I recently bought a telescope after finding one for $19 in a used goods shop. I briefly debated whether or not to waste the money on it, but after thinking about how I've yearned for some good binocs or telescopes in the past, I decided what the hell, go for it.
Pretty glad I did.
Took it out at 04:00 the other night on a rare clear, still night, the first clear sky in weeks, and pointed it at a few random bits of sky. Saw a yellow star coming up over the mountains and nudged and fiddled with the various eyepieces that came with the scope.
Holy crap, there was a glorious yellow ball, with big rings around it. I saw Saturn! I don't think it can be put into words the kind of feeling you get when you look at something like that with your own eyes, nothing but a fancy magnifying glass between you and another planet. It's quite awesome really.
Anyone here have a telescope?
I've caught the fever and I'm thinking about getting another, more sophisticated, higher power scope.
For what it's worth I bought an 80x560mm refractor made by Vixen in Japan probably sometime in the 70's or 80's. Very sharp image though the eyepieces seem to be of mediocre quality. I'd like to get a 2 or 3x barlow lens (For magnifying as the picture is quite small with a 10mm or 5mm eyepiece), and another, bigger telescope to view the planets more clearly. Any advice about this would be appreciated. Shoestring budget though. Not out of the question to make the mirror myself from a glass blank or pre-made mirror.
I was lent one for a few years as a kid, fascinating stuff. I couldn't tell you the model or specs but it was apparently top of the line at the time it was bought.
Nowadays I only have a 45x spotting scope that I found, that I like to climb up the local mountains with and check out the landscape.
Congratulations on your new telescope, the Vixen brand is quite good too so well done on your purchase.
I'm on my 3rd telescope now, a Meade 10" LX200R but it has gotten to heavy for me to move around as I have little strength or feeling in my left hand and arm.
Here in Belgium the seeing is terrible, there is so much light pollution that astronomy is frustrating to me after the really dark skies we had in the Highlands of Scotland. Belgium is the most light polluted country in the world!
Your telescope at 80x560 works out at f7 that is a reasonably wide angle, my LX200R is f10 and my first Tasco refractor was a 40x600 which is f15, the "f" ratio is the focal length of your telescope, 560mm divided by the diameter of the objective lens 80mm and it gives you a rough idea on how much light the telescope can gather, so your telescope can gather more light, it is just the same as the f-stops on a camera.
What diameter are the interchangeable eye pieces? there are 3 common sizes, with toys the likes of the Tasco the eye piece is 1", the LX200R I have modified to accept 2" but normally it would only take 1.25", most likely your telescope will take 1.25" but it may also take a 2", those are the physical sizes of the barrel that goes into the eyepiece holder on the telescope.
I have bought a few lens's secondhand and the quality is so so, there are various astronomy shops online like: Telescope House where I got a few of the bits and pieces for mine.
It is very tempting to go up, up and up in magnification but the distances and the magnification your telescope can do will not make a big difference in size of the object in the eyepiece, one fellow told me to think of the light coming through your telescope as the butter and the magnification as a slice of bread, the bigger the slice of bread the thinner the butter or the more you magnify the image the fainter the object will become and more difficult to see details. You have a wide angle telescope to take in a broader view
I use a couple of apps on my iPhone for planning viewing, I have used this on my PDA long before I got an iPhone Astronomist it is quite useful and can link in to a "Goto" telescope to control it, the other one I use is https://skysafariastronomy.com/ it can also control a goto telescope.
Paul Rix should be along and be able to give you much better advice than I can, there are a few good astro-photographers on this site, have a look in the photo section here for their work.
This is my LX200R telescope and you can see the little Tasco sitting on top of it being used to guide the larger one.
Chlanna nan con thigibh a so's gheibh sibh feoil Sons of the hound come here and get flesh Clan Cameron
I don't think it can be put into words the kind of feeling you get when you look at something like that with your own eyes, nothing but a fancy magnifying glass between you and another planet. It's quite awesome really.
It IS pretty surreal the first time isn't it? It's like the difference of seeing something on TV and then actually being there....
Seeing a crazy good Hubble or Cassini image doesn't even quite have the impact of literally seeing it DIRECTLY with your own eyes, no electronics.....
The first time I looked at the Moon through a telescope I was astonished at the speed at which it moved, it was an effort keeping it in the middle of the viewer.
Mick.
"An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile hoping he will be eaten last"
Nice find to get a 80mm telescope for $19! That first view of Saturn is one of those moments that will stay with you for a long time.
I haven't done much amateur astronomy for quite awhile, but I am excited to be getting back into it. There was a great deal recently on cooled, one-shot-color cameras and I was lucky enough to snag one before they sold out. It should be here sometime next week.
It is amazing what you can observe with a cheaper scope. It is even possible to do some basic imaging as well.
These were my first images of Saturn, taken using a webcam and my first telescope, a little Meade ETX70. You would probably get better results these days with the camera on you cellphone. Saturn
Last edited by Paul Rix; 04/02/1704:14 PM.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Saturn was my first "Holy Crap" moment with a telescope, but when I looked at the Ring Nebulae with my 8 inch Dobson was when I really pooped my pants! Didn't look anything like the sights seen through the big, professional telescopes, of course, but I was seeing it with my own eyes!
I remember one night maybe 7 or 8 years ago, out in the backyard looking through a cheap telescope I borrowed from my brother and seeing Saturn for the first time. It looked like <O> at 70x, I think. Not long after there was a lunar eclipse and Saturn was high in the sky at the time of the eclipse, so I brought the telescope back to my brother's so his kids could see. They were anywhere between 5 & 8 at the time, it was brutally cold out so we set the 'scope up inside and pointed it out the huge cathedral windows. There are no streetlights where they live and no neighbors close enough to create light pollution, and we just turned off all the lights & put up comforters to make a sort of booth. The kids got a kick out of it.
I've also seen Jupiter & the Galilean moons, but not all 4 at the same time. The star tracker doesn't work on it and I'm not steady enough to track anything by hand.
Phil
“The biggest problem people have is they don’t think they’re supposed to have problems.” - Hayes Barnard
#4348581 - 04/02/1704:35 PMRe: Ever looked through a telescope?
[Re: Zamzow]
I don't think it can be put into words the kind of feeling you get when you look at something like that with your own eyes, nothing but a fancy magnifying glass between you and another planet. It's quite awesome really.
It IS pretty surreal the first time isn't it? It's like the difference of seeing something on TV and then actually being there....
Seeing a crazy good Hubble or Cassini image doesn't even quite have the impact of literally seeing it DIRECTLY with your own eyes, no electronics.....
Zamzow, Exactly!
Hi, I'm Larry and this my brother Dayrle, and this is my other brother Dayrle.
Yes, I have a 4.5" reflector with a 900mm focal length on an equatorial mount. I added an Orion 7x40mm crosshair finder scope, plus some Celestron Omni eyepieces.
It's been a few years since I've been able to use it (due to poor setup conditions at present). But in the years I did get to use it, a very, very enjoyable hobby. In addition to viewing the planets and moon, I bought some star charts and a red flashlight, and began exploring the items from the Messier catalog, and whatnot. Having a good star chart and that 7x40mm finder makes the navigation such a pleasure. Finally arriving at a faint target, after following trail based on the star charts, was always a joy.
Lots of enjoyment in amateur astronomy, and as mentioned above it really doesn't take lots of money. My scope is nothing expensive, a Bushnell, and I was gifted that from a prior owner who had lost interest. Still gave me years of enjoyment.
WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
Pro-Consul of Florida
PanzerMeyer
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Is it just or me or did amateur astronomy decline in popularity a lot since the 1990's? As a kid and teen during the 70's and 80's I remember seeing magazine ads and tv commercials all the time for telescopes. One brand I remember is Tasco!
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
I have a Meade that comes with a digital keypad where you can program it to direct you to look at certain objects and Messier bits, but I dunno. I looked at Jupiter once and it still looked like a big star, but you can see little stars around it being the moons and if you looked the next day the moon position would change. That's the most I got out of it except for really great shots of the full moon.
On my birthday in 2003 I had the pleasure of being in New Orleans when Mars was the closest it's been to earth in something like 500,000 years and the closest it will be until 500,000 years and someone had a telescope near Cafe du Monde letting people look for free. So I got to see Mars on my birthday that way...and it was beautiful. You could see the redness of the planet, the canals, and the ice cap. It was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm glad I didn't miss out on, one of the best birthday gifts I've ever gotten.
v6, boNes
"Also, I would prefer a back seater over the extra gas any day. I would have 80 pounds of flesh to eat and a pair of glasses to start a fire." --F/A-18 Hornet pilot
Is it just or me or did amateur astronomy decline in popularity a lot since the 1990's? As a kid and teen during the 70's and 80's I remember seeing magazine ads and tv commercials all the time for telescopes. One brand I remember is Tasco!
Considering how much light pollution there is now, the average person doesn't get a great night sky view. Only rural areas and North Korea, I think.
The Jedi Master
The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
Is it just or me or did amateur astronomy decline in popularity a lot since the 1990's? As a kid and teen during the 70's and 80's I remember seeing magazine ads and tv commercials all the time for telescopes. One brand I remember is Tasco!
Considering how much light pollution there is now, the average person doesn't get a great night sky view. Only rural areas and North Korea, I think.
The Jedi Master
Actually, I think you're both right -- I think amateur astronomy has significantly declined since the '70's, and I think Jedi's point is a factor. Other factors may be less interest (in general) in outdoor activities, and, in some ways, the wealth of info and pics on the internet.
Simply put, in less than a minute, I can find dozens of pictures of Saturn that are far better than I could ever hope to take myself -- without learning how to set up and use a bunch of equipment, trying to figure out where things are in the sky, occasionally freezing my privates off, or being accosted by cops because somebody sees me out in a field at night (yep - been there, done that).
In some ways, I can understand it, but "seeing for myself" has always been a part of the thrill for me, and introducing other folks to it, has always been fun too.
With that in mind, I have a couple scopes; one, an old Carl Wetzler 4.5 reflector that I've had since I was a kid (and it looks it ). These days, it sits on a home-made Dobsonian mount I made as a teenager, and its "finder scope" is an old pair of 7 X 35 binoculars screwed on top of it... It's really handy for just informally (and quickly) looking at whatever catches your fancy. I also have a computerized Celestron Nexstar 130 SLT that is handier for finding, tracking and observing more difficult objects -- eventually (I keep telling myself this) I'll get around to setting this one up for astro-photography... (maybe by the time I retire ).
Additionally, I have a couple pairs of Celestron Binoculars (15 X 70) that I set up on camera tripods. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed with them, but they're still great for letting raw beginners look through -- I've never seen *anything* in my telescopes that I could not *also* see in a decent pair of binoculars (even 7X35's), and most folks can use them easier than a scope so those are great for simple stuff and gives folks something else to look through when the scope is already being used.
Over the years, I've looked at all the planets (that we know about, and can actually see in a small scope), several comets, many of the Messier and NGC objects, and several stars, eclipses, and even a Sun transit (of Venus a couple years back), so I've personally found it a fun hobby. It would be nice to see general interest in astronomy start to increase again, but I'm a bit doubtful that will happen anytime soon.
Of course, there are still plenty of things to see without needing a scope, or even binoculars (constellations, meteors, occasional naked eye comets, lunar eclipses to name a few), and even in downtown Phoenix, you can still see Iridium Flares and certain satellite passes as well as the ISS when it goes over, if you know when and where to look...
Is it just or me or did amateur astronomy decline in popularity a lot since the 1990's? As a kid and teen during the 70's and 80's I remember seeing magazine ads and tv commercials all the time for telescopes. One brand I remember is Tasco!
Considering how much light pollution there is now, the average person doesn't get a great night sky view. Only rural areas and North Korea, I think.
The Jedi Master
^^this, it is something I miss, having really dark skies when I was in Scotland, but when I moved south in 2010 the light pollution was even reaching the far north.
I took this little video back in 2009 with a CCTV camera at prime focus feeding s-video to a D8 camcorder to record it, M42 which is a naked eye visible nebula in Orion is too dim to overcome the light pollution here, the CCTV camera set to long exposure, the settings are visible in the video. Saturn's rings are edge on and don't really give the spectacular view that you can get when the rings are open.
HD it is not!
@PM my first telescope was/is a Tasco and I still have it and use it, I even had an adapter made up to fit a CCTV camera to it so I could get some video of Halley's comet in 1986 when it came past, alas it was only a faint smudge on that last visit and way below the threshold of what my camera could see back then.
Chlanna nan con thigibh a so's gheibh sibh feoil Sons of the hound come here and get flesh Clan Cameron
#4348822 - 04/03/1706:50 PMRe: Ever looked through a telescope?
[Re: Alicatt]
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
Pro-Consul of Florida
PanzerMeyer
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Joined: Apr 2001
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Miami, FL USA
Originally Posted by Alicatt
@PM my first telescope was/is a Tasco and I still have it and use it, I even had an adapter made up to fit a CCTV camera to it so I could get some video of Halley's comet in 1986 when it came past, alas it was only a faint smudge on that last visit and way below the threshold of what my camera could see back then.
Hey, that's ok Alicatt. You should have another chance to record it! The comet is due to pass by us again in about 45 years.
Last edited by PanzerMeyer; 04/03/1706:51 PM.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
@PM my first telescope was/is a Tasco and I still have it and use it, I even had an adapter made up to fit a CCTV camera to it so I could get some video of Halley's comet in 1986 when it came past, alas it was only a faint smudge on that last visit and way below the threshold of what my camera could see back then.
Hey, that's ok Alicatt. You should have another chance to record it! The comet is due to pass by us again in about 45 years.
I should hope to live that long, I would be a sprightly 105 then
Chlanna nan con thigibh a so's gheibh sibh feoil Sons of the hound come here and get flesh Clan Cameron
So I got to see Mars on my birthday that way...and it was beautiful. You could see the redness of the planet, the canals, and the ice cap.
IMO, the getting to see recognizable details on planets is one of the very most exciting and appealing things in the hobby. Seeing the ice cap on Mars, the cloud bands on Saturn, things that aren't just spots of light, or a faint gray fog, but actually recognizable features we can relate to.
I kind of got the feeling back in those days that amateur astronomy was a pretty geeky zone. Interest in and seeking largely obscure targets and enjoying arguably inferior views. As mentioned above, the internet provides incredibly superior views of 100% of the night sky. Software lets you enjoy a virtual telescope, zooming in to magnifications and resolutions that are simply impossible at most eyepieces. I remember quite a few times guests who were initially excited to look through the scope would always seem to be relatively disappointed when they saw nearly zero color, and that the targets can be so incredibly faint.
Still it was great fun for me, collecting a catalog of targets I had viewed, and a log of viewing conditions. Something I'd still probably enjoy once in a while, if I still had a good place to setup the scope like I used to.
WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.