dual one

[JOC]

Hi Shyam - just to ensure we are all talking the same thing NOT a dual red dot finder - just one of those (the one you have is fine) - I pair my red dot finder (which I think is near identical to yours - in fact mine may even be a Celestron), with a Right angle optical finder.  In fact have you discovered that both these have an adjustment on them so that you line them up with what you see in the telescope?  If not then in the daytime (careful to miss the sun) find a distant object (tree, spire, telegraph pole etc. as far away as you can over a mile away if you can manage is good (I can't see this far away so I use a tree in the next field though).  Get this (say the top of the telegraph pole) in the centre of an EP of you telescope (start with a high mm number - low magnification, then try and move to a lower mm number - high magnification), then find the knobs on the finder that move its alignment (up and down and left and right) until you get the finder dot (or the cross hairs in an optical one (try an get an optical one with cross hairs) also on the same bit of the object (i.e. top of the telegraph pole) - then the finder is aligned with the telescope.

Now the slight issue I have is that there is just not quite sufficient adjustment on my red dot one to perfectly align with the top f the telegraph pole, but at its furthest extent left it is very, very close.  So close that once the red dot is roughly on target the object is clearly in the view of the optical finder - I then align that with the cross hairs and because the optical one does absolutely line up with the centre of the eyepiece on the telescope what I want to find then falls in the telescope view.  NB.  If you get home late you can also do the lining up with something easy like a bit of the moon (i.e. the top of the crescent).  You will need to align the finder each time you use the telescope, but without doing so it is unlikely you will easily find the objects in the sky.  Pictures of my right angle optical and red dot finder setup below for reference. 

Please note the tatty orange is not part of my normal setup!