New to the stargazing world

[Jimbrad_wa]

Hello,

my name is Jim. My wife and I recently purchased a used stargazer evostar 120ED. It came with a Celestron omni cg-4, lots of different filters and lenses and I honestly haven’t a clue where to begin. We mounted the telescope last night and tried to view some stars but couldn’t figure out what we were doing. So, the next day (today) I brought it out in the daylight and used a 20mm lense to line up the spotter scope and the main telescope. That seemed to work well and I’m gonna be getting off of work here shortly and am planning on trying to view some stars again. I guess to make a long story short… if there is any helpful tips are tricks out there, we would greatly appreciate them.

 

-Jim 

[radiofm74]

Hi Jim, welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new telescope!

I think that the key is to take the problems one at a time. A refractor like yours is the easiest optical tube to use, so this takes out of the equation issues such as collimation etc… so far so good! 

Preliminary: you know that already but NEVER POINT YOUR TELESCOPE AT (OR NEAR) THE SUN. It's extremely hazardous and serious injury may result from looking through lenses at our day star. 

With that out of the way… 

Item #1 for you is to understand how an EQ mount works and must be set up. I had the CG-4 and it's a very nice equatorial mount. Look up the internet on how to use it. A 5-min video will do the trick (the channel "Small Optics" is good for tips to beginners). As a passionate user of EQ mounts, here's my advice: In setting up you need to polar align your scope, i.e. align its "right ascension axis" to the North. Imagers may lose their sleep over a slight misalignment. For observing, it's enough that you point the N leg of your tripod roughly towards Polaris, and adjust the altitude knob to the latitude of your location. To check if you've pointed it right, do this: your mount probably does not have a polar scope, but if you remove the caps on both ends, there'll be a hole to peep through. Just check that if you peep through you see Polaris. Once you're polar aligned, your telescope will move along the celestial coordinates: right ascension (east-west) and declination (north-south). And once you've acquired a target, you'll be able to "track it" (keep it in your field of view) just by rotating the right ascension knob. That's the big advantage of an EQ mount. Nota bene: for your eq mount to be smooth in its movements, you need to take care that the scope if well balanced on both axes. All you have to do is put the scope on the mount (with the counterweights already on!), loosen the RA knob, place the shaft horizontally, and move your counterweights up or down the shaft until your telescope stands still. Once you've done that, you bring the shaft back down to resting position (shaft and counterweight pointing to ground), loosen the Declination knob, and check that your scope stands still once parallel to the ground. Make sure that, while doing these things, your telescope is in "working configuration": finder on, eyepiece in, caps removed. 

All of the above is much easier done than described! It will take you all of 5 minutes (maybe 10 for your first time). 

Once you've done that, check the alignment of the finder, and leave your scope (capped and ideally out of direct sunlight) out to cool while evening approaches. 

Item #2 is to decide what to look for. My best advice is to buy a book called Turn Left at Orion. Meanwhile there are good apps such as Sky Safari that can help you make a list and finding objects. Make a list with just a few easy objects, ideally all close to each other, based on your local conditions. You may want to give us more details on where you'll observe from (city or countryside? Unrestricted view in all directions or e.g. big building to the South?). Meanwhile, I can offer you a small "starter list" for tonight:

- Start from some beautiful double stars that are visible to the naked eye: Porrima in Virgo, Cor Carol in Canes Venatici, and splendid but more challenging Izar in Bootes.  Mizar in Ursa Major is also available and beautiful. They're not all close together and it will be a little gym for your EQ mount skills, but as they're naked eye visible, it will be essentially "point and shoot". 

- If you want to look for a deep sky object, go for for Messier 13 (the great hercules cluster), which should be up high for you, is relatively easy to find, and looks wonderful (even in light polluted skies). If you find it, and enjoy it, and want more challenges, go look for two other splendid globular clusters M3 and M5. (Galaxies may prove too difficult just yet). For tips on how to find and observe the Messier objects, consult this wonderful guide: https://tony-flanders.com/urbansuburban-messier-project/

- Still up, and still up for a challenge? Go look for the Double Double (Epsilon Lyrae) and the Ring Nebula, both in Lyra.

There are two things that typically confuse beginners while looking for objects in the sky: (a) the orientation of your finder scope and of the view in your eyepiece are not the same… take that into account! (b) cardinal directions change depending on where you're looking (e.g. if you look with your naked eye to the North, N is down, S up, E right, W left; if you look East E down, W up, S right, N left, etc…), on the image orientation of your (finder)scope, and also on how your diagonal is rotated. It's very confusing so if, while looking into your finder or eyepiece, you don't know where's West, just nudge your scope a little along the RA axis and you'll see movement East-West. That, and a map of the stars you're looking at, will help you understand just where you are and how cardinal points are oriented in your view. 

Go slow! If you manage to see two, three objects with satisfaction it will have been a great first night!

 

Edited June 7 by radiofm74

[Vroobel]

Wow, that's much better and useful than a quick start guide. 😲👍

[Elp]

The first thing to do if you're using an equatorial mount is learn how to see the pole stars (or location in the case of the southern hemisphere) in the night sky with your own vision first. Trying to see it via a scope will be a fools errand if you don't know where it is instantly when looking with your own eyes, because when you look through a finder scope you'll see more stars and get confused, as per the above the orientation will also be different depending on how many lenses (or in the case of scopes, mirrors) are in the optical path.

[M40]

Hello Jim and welcome to the site. You've probably already worked it out, but just in case, with your eyepieces, the lowest number gives the greater magnification and the highest number gives the lowest magnification. I  tend to start with a high number eyepiece to center things and find the target then swap them out. Being somewhat clumsy, I do tend to knock things when putting stuff away at end of play, so I always check alignment at start of play. I do this with a low power eyepiece in the telescope and then center the finders.

I wouldn't worry too much about filters just yet unless you have a moon filter. When looking at the moon, it can be quite bright, so a moon filter is quite helpful here. All the best and ask away with any questions. 

[AstroMuni]

Hi Jim,

Welcome to this forum. All good advice above and a comprehensive guide too 🙂 

The biggest challenge I found when I got into this hobby was getting the telescope to point correctly to the desired object, which was frustrating. And this is where alignment of the finder scope plays an important role. In daylight point the telescope to a distant object and centre a distinctive item (eg. a TV antenna or chimney) in the eyepiece (use a low power one). Then adjust the finderscope until this item is also at the centre of its field of view (FOV). Good luck.

[YogSothoth]

welcome to the forums

Can I ask, are you completely new to astronomy or just telescopic astronomy? If you’re new to astronomy, the night sky can be quite confusing, and you’ll really benefit from just sitting outside for a bit with a simple star map, like the Phillip’s planisphere. You can use this for getting used to the night sky and starting to identify constellations. Start off with the more obvious ones such as Ursa Major, Leo, Cygnus and you’ll soon become familiar with what’s up there. This will make finding things so much easier as well as giving you a sense of connection to the night sky. You can do this while your eyes are becoming dark adapted and your scope is cooling down to reach thermal equilibrium with the ambient temperature.