beginner needing advice/help

[Gingerknight]

Good afternoon folks, I'm quite new to the whole astronomy game and I'm looking for a little help/advice.

I recently got a skywatcher heritage 130 and I've had a relative amount of success in the few nights that I've used it, viewing the moon on the first night and progressing to betleguese (?) yesterday.

In the box was a 10mm lens and a 25mm (wide angle) one. I've since brought a cheap Barlow lens just as a tester and I wanted to check something.

When I looked at betleguise (?) using the barlow lens with either eyepiece it looked remarkably clear and relatively easy....although what I was viewing looked very much like a disc of light with the shadow of the secondary mirror obstructing the star?

Is this normal? I didn't have this when I viewed the moon without the Barlow? Can I get around this at all? please help!!

Thanks in advance!

[John]

Hi,

What you were seeing was an out of focus Betelgeuse. Adjust the focus and the "polo mint" appearance will dissapear and you should see stars as points of light.

It may be that the barlow lens plus eyepiece won't come to focus with the Heritage 130 as I beleive it has a limited range of focus travel.

Look at Betelgeuse without the barlow lens and it should come to focus as I described.

Hope that helps.

[Ant]

Welcome to SGL.

Isn't the moon great when you first see it though a scope...?

As John says all stars will appear as a point source when they are correctly focused.

Usually when you add a barlow the focus point moves out away from the tube. Adding a barlow increases the magnification but does make it harder to get a good focus. So just slowly turn the focuser knob so the eyepeice moves out to the focus point.

If it is a 2x barlow you have, being used with the 25mm will be the equivalent of a 12.5mm - so almost the same as the 10mm.

Cheers

Ant