Observing Disappointment

[timothy4]

On 09/11/2020 at 20:13, KP82 said:

I could fully understand your disappointment.

The first time I looked through a telescope was when I was in Year 10. The scope, an 80mm refractor belonged to my Physics teacher. Since then I always wanted one for myself. Two years later my aunt bought me a Tasco 60/900. I enjoyed the views of Jupiter and Saturn through it. However that was about all I could see with it. Then I read up some magazines about different aspects of a scope like aperture, focal length, refractor vs reflector, etc. and started to suspect the reason I couldn't see much else with my 60mm was because of its limited aperture. So when my cousin got a 114mm newt, I immediately went to his house and asked to try it. Unfortunately there weren't much to see either. All those beautiful looking galaxies/nebulae printed on the box were either a blob of fuzzy or a grey hazy patch. I still believe these marketing materials have a lot to do with unrealistic expections among beginners like once I was.

I finally started imaging a couple of years ago when I acquired my own APO refractor. The results so far have been quite satisfactory. I haven't given up on visual, but my main targets are now open clusters, doubles and planets.

Thank you, I can now understand the attraction of imaging vs observation, at least theoretically as I do not know from a practical point of view, at least not yet

[timothy4]

On 10/11/2020 at 22:24, MercianDabbler said:

I don't think anybody said M57 yet, so...

M57

Lyra is often pretty high from our neck of the woods and M57 is a lot less of a fuzzy thing than many other objects.

I'd suggest getting a bit more involved in planning your own target list, for example look at the Messier list on Wikipedia and sort the table by constellation. Figure out which constellations are favourable and pick some easier Messier objects to start with. The Messier Marathon Planner http://calgary.rasc.ca/darksky/messierplanner.htm is handy because it tells you which ones are easy to spot and which are difficult. You don't need to do a marathon to get some good info from this site.

For me, star hopping to a target is part of the fun (assuming a successful outcome anyway), albeit now using Stellarium on a tablet rather than a paper sky atlas.

Stick with it

Thank you for the useful, practical and encouraging advice

[timothy4]

On 10/11/2020 at 23:24, Louis D said:

The Caldwell catalog is another good resource for showpiece objects missed by Messier.

Thank you for pointing out this useful resource 

[Armand Popa]

In the best base, under great sky conditions and a good scope, you can expect to see some of the nebulas an galaxies only as a faint and small cloud , something like this

 

or this one

Some of them can be visible only with adverted vision (you do not look directly to the object, but somewhere near it), and do not expect to see colors or too many details.

With your scope, the planets must look nice, but in case of planetary observations, you depend on the good seeing conditions. When the conditions are not so good, you will not be able to make focus at higher magnifications.

Do not give up! Astronomy is like any sport or learning a musical instrument  . You have to practice a lot, and train your eye at the eyepiece.

Clear sky and good luck

Armand

 

[timothy4]

1 hour ago, Armand Popa said:

In the best base, under great sky conditions and a good scope, you can expect to see some of the nebulas an galaxies only as a faint and small cloud , something like this

 

or this one

Some of them can be visible only with adverted vision (you do not look directly to the object, but somewhere near it), and do not expect to see colors or too many details.

With your scope, the planets must look nice, but in case of planetary observations, you depend on the good seeing conditions. When the conditions are not so good, you will not be able to make focus at higher magnifications.

Do not give up! Astronomy is like any sport or learning a musical instrument  . You have to practice a lot, and train your eye at the eyepiece.

Clear sky and good luck

Armand

 

Thank you Armand for the useful information and encouraging words.  I am going to keep practicing and not give up.