equipment to gaze at mars with a telescope

[babybrothers]

hello I had recently got a telescope and wanted to look at mars and it did not look as if it was mars. I am not sure if I need a filter for mars or more magnification to get a good picture of mars 

[Mick H]

6 minutes ago, babybrothers said:

hello I had recently got a telescope and wanted to look at mars and it did not look as if it was mars. I am not sure if I need a filter for mars or more magnification to get a good picture of mars 

Hi, and welcome to SGL.

It would help if you stated your scope/mount, and eyepieces.

[kerrylewis]

Hello

As Mick says it would help to have details of your telescope.

It’s worth pointing out that Mars is not best placed for observing at present for two reasons;

1. It is low in the sky so you are looking through lots of disruptive atmosphere 

2. It is not at its  closest and is therefore small

Both of these conditions will improve later in the year 

Edited June 1, 2020 by kerrylewis

[Waddensky]

What did you expect to see? Did you try to take a look at Jupiter and Saturn too? How did they look? As @kerrylewis says, Mars will be much better this autumn, although with a diameter of just below 23 arcseconds it will remain quite small at useful magnifications.

[babybrothers]

oh sorry it is a national geographic 76/700. is this good enough to look at other planets with a 3 times Barlow lens and 8mm magnification. and is there are app that tracks the position of the planets because they look a lot like stars.

 

Edited June 1, 2020 by babybrothers

[Ricochet]

23 minutes ago, babybrothers said:

it is a national geographic 76/700. is this good enough to look at other planets with a 3 times Barlow lens and 8mm magnificatio

Unfortunately, the National Geographic branded scopes are at a price point where barlows and eyepieces that produce unusable magnifications just so they can write that magnification in the box. 

The 8mm by itself will probably be the point at which the most detail is in the image, but at only 87x magnification the image will probably be too small. Adding the 3x barlow will be too much, adding a 2x barlow (to effectively make a 4mm eyepiece) will probably be too much as well, so really you need something between the two. If you bought a 2x barlow with a nosepiece that unscrews, then you can screw that directly to the 8mm where it will effectively be a 1.5x barlow, and you could compare the views with each combination to find the optimum. The downside is that all the planets will still be very small. 

45 minutes ago, babybrothers said:

is there are app that tracks the position of the planets because they look a lot like stars.

On a PC you can download Stellarium for free. If you want an app for your phone I would suggest Sky Safari, although Stellarium Mobile is also an option. 

[babybrothers]

28 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

hello brown dwarf thanks for the information and the app it helps a lot.

 

 

Edited June 1, 2020 by babybrothers

[Ricochet]

Try Sky Safari. I think the lowest version of that is free now. If not look for Celestron Sky Portal, which is a Celestron branded version of Sky Safari. It expects you to be connecting a Celestron telescope, but you can ignore that and use it as normal. 

[dweller25]

On 01/06/2020 at 16:39, babybrothers said:

hello I had recently got a telescope and wanted to look at mars and it did not look as if it was mars. I am not sure if I need a filter for mars or more magnification to get a good picture of mars 

Hello and welcome to SGL

Mars currently rises in the south east at around 1:30am but is best viewed at around 3:30am when it had risen a little higher in the sky.

Mars is small and still very distant from us - closest approach is around 4 months away so you will not see much detail and as it is very low the atmosphere will blur the disk.

Always try to keep your magnification as low as possible - x120 in your scope would be good  which is a 6mm eyepiece.

Edited June 18, 2020 by dweller25

[chris2]

Hi

I remember my first view of Mars many years ago through a 4” Meade telescope, it was rather disappointing. A very small disc with little (if any detail)

Now I’ve progressed to a larger aperture and my aim is to see Uranus and  Neptune. I am not expecting to see much! 
 

keep magnification low and have look later in the year, you will get better views