are the pictures real?

[Stub Mandrel]

17 hours ago, John said:

I'm going to be more cautious now - I don't know the quality of your scope or eyepieces or the observing conditions you will be viewing under, or your experience. All these things can make a big difference to how objects will appear.

The image I posted assumed a good quality scope with a decent eyepiece under good conditions and an observer of average experience.

If the scope is not good quality, not cooled, not in good collimation, with a low quality eyepiece and under poor conditions the image will be poorer. Reverse these factors and the image can be better.

So many variables, it's impossible to do any more than give very approximate guide to how things might appear, with "might" being an important word !

Jupiter might look like this at around 150x if all the factors above are positive (but only might, not definite):

 

I would say that is about right through a 6" scope (150PL) with good seeing, but the moons should be much better defined dots (bright points look brighter, not bigger, to the eye through a scope, different to a camera and something which surprised me at first). Light pollution is effectively irrelevant if you are looking at planets as they are quite bright.

[aser hisham]

@Stub Mandrel I was honestly hoping for a bit more detail when viewing Jupiter but this is good enough

[Stub Mandrel]

13 minutes ago, aser hisham said:

@Stub Mandrel I was honestly hoping for a bit more detail when viewing Jupiter but this is good enough

You will see things like the red spot and moon shadows on the disc, especially if you have good seeing, but that is a typical view for an ordinary night.

[John]

29 minutes ago, aser hisham said:

@Stub Mandrel I was honestly hoping for a bit more detail when viewing Jupiter but this is good enough

With experience, careful observation, time spent at the eyepiece and the other things I mentioned previously being favourable you may well eventually see more details than that. Planetary details don't just jump out at you so you need to develop your observing skills. The seeing conditions will vary night to night and sometimes hour to hour as well and again that will affect how much detail you can see.

As I said before, there are so many variables !

[Dave In Vermont]

You might like this little software-program to help you locate the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, and tell which Moon is which - Free, of course:

http://astrosurf.com/rondi/jupiter/

Enjoy -

Dave

p.s. - the Download link is in the upper-right.

[aser hisham]

Thanks , everyone . I will surely spend a lot of time observing and I will tell you about it for sure .

[Mr niall]

On 24/09/2017 at 15:55, John said:

I feel that sketches or drawings made at the eyepiece are the closest that you will get to the views through a telescope. Neither stacked and processed images or video captures the subtlety of what we see visually in my opinion.

This web page gives some reasonable representations although if your skies are light polluted you may struggle to equal these on deep sky objects:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/Articles/what-can-i-see-through-telescope.html

The 6mm eyepiece will probably be good for high power viewing (depending which 6 inch scope you now have) but you will need eyepieces that give medium and lower magnifications as well to get the most from it.

I rememeber looking at that when I got my first scope but, now I’ve upgraded to a 127 Mak I can’t help but be devils advocate and say that every single one of those “through a small cheap telescope” images are far in excess of what I have achieved in my scope. Far far in excess!

[Mr niall]

On 24/09/2017 at 17:34, Gina said:

I think that's why many beginner astronomers are disappointed.  They see all these superb stacked and highly processed images and think that's what can be seen through a telescope but it isn't.

Yep, guilty!

 

[John]

3 minutes ago, Mr niall said:

I rememeber looking at that when I got my first scope but, now I’ve upgraded to a 127 Mak I can’t help but be devils advocate and say that every single one of those “through a small cheap telescope” images are far in excess of what I have achieved in my scope. Far far in excess!

Your current scope is fully capable of equalling those views - I know that from personal experience of using a 127 mak

[Mr niall]

5 hours ago, aser hisham said:

@Stub Mandrel I was honestly hoping for a bit more detail when viewing Jupiter but this is good enough

It’s all about practice, I’m still very green but it’s definitely true that what you see gets better with practice, and can vary massively from night to night. It’s takes time for your brain to learn how to do it, if that makes sense. I’ve looked at Jupiter and seen perfect bands and a clearly defined GRS one moment, and then just a Smushy blob an hour later. It’s worth the effort though.

[Mr niall]

2 minutes ago, John said:

Your current scope is fully capable of equalling those views - I know that from personal experience of using a 127 mak

Thanks John - don’t think my back garden is a great position to be honest but still having fun. Definitely something to aim for! (Btw I’m not scope bashing, love my Mak!)

[LukeSkywatcher]

I love this view of Jupiter. IIRC (its been so long since i observed Jupiter), this view is pretty close to what i see when i use a 12mm or 15mm EP with my 8".  I am so unlucky though..........i always seem to miss the GRS when observing. I really should plan ahead.

If you think you have trouble seeing details on Jupiter, wait til Mars is in a good position in the sky. Ive seen the ice caps a few times as faint white bits and a darker feature on the surface which i call "India" (because it is shaped like India)..................ONCE and only for a fleeting moment. Jupiter in my eyes is beige and the bands appear as brown. If i use a higher magnification such as 8mm, i can clearly see 4 bands.

Jupiter positively screams with details when compared.

[JOC]

Try the thread 'what can I expect to see' in the stickies at the rop of this forum board.  Even if you don't read the whole thread look at the piccies on page1.

[JOC]

I've found the link for you - it's difficult to do on my phone which I posted with last night - as I noted above - if you do no more than check out the photos on the first page you will very quickly rein in your expectations:

 

[ollypenrice]

Just for fun, here's what Jupiter looked like in the 0.8 metre professional grade Ritchey Chrétien a few miles from my home. In fact it was a bit sharper and we had the luck to catch a shadow transit of Callisto. In that scope a 31 mm Nagler Type five was the planetary eyepiece...

If four hundred thousand of us gave ten euros each we could buy a scope like this...

lly

[spaceboy]

It always amazes me the expectations beginners have to what they are going to see in the eyepiece. I for one was shocked to hear I wouldn't be able to see any real colour. Why the hell I though I would be able to still baffles me. I don't know what it is but we do seem to have such high expectations. Maybe it is just down to all the gloss magazines showing us Hubble quality images and seeing some scopes that can require two people to move. The truth is these objects are a long, long, long, long way away and are only visible against the pitch black of space due to sun light illuminating them, be it our sun or distant suns. Nebula would be invisible if it was not for the new stars being born with in them and planets would traverse the skies undetected, so the fact we can see anything at all I feel is amazing. Telescopes don't have mystical powers and they have their limitations. Then there is seeing and the pollution, city lights and everything we have to look through before we collect the light from these distant objects.

I admit it is easy to become underwhelmed by the views in smaller telescopes but even so there sounds something really wrong that your not seeing any detail on Jupiter in a 3 inch scope. Is it correctly collimated @aser hisham ?

[saac]

8 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Just for fun, here's what Jupiter looked like in the 0.8 metre professional grade Ritchey Chrétien a few miles from my home. In fact it was a bit sharper and we had the luck to catch a shadow transit of Callisto. In that scope a 31 mm Nagler Type five was the planetary eyepiece...

 

If four hundred thousand of us gave ten euros each we could buy a scope like this...

lly

Would it break down to fit in my car though Olly?

Jim

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, saac said:

Would it break down to fit in my car though Olly?

Jim

Perhaps not, and it was installed by a very large crane... Made it onto the front page of the regional newspaper.

Olly

[saac]

I'll put my 10 Euros away then.  

Jim

[domstar]

23 hours ago, spaceboy said:

It always amazes me the expectations beginners have to what they are going to see in the eyepiece.

There must be something wrong with me because I was quite the opposite. I expected to see the moon and to see Jupiter as a disc, but I was gobsmacked that I could see the rings of Saturn. After seeing Jupiter a couple of times I remember telling people that it was probably possible for amateurs to see Uranus but I never would. Within a couple of months I'd see Neptune (though to be fair I still haven't seen Uranus). I'd heard about the Andromeda galaxy, but apart from that, I never thought I would ever see another galaxy. It still amazes me that I've seen other galaxies. It's brilliant that people learn from this forum before they have even bought a scope. I got my scope at Christmas and it wasn't until the following October that I looked at anything here. Just about everything I've seen has been a bonus- especially after thinking my H4mm eyepiece was my widefield eyepiece for a good few sessions. I never even tried the 20mm because I thought I'd be making the field of view even smaller.

Anyway, I seem to have drifted off topic. Sorry about that.

[Stu]

This is a single shot image using an iPhone at the eyepiece of my 4" frac. A lovely, and high quality scope but still only 4".

The actual view was significantly sharper than this with more detail visible but you get the idea. In this picture you can just see a black dot on the surface which is a shadow transit. In the eyepiece view visually, this was a razor sharp, jet black dot, very lovely.

 

[JOC]

That's impressive Stu, what sort of magnification was that shot?

[ollypenrice]

8 minutes ago, JOC said:

That's impressive Stu, what sort of magnification was that shot?

There is no such thing as 'magnification' in imaging. (An old subject! Briefly, 'magnification' means magnifying the naked eye view a certain number of times. The image on the retina can be magnified 8 or 50 or 300 times, which makes sense. But a photo does not have a 'natural' size to multiply up.

I would strongly recommend reading Stu's post again because, to me, it describes with absolute and perfect clarity what it is like to view a Jovian shadow trasit in a 4 inch scope. I've done this under a sodium lamp in Wirksworh, Derbyshire and at a dark site. This observation is not so utterly dependent on a dark site as is an attempt to see the Veil Nebula, etc etc.

I really thnk Stu has hit the nail on the head with his post.

Olly

[JOC]

I don't think I'll ever get to grips with these photo's.  If an iphone is held up to the EP, surely it is seeing what the eye sees?  Or will Stu have zoomed in using software.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

On 9/24/2017 at 17:16, newbie alert said:

Sketching m42 isn't going to show anything like what it looks like it is from 1 image without stacking ..rosette is going to look like a bunch of stars..North American isn't going to look like there's anything there ...all this because your eyes cannot see the hydrogen alpha wavelength..

Actually, I have seen both Rosette and NA Nebula many times. We can see H-beta, which isn't emitted as much as H-alpha, but is certainly there. They are faint, hard to spot objects, and you will need clear, dark skies, but I have seen both with an 80mm scope. Best views were with a UHC filter and a Nagler 31mm T5 (so just 15.5x magnification).