First light for a newbie - need some help

[dc509]

Took delivery of a Celestron 925 CGEM yesterday. Thought it would be indoors for a month, so could not believe my luck when the skies cleared today. Have had my first go and managed after a fashion to use the 2 star alignment system, but with varied results. Any tips for getting the Goto more accurate?

Managed however, to see M42, M37, Mars and M31, among others! Superb!

Another question: M31 was a fuzzy blob with a 25mm eyepiece - should I be able to see structure with my scope?

Duncan

[markyoung1972]

hi new to this got binoculars and great book for christmas, my lady notices my growing interest on the stars and took the hint! my reason for posting for now is that i was ouside about 70mins ago and saw what was like a star moving slowly across the sky and then disappeared, i am not drunk and it was def not a plane, are there slow shooting stars? please help a freaked out newbie from the isle of wight uk? it was near the top left side of orion. thank you in advance

[John]

Duncan,

You are only seeing the core of M31 with your scope - it's a very large object - over 4 degrees across. Your field of view with a 25mm eyepiece will be around half a degree so it won't all fit in !. The core does indeed look like a misty blob concentrated in brigtness towards the centre.

With a very low power, wide field eyepiece you will be able to fit more of M31 in and may detect the dark lanes on a night of very good transparency.

markyoung1972 - would you mind starting a new thread for your question please ?.

Thanks.

[LukeSkywatcher]

With a 25mm EP, M31 will appear as a biggish "faint fuzzy",but as stated...........you are really only seeing the galatic core.

[LukeSkywatcher]

hi new to this got binoculars and great book for christmas, my lady notices my growing interest on the stars and took the hint! my reason for posting for now is that i was ouside about 70mins ago and saw what was like a star moving slowly across the sky and then disappeared, i am not drunk and it was def not a plane, are there slow shooting stars? please help a freaked out newbie from the isle of wight uk? it was near the top left side of orion. thank you in advance

Sounds like a typical man made satellite to me. They mostly move north to south OR East to west. They are very easy to follow with binoculars and they seem to "vanish" when they are no longer reflecting the light from the Sun.

On any given night when your eyes are trained well enough from observing the night sky, you will see literally dozens of them crossing the night sky. Some you can even see without binoculars.

[dc509]

Thanks for this - I'll try next time with a focal reducer. Hadn't occurred to me that the scope was too powerful!

[John]

Thanks for this - I'll try next time with a focal reducer. Hadn't occurred to me that the scope was too powerful!

M31 is a huge object in the sky - 8x as large as the diameter of the full moon !.

Many other deep sky objects are much smaller though so there will be lots you will be able to fit into your feild of view. A focal reducer is a great way to increase your field of view though.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I've read about focal reducers and they they are very badly names because the actually INCREASE your FOV rather then REDUCE it.

They reduce the focal length of your scope?.................so a 2x focal reducer would make f5 scope a f2.5 scope?

Could be worth investing in.

[John]

I've read about focal reducers and they they are very badly names because the actually INCREASE your FOV rather then REDUCE it.

They reduce the focal length of your scope?.................so a 2x focal reducer would make f5 scope a f2.5 scope?

Could be worth investing in.

I think they are correctly named because the have the effect of reducing the effective focal length, the opposite effect that a barlow has in fact.

This does result in an increased true field of view (TFoV) with a given scope eyepiece combination of course.