Help with telescope

[legolas]

Hi guys im new to the forums and I need a bit of help. I had this telescope North Star Optical The Vista 80S Spotter and astro scope starter kit

given me and ive been looking a jupiter tonight and I can see its moons and a small amount of detail on the planet itself. My question is, is there any way I can make it better, by this I mean is there any way I can make the planet clearer and see a bit more detail?

Cheers

[John]

Hi legolas - welcome to SGL !.

With an 80mm short focal length scope Jupiter's 4 moons and the 2 main equatorial cloud belts are about what you would normally expect to see. On a really good night you might be able to pick out a couple more fainter cloud belts, the black dot of a moon shadow if there is one that night and possibly hints of the Great Red Spot - but that would be on a really good night and after you have developed some experience of observing faint details.

You won't really benefit from magnfications above 80x with your scope but that's enough to show all the details that your scope will show on a given night.

If that's not enough, you will need to consider a larger aperture scope - something like a 6 inch newtonian reflector will show more.

John

[legolas]

Cheers, I thought it might mean a new scope. Any recomendations I dont really want to spend over £200 if I can help it.

[John]

I see you have started another thread on this (good idea !) in the Beginners section so I'll post my thoughts there.

John