Jump to content

Yes, I am new

skymanlol

Recommended Posts

skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
Posted

and was wondering; I was given a Seben Comet Maksutov-Cassegrain 1200-90 scope and wondered if I should be able to see Jupiter with it? I tested it tonight and can see a dot that looks like the moon in the extreme distance, basically a white dot slightly bigger than a star..... and just wondered if that is all I should expect to see with this scope?

I have never used one before so I am not sure what to expect, I had hoped, perhaps ignorantly to be able to see some of the colour of the planet, etc...

Sadly not, thanks and best wishes :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
matteboy

matteboy

Posted
Posted

Get the blob focused into a disc, you should see a pin ***** to one side, that's one of the moons, I was just looking and another moon is just appearing close to the planet, you should go past the focus and when it goes just past focus, focus back if that makes sense, you should definitely see a band in your scope. Try and focus the moons into pinpricks and stay there for a little while as it should come in and out of focus due to turbulence in the atmosphere. Maybe someone else would be able to explain this a little better!

Good hunting and clear skies

Link to comment
Share on other sites
skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks for the replies :D

matteboy: I will go and try what you say right now :p yes it made perfect sense.

jahmanson: it has 2 eye pieces...

1: Plossl 26mm AF40

2: Seben 8mm - 24mm

Does not mean much to me yet as I am totally new to this, but very excited I saw Jupiter and looking forward to many more wonderful experiences :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
John

John

Posted
Posted

Remember to let your scope cool down before using it - about 30 minutes would be OK - more if it's really cold out and the scope has come from a warm place.

You seem to be well covered with your eyepieces. Use the lower power ones (the most mm's !) to start with and build up magnification gradually. Many astro objects don't need much magnification to look good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
  • Author
Posted
You seem to be well covered with your eyepieces. Use the lower power ones (the most mm's !) to start with and build up magnification gradually.

Does that mean that the 26mm eyepiece is the lowest and the 4mm is the highest? So go from 26mm down toward the 4mm? sorry for the silly question, just you said 'the lower power ones (the most mm's)' which confused me :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Hi there sir, sorry but that is not a picture I took - I do not have a camera yet to take pictures so I googled and found one that looked similar to what I saw tonight. Real sorry to waste your time, I should have pointed out that it was an example.

I will remember your advice about playing around with different Iso settings when I do get a better scope though ( I have a camera but new to this so taking one step at a time :D)

Currently I have a Seben Mak (got it free from a friend recently) and only just got round to using it as I noticed a bright "star" in the sky tonight when coming back from the shop, which turned out to be Jupiter!

Now that I have seen her and her moons for the first time, I am in love and so going to get a new scope next month (I will get advice form the equipment section here but the image quality of SKYWATCHER EXPLORER-200P looks great and within my 300£ budget :p )

Until then I will learn what I can with this current scope so I am a bit more skilled when I get the new one :)

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Another one hooked! :)

It was Jupiter for me also, and realising it had moons!

Well, I knew it had moons as I have probably seen 1000 programs on Discovery but when it came to looking, I never thought of them at all. After your advice, I saw them and it was amazing, even though they were so small. Still, I could clearly see them, it reminded me of the sparkle of a diamond ring - not sure why, but these little dots set around Jupiter, all sparkling away.

I am really keen now to get a better scope and see more detail; the problem now is that the more I look at scopes, the more I find that to get great images, the price of the scopes drastically increases lol

So I need to spend time and research some options as there is so much to consider; do I want to see planets, deep space objects - I just assumed I could buy a scope for £300, pop it on a stand and see all the planets and all the close galaxies, nebulae and all that stuff.

Got a lot to learn, even a lot to learn to simply buy a scope :D

It seems to me that you need to have a couple of different scopes to deal with the different light requirements of objects in space, but I will start with something that works well at picking out the planets and some close star systems :p

Looking forward to my new hobby lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites
matteboy

matteboy

Posted
Posted

Well you're in the right place here, took me a LONG while to decide which scope I was going to go for, but for £300 you can one hell of a Dob, that's what I've gone for, no messing with polar aligning, just point and go, and nudge a bit, nudge a bit! Depends on whether you want to track the stars in the EP, go for the EQ mount with motors, more money goes on the mounts, especially if you go down the slippery slope of imaging!

Soo many options, but read the advice on here to work out what's best for you, don't forget that when you get the scope you may need extra EPs as most scopes come with pretty poor ones I've read. You could do what I've done and look second hand, I picked my 8" Dob up for less than £200, as new condition, 6 hour drive but sooooooooo worth it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
skymanlol

skymanlol

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Well you're in the right place here, took me a LONG while to decide which scope I was going to go for, but for £300 you can one hell of a Dob, that's what I've gone for, no messing with polar aligning, just point and go, and nudge a bit, nudge a bit! Depends on whether you want to track the stars in the EP, go for the EQ mount with motors, more money goes on the mounts, especially if you go down the slippery slope of imaging!

Soo many options, but read the advice on here to work out what's best for you, don't forget that when you get the scope you may need extra EPs as most scopes come with pretty poor ones I've read. You could do what I've done and look second hand, I picked my 8" Dob up for less than £200, as new condition, 6 hour drive but sooooooooo worth it!

Hi mate, well I actually want to do the finding manually for now because that will help me to learn the layout of the sky and it will also make me more skilled with my scope.

So I am hoping to just start off by using the stand I have with my current spotter scope. That might be a bad idea but I think I would rather pay out money for a half decent scope now and enjoy some lovely (perhaps wobbly) views and suffer with a poo stand than have a great stand and a poo scope :D

I can always try and hack something together to improve the stand stability if need be, but I can't do anything to improve the real quality of images with the current scope. So it is a trade off :p

Need to read up more on EPs and all that stuff, still trying to figure out if I should get a reflect, refract or the one that starts with a C lol and then there is the dob, newt and all the other kinds..... geez, making life hard :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
matteboy

matteboy

Posted
Posted

A Dob (Dobsonian) is the mount under a reflector, essentially the Explorer 200P you mentioned earlier is the same scope on an Equatorial mount, an EQ mount needs to be set up with the pole star and will follow the path of the stars due to the earth's rotation (manually or with motors). Reflectors use mirrors, refractors use a lense and the 'C' ones use both I think.

Have a read of something like THIS

Or Google which scope to buy

It's all very confusing at first but it gets easier, there are so many abbreviations that people use, I am still pretty new to all this but get good advice from here

Definitely with on the finding stuff manually, learning your way round the sky means you've found it and not the computer in the mount!

Have you downloaded Stellarium yet? It's free and I would be lost without it! Google it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
gedmac

gedmac

Posted
Posted

and remember KEEP POSTING on here,get to 50 posts and you will be able to enter the "for sale" section:p some great scopes at great prices appear regularly,second hand but generally very well cared for:D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.