First Sightings

[sarahb]

This morning I took my telescope out to practice moving and focusing, I managed to spot and focus in on a couple of trees and an electricity pilon! Now comes the silly question; is everything that I view meant to be upside down or am I doing something wrong?

[GordonCopestake]

No, you are not doing anything wrong! With a telescope everything does appear upside down as there is no extra prisms or mirrors to "correct" the image. The reason for this is that in space there is no up or down and the extra glass needed reduces the image quality. Spottings 'scopes and binoculars do use this extra glass and the images are the right way round. If you are using the 'scope for day time viewing you can buy special correcting eyepeices or a prism diagonal that corrects the image for you, but these are not ideal for night time viewing.

Hope this helps some

[Caz]

Adjusting your telescope when your target is upside down through the ep, takes a little bit of getting used to, but you'll get there with practice....

Caz

[moondog]

What type of scope do you have ?

Some types of astro scope show an upside down image (not mirrored left to right). Others show a right way up image but mirrored left to right. Both my scopes have the mirrored view because they are refractors with a 90 degree mirror star diagonal. If I remove the star diagonal the view will be like yours.

It's confusing to start with, but you soon learn to adapt !

MD

[lunator]

Sarah

With the reflector scope you have the view will be upside down.

When you look into space this will make no difference to the view.

Cheers

ian

[The Warthog]

Adjusting your telescope when your target is upside down through the ep, takes a little bit of getting used to, but you'll get there with practice....

I find myself having trouble adjusting to a correct image view, now. I am used to the way an astronomical scope sees things.

If you want to view terrestrial objects, if you stand in front of and slightly to one side of your scope, so the scope is looking under your arm, and look through the eyepiece, the view will be rightside up. It's a bit silly, but it works. You need to aim the scope first.