Celestron powerseeker 114eq help!

[happy-kat]

If you look in the site menu then under Resources you will find astro clubs and other useful stuff.

[Jennifere20]

Forgot to mention... I did also purchase a 9mm eye piece 

[Jennifere20]

Just checked for clubs. There’s none around my area. But to be fair

its a shitty place to live. Lol

[John]

30 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

I’m going to look into buying more expensive bits and bobs if I can get into it properly. I’m not

giving up yet

No don't give up. I spent quite a few years with my old scope. Despite it's drawbacks it did show me enough to get me hooked on the hobby.

Joining an astro society is an excellent idea. There are a list of them down the left hand side of the front page of the UK Astro Buy & Sell website (scroll down):

https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/

 

[Jennifere20]

Just now, John said:

No don't give up. I spent quite a few years with my old scope. Despite it's drawbacks it did show me enough to get me hooked on the hobby.

Joining an astro society is an excellent idea. There are a list of them down the left hand side of the front page of the UK Astro Buy & Sell website (scroll down):

https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/

 

Oh Thankyou! Il join that! I know. I don’t usually give in to anything and I’ve been wanting a telescope for years! Think is with me i need somebody to show me on my actual scope what to do then il get the hang of it properly! But unfortunately I don’t know anybody that’s into them! At least I saw Venus haha. But another question:

I used my 20mm in my Barlow when I’d found it without my Barlow. Would my 9mm be better on its own? To view Venus? 

[DaveL59]

what 9mm eyepiece do you have?

In effect it should be better on its own than the 20mm in the barlow you have, which would be 10mm as a combination but likely a degraded image.

[Jennifere20]

Ahhh right ok. I’m not sure. Just ordered a 9mm haha. I know it was £35 

[DaveL59]

hopefully a reasonable one then, probably the Celestron Omni 9mm plossl?

Best bet is give it a go and see how it performs, you'll see Venus a bit more magnified with it for sure and should be better than the 20+barlow.

[Jennifere20]

Okay thankyou 

[carastro]

Hang in there Jennifer (nice to see a photo BTW).  Once lock down has eased there are bound to be people in your area who can give you a hand.  

I just found your local Astronomy society:

https://liverpoolas.org/

Carole  

[Jennifere20]

5 minutes ago, carastro said:

Hang in there Jennifer (nice to see a photo BTW).  Once lock down has eased there are bound to be people in your area who can give you a hand.  

I just found your local Astronomy society:

https://liverpoolas.org/

Carole  

Oh Thankyou very much Carole

[Rob]

Welcome. And as the others have said 'Hang in there!' this hobby is very much a marathon, and not a race. Joining a society or club will help you so much.

I started out with the same setup, and my beloved 114 Newtonian showed me so much. However it really does take a little time to grab the basics of kit & star hopping. Once mastered you will be all good.

Best Rob

[Jennifere20]

5 minutes ago, Rob said:

Welcome. And as the others have said 'Hang in there!' this hobby is very much a marathon, and not a race. Joining a society or club will help you so much.

I started out with the same setup, and my beloved 114 Newtonian showed me so much. However it really does take a little time to grab the basics of kit & star hopping. Once mastered you will be all good.

Best Rob

Thankyou. Did you get frustrated at the start too? 

[Rob]

1 minute ago, Jennifere20 said:

Thankyou. Did you get frustrated at the start too? 

A little.. I'm sure we all did , but you WILL get there I assure you!.

[Nerf_Caching]

The most important part out of everything is knowing how to navigate the night sky to hunt for those 'faint fuzzies'. You might not be able to see a faint galaxy or nebula the first time but technique, patience and experience will help you manage your expectations of what faint deep-sky objects will look like. Additionally, here is a list of accessories worth upgrading to:

1. A Telrad or red-dot finderscope.

2. Grab yourself a set of Celestron Omni Plossl eyepieces, ideally a 32mm, 15mm and 9mm. You may also consider an Omni barlow to double the eyepiece collection by providing more magnification options for lunar and planetary viewing.

3. A laser collimator(for collimating the telescope although you don't need to worry about this unless your telescope mirrors are misaligned by rough handling of the scope.)

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Nerf_Caching

[Jennifere20]

Thankyou everybody for your help and advice over the past few days. I really appreciate it. Although I’m getting frustrated I am going

to sit down with it later and try to align it to Polaris etc. Suppose it’s just one of things that take

time to get use to. I will stick to it 

[Jennifere20]

Does everybody use theirs during the day or night? Is it better to do it at night when your a beginner? 

[Nerf_Caching]

12 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Does everybody use theirs during the day or night? Is it better to do it at night when your a beginner? 

Well, I can recommend you your first object to look at during a clear night which is the double star Alcor and Mizar. Find the Big Dipper or Plough in the northern sky. It is unmistakable as an inverted saucepan-shaped pattern of stars. Find the middle star of the saucepan's 'handle'(the second star from the end of the handle). If you point your scope at it, you will find that it is actually two stars close together with one of the two (Mizar) being a tight pair itself. I have attached a simulation from Stellarium to show you what you should be able to see through your scope at about 63x magnification. Bear in mind that the view through your telescope is inverted by design and that stars will always appear as points of light no matter the magnification. 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Nerf_Caching

[Jennifere20]

Ok I will try that. Thankyou. One more question. Im

mot really sure how to align my scope to Polaris so. If I just set the latitude to 53.3 would that not be suffice? 

[DaveL59]

25 minutes ago, Nerf_Caching said:

 

2. Grab yourself a set of Celestron Omni Plossl eyepieces, ideally a 32mm, 15mm and 9mm. You may also consider an Omni barlow to double the eyepiece collection by providing more magnification options for lunar and planetary viewing.

3. A laser collimator(for collimating the telescope although you don't need to worry about this unless your telescope mirrors are misaligned by rough handling of the scope.)

 

with that eyepiece selection the barlow won't really give much flex, since they're approx. 2x apart as it is, so would be a waste of funds IMHO. If you only had the 32+9 then yes, but having a 15 in the middle it won't gain very much in real use. You'll likely find the 9mm+barlow (giving 4.5mm) would be too much magnification for the 114 aperture.

Laser collimators can be very hit and miss, quite often the latter as lower cost ones aren't always well aligned. A collimation cap and maybe a cheshire would likely be adequate to start with on this scope, you can always move upmarket to the more exotic tools when you've a bigger scope, since the cost for those also jumps in quite big steps too.

As to setting up, no reason you can't during the day but probably best as the sun is low so the scope isn't getting heated up, it'll need to cool to get the best views. You can polar align reasonably well with an app for the phone - PolarAlignerPro, which you can lay on the mount (OTA removed) and it'll give you an impression of where you're pointing. You want the OTA pointing parallel to the RA axis before removing it so that the phone is pointing in the right direction.

 

[Nerf_Caching]

17 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Thankyou everybody for your help and advice over the past few days. I really appreciate it. Although I’m getting frustrated I am going

to sit down with it later and try to align it to Polaris etc. Suppose it’s just one of things that take

time to get use to. I will stick to it 

As a rule of thumb, Polaris is due North, n degrees above the horizon where n is your latitude. If my latitude is 50 degrees, then Polaris will be due North 50 degrees above the horizon. The width of your fist at arm's length is about 10 degrees so you can use it to find the correct angle above the horizon to search for Polaris. Alternatively, locate Polaris by using the two end stars of the Plough's saucepan shape which point directly at Polaris which is not as bright as you think.

[DaveL59]

11 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Ok I will try that. Thankyou. One more question. Im

mot really sure how to align my scope to Polaris so. If I just set the latitude to 53.3 would that not be suffice? 

have a watch of this video, if you have a compass, some string and a stick... it'll be reasonably good enough for visual  But yes you do need to set the lattitide to 53 for your location too.

[John]

24 minutes ago, Jennifere20 said:

Ok I will try that. Thankyou. One more question. Im

mot really sure how to align my scope to Polaris so. If I just set the latitude to 53.3 would that not be suffice? 

I find that setting the mount to my latitude (one off task) and then pointing the Right Ascension axis towards the North when I set the scope up, is usually good enough for visual observing. One of the tripod legs might have a "N" sticker on it to indicate that one needs to point north.

 

 

[Jennifere20]

So when I’ve set the latitude I just move the scope left and right rather than up and down and I will find things that way? Because I find myself moving it left to right and up and down and I can never find anything in the sky’ 

[Jennifere20]

Don’t think I’m going to be able to go out tonight. The sky is black. Going to get some bad weather I think 💭