Absolute Begginer needing help :)

[Irvine6]

Hi All,

Im new to this site as i have had my first telescope for xmas, It is from Jessops i belive to be something like 800X80 ? with 3 eye pieces, of the top of my head x20,x6 and x1.5? and another extra piece which zooms 3x. I have read a few posts on here and a few people seem to have had it also.

I have managed to set it up fine and have been viewing the moon and would now like to try something diffrent.

what else am i likely to see with this scope, mars, jupiter etc? as a begginer i am after some tips on how to find these and when etc if i am able to. Also any good fact sheets or books etc..

Many Thanks

Gav

[greenkat]

Hi Gav and welcome to SGL

To help you see whats up in the sky , try downloading a program called Stellarium

You will be able to see Jupiter in the southwest at the moment in the early evening and Mars is rising in the east now and very visible as a bright reddish looking star.

Greenkat

[Irvine6]

Thanks for the quick reply

I will download the program now, Would i be able to view Mars clearly with my scope? or is it a matter of conditions?

[Saturnalia]

Once you have installed Stellarium, don't forget to hit F6 and tell the program your location - then it can show you what you can see in your local skies assuming there's no cloud...!

Your location's latitude and longitude can be easily found with Google Earth and then input to Stellarium.

I would also suggest you avoid the 1.5 eyepiece (assuming that is 1.5mm ?) as the magnification will be too much.

[Capricorn]

You will be able to "see" Mars but it will just be a small disc, not quite a point, but not much else.

Jupiter is I think still around and is in the South/south-west early in the evening. I could be utterly wrong but think that I was looking at it this evening about 18:00, just with my eyes.

If you have a magnification of 60-80x you may be lucky and see some detail but expect a small disc with 2/3/4 dots around it.

Orion is visible, so look at the belt stars and then look at the blur below the belt, Orion nebula. Should come up fair.

After that you need to decide what to look at/for. Messier objects are an option but usually faint. Double stars are another, Here is a link to a list of coloured doubles (you just have to find them:D):

Astronomical Data - Colored Double Stars

[Irvine6]

I have just set my location now as i noticed it was set to paris..lol

Seems to be a great little program i will look into it more tomorrow.

Can i buy diffrent eye pieces for my scope so i can see better or is it mainly down to the quality of your scope?

[John]

....Can i buy diffrent eye pieces for my scope so i can see better or is it mainly down to the quality of your scope?

If your scope takes 1.25" diameter eyepieces you can get lots of other ones for it. The standard ones are probably not too great so you might want to invest in something better but ultimately the amount of detail that you will see, the faintness of the objects that you can detect and the magnification that you can realistically use (as opposed to what the sales pitch claims ) depend on the aperture (and quality) of the main lens or mirror - the larger the better !

[Saturnalia]

Mars is visible in the South East and Saturn is visible low in the East after 11pm tonight - what you will see of either is difficult to say.

Take a look and let us know...!

[Irvine6]

I will invest in some new pieces,

Tomorrow i will set up the finder properly as i am struggling to find things at the moment (Just moving my scope round the sky!)

So to see things like the picture of the week above i take it you need a mega expensive scope?

[Irvine6]

Mars is visible in the South East and Saturn is visible low in the East after 11pm tonight - what you will see of either is difficult to say.

Take a look and let us know...!

I will do no tonight though as it is snowing at the moment:)

Thank you everyone for your help i will be back tomorrow for some more reading

Thanks

[vegas]

To see things of that quality you need to get into imaging, our eyes cannot pick up half of the colour or detail images can. Even in a good quality large aperture scope most nebulas and galaxies will be just grey blobs and fuzzy smudges.

[Saturnalia]

You may find it easiest to setup the finder in daylight (DON'T point your telescope towards the sun...!!).

Find a good landmark like a church spire or radio mast or other high building and spend some time aligning the finder so what it sees is visible when you look through the main scope.

Astrophotography is a major learning curve and will need a pretty decent telescope, GOTO mount, camera etc.

Good images of the Moon are possible with more basic gear like yours and mine

[jimhaleysscomet]

Visit skymaps.com for a free monthly night sky map and observing lists. With your scope, focus on the "binocular" items and use your lowest power (highest focal length) eyepiece. The skymaps.com complements stellarium because it shows you a full sky view. The hardest part is getting the "tiny constellations" on the map to "grow" to match the huge constellations in the sky.

There should be some good stuff in the list.

[Space Bat]

I believe you have a Galileo New Age 800x80 reflector

Having a 3" mirror - you are going to be limited to what you can see - however on a plus point it is small and portable so when in dark skies you will be able to get some good use out of it and see a lot more than under urban sky conditions.

Remember a lot of earlier observations were made with scopes around this size, so don't be put off with some of the pictures the bigger scopes can do...you will get some nice views of the planets however an unguided scope at high magnifications is impossible and not worth the silly X magnification quoted, just use the lowest magnification to optomise the amount of light your scope can handle for looking at observable deep sky objects. You can go a little higher for the planets.

Concentrate on the brigher wonders such as orion nebula, and clusters and some bright globulars, search out some double stars, that you can break apart.

The main thing is patience and managing expectations....As a former worker in the business of producing scopes - I lost count of the people that didn't appreciate the fact you are not going to see what a 200" observatory will see - believe it or not people often believe that they will see the same thing only smaller

Have fun and get used to the sky - and if this is a hobby you want to persue in more depth you can always upgrade to bigger scopes in the future.

Chris

[Irvine6]

Thanks for the replies

Im glad to hear that i will be able to see more than just the moon!

So are you saying my best eye piece to use is x20? which will give me a wider view?

[Saturnalia]

That would be my suggestion - start with the X20 (I'm assuming that it is a 20mm eyepiece) - you will get 40X magnification if your telescope is 800mm long.

[LukeSkywatcher]

With my 3.5" scope using a 9mm-10mm EP i can see the banding around Jupiter (depending on conditions). Saturn is an absolute JOY.

With the same scope and EP (10mm) the Orion Nebula is really out of this world. I have lost track of time observing it and just thinking about the bigger picture of just where we humans fit into the grand scheme of things.

Do not underestimate the power of a modern 3" scope. It will even show galaxies such as M31.

The biggest/best trick to observing DSOs with any scope (in particular smaller scopes) is learning to observe with averted viosion (looking slightly either to the left or right of the object).......................

Observing it in the "corner of your eye" as it were. With experience you will see a lot more then looking directly at it.

[Irvine6]

I often wonder what else is out there..

I realluy need to spend some time and set my scope up right with the view finder i have replaced the battery for the red dot as it was left on in the box!

Im also learning alot from this site

Thanks:)

[Irvine6]

Thought i would just write back here instead of starting a new post..

Just wanted to say thanks for the help i have set up my scope properly and have been out in the garden for 2hours tonight!!

Looked at loads of diffrent stars and came across a great cluster! and didnt realise what i was looking at until i came in and looked on Stellarium, its coming up as Great Nebula in Orion.

Really looked great.

[Saturnalia]

Great news - clear skies...!