need help with my Skywatcher heritage 130p

[cyclone]

i've been having problems observing anything other than the moon. i couldn't find any planets so i studied a skychart and made sure i was pointing my scope at mars but all i could see was a reddish dot. i tried my 25mm ep and my 10mm ep that came with it but it was still just a dot so i attached an erecting lens which adds 50% mag and still it was a dot. am i doing something wrong? or do i need to get a smaller mm lens and a barlow?

any help will be very, very appreciated, it's really annoying and i really want to see something out there other than the moon.

[Cornelius Varley]

You are not doing anything wrong. Mars is moving away from us at the present and is getting smaller. The best you will see is a small red dot. Jupiter is starting to rise earlier now (about 21.00 today and getting earlier every day).

Peter

[CGolder]

Hello,

You have made a decent choice for a first scope and i have had first hand experience with one. Mars and Saturn are to low in the horizon to see now, mars is also a long way away from the earth. Jupiter is just starting to come up at a good time now and is very bright as easy to see. you should see it in the east early evening if you are lucky enough to have a clear east view. M13, M31 and m57 are all good targets in this scope.

You will get a decent view of Jupiter in the 10mm but i think the 25mm is a lot better and you might find using the 25mm with the x2 Barlow better than the 10mm. the 25mm will also be ok for some deep sky targets.

if you need some help with navigating the stars a program called Stellarium is great.

Best of luck mate

[barkis]

Don't get downhearted. Mars as Indicated, is not a good target for any scope now, it is much too distant, and appears starlike.

Lots of other targets for your telescope, Jupiter is an obvious one, and don't dismiss the moon, which is a wonderful target for your scope. It is about full though, and detail is not easy to see. Better when the moon has moved further east in its orbit around the earth.

Be prepared to wait up late though.

Don't forget double stars either. They are also very rewarding targets for your scope, and some will be a good test for you optics when conditions are favourable. There are some very pretty coloured double stars, have a look for Albireo in Cygnus. Albireo is the head of the Swan. Quite faint to the naked eye, but a tremendous sight in a Newtonian telescope.

Ron.

[Glider]

CGolder makes some good observations. I spent most of last night observing with my ST80/EQ2 manually and put the computer controlled HEQ5 Synscan Pro/200P/ED80 away. Spent an hour or 2 trying different coloured filters on a 10mm lens to see bands and spots on Jupiter. Great fun.

[bombassa]

Hi

I have the same scope. As stated by the other good people Jupiter is a good target. It very clear (when not obscured by clouds) and so pretty easy to find- yet it will be small in the scope but the moons are easily seen and with a bit of luck you can see some surface details.But again - its small!

As also stated a piece of free software is recommended - Stellarium or Cartes du ciel. It makes finding things much easier.

Concerning Barlow - the TAL barlows have been much recommended but I have some problems with this together with the supplied 'super 10' eyepiece and after much reading it seems that this eyepiece is in fact not so good. The 25mm on the other hand has given me nice views on clusters - especially m44 in cancer was very nice earlier this year.

The super10 and 25 eyepieces are sold by teleskop-ekspress in Germany as 'RKE' - a modified version of the Kellner eyepiece as I understand it. How much difference a cheap plossl would make sadly I don't know. Perhaps more experienced users can tell us more.

Likewise you can find fuzzies with this scope - to me they look like faint grey smudges in the dark sky. I can see the shapes but no details.

I hope you will find good use for your scope.

And please forgive the poor english.

　

　

[cyclone]

Thanks for all the help guys i got the Stellarium program and saw where jupiter was in the program, i couldn't see it though because it was behind a giant set of trees. Getting past the trees would have involved a climb across a ditch thats covered in nettles and thorn bushes and dead tree branches in the dark and into a muddy field full of cows, i decided it was to risky to my scope, i've only had it a week. i did see some double stars but i'm not sure which ones, they were much better looking than through my binos. i think i did see a meteor as when i was looking through my binos, i saw a streak of light shoot past the lens. i did try to find some Nebulas but by then it was getting late and i was tired so i called it a night. I'm going to spend today looking over the Stellarium program and make note of nebula locations, so i will hopefully see some of them tonight

[Mouse on the Moon]

Good luck cyclone,

I have one of these excellent scopes. Feel free to ask any advice.