All things Astronomy!
I think one of the few things I would like to talk about is my expierences with my telescope from the beginning. I have to admit that I thought using a telescope was going to be a simple thing. Boy was I wrong. I went out and bought a $1000 telescope and when I got it home I had NO idea what I was doing. Just finding out where north pointed was an affair. I remember being outside and looking at the stars, they were soooo out of focus. I thought that they had craters on them! If you use a telescope you know what I mean. I bought myself a Meade ETX125 with UHTC coatings and a ton of extra stuff to get me going. Wish the store I bought it from was not just in it for the money. Anyway I get home and get the telescope all setup which took a good 2 hours, and off I was. It has the autostar system where you tell it to point to a couple stars in the sky and then once that is done it will go to any object in its database. Here is where all the trouble started. After taking an hour to level the scope and find north. (I used a 2 star alignment.) You have to pick 2 stars, center them and you are good to go. One problem is that I had NO idea what the names of the stars were. Let alone how to even say the names! Did not know about any software and only had a planosphere to help. It was one of those little round ones that suck. I was very frustrated to say the least. After a few nights of torture I set the scope aside for a while and decided I really needed to understand where everything was to get going. Found a couple programs to help. Starry Night was a great find. Was kind of easy to use and help a great deal. Now that I got a general idea about where a couple stars were it was off to the races! I remember the firs night was a cold one. I aligned the scope and used the autostar best of night setting and it went to the M42 The Orion Nebula. Now it did get there, but passed it by a lot. I did see something blurry in the eyepiece, but it took a long time to get back to it. The up/down/left/right buttons were all screwed up! At least thats what I thought! After messing with it for about 1/2 hour with my face buried in the eyepiece I finally found M42. Boy was I disappointed. Where the hell was all the color like Hubble images? Wow I got robbed! I thought that I spent all this money and all I see is a little gray blob? Was ready to pack it up and get my money back! Happy I didnt though! Anyway decided to check out the moon. That is what hooked me! It was just INCREDIBLE! The view of the craters and how many there are is just incredible. Then I put in a high power cheapo eyepiece that has the LITTLE, LITTLE, TINY hole to look through( I think it was a 6 or 8 mm) and even though it was tough looking through it was totally worth it! WOW is all I can say. That got me hooked and off to the races I go.
In the next few updates I am going to talk about imaging, alignment upgrades and a bunch of other things. If you are interested in a specific topic let me know and I will do my best to help.
Great stuff. Cant wait to read more!
Great article! What people don’t realize is that observing depends on location and conditions. Take that ETX away from the city on a moonless night, slap an O-III filter on, and you will be presented with a near photographic view. The best view of the ring nebula I’ve ever had was at my local astronomy club’s dark site, on a ladder peeking through an 18” Obsession. The color was pure grayish white, central star was visible and I even got a hint of green…almost fell off the ladder, lol. I remember that was the time I was hooked, and also my first peek at the ring neb. and the rings of Saturn.
There sure is a learning curve involved when buying a first telescope. What helped me was the combination of a manual and online discussion groups that offer a ton of info and answer your questions.