am i in the....
Discussion
Rather randomly, astronomy things tend to end up in Boats, Planes and Trains -
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
jdl1981 said:
A 2nd hand celestron astromaster 130, pretty basic so I'm told!
Basic is goot to start with!What mount is it on? What eyepieces did it come with?
If you haven't already, download Stellarium. It gives you a real time representation of what's going on, best of all is it's free!
Saturn is good at at the moment (Google images isn't quite as good
) Unfortunately you're starting in summer when the skies never really get truely dark, so deep sky stuff is going to be pushing it a bit, especially in a .......no offence..... smaller scope. You should be able to see the Andromeda galaxy though, that's bright and large. Get Stellarium downloaded and start learning the sky!
jdl1981 said:
It came with a 10mm and 20mm lens, no idea what the mount is. It has several adjustment points and levers all of which do things I don't fully understand! I've downloaded the manual for it so hopefully I will figure it out. Not quite brian cox just yet!
The mount will be an eq mount of some sort then.This http://www.themcdonalds.net/~themcdo/richard/index... will teach you all you need to know regarding setting up and using, not that simple unfortunately.
With the eyepieces you have, you will get 65x mag from the 10mm and 32.5x mag from the 20 (you work this out by dividing the focal length of the telescope, 650mm in your case, by the focal length of the eyepieces you have, 10 and 20mm)
This won't really be ebough for the planets, but you can fix that by ordering a 2x barlow lens which effectivley doubles your focal lengths, so you'll end up with 130x from the 10mm eyepiece. Have a look at First Light Optics and see if they have the TAL 2x barlow lens, supposed to be the best bang for your bucks.
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