Astronomy - telescopes...

[TassieTiger]

Just wondering - been looking at some stars etc with some of my spotting scopes recently and I’ve decided to purchase a decent telescope for me and the kids to use.
Any members in to astronomy ?
I booked a couple nights at one of the local radio telescopes - but they both got cancelled due cloud. I was hoping ppl there could help with purchasing advice...never mind, I’m looking at a 10 inch Dobsonian so kids can really get deep into space and see Saturn etc.
the question is re computer controlled - they add about $1500 to the scope but I think it would save a lot of anguish by kids / me - especially with just tracking - as I’ve stars and planets move across field of view bloody fast...
???

[Blr243]

I think most of us ignore/ neglect astronomy these days , but man paid so much more attention to it centuries ago .. cavemen learned about it all because they had no tv or internet ....a deeper understanding about how it all works up there would be very beneficial

[TassieTiger]

I really want to get kids off their bloody computers and show them something “real” - try and inspire them somehow...
We were lucky enough to witness the Russian rocket burn up the other night Right over the top of us and kids are still talking about it - it was pretty amazing...Hoping a scope might do similar,

[poid]

I was very into astronomy as a kid, reckon i was about 7 years old when the old man bought me a 4.5" reflector...one of the only presents I remember getting as a youngster! Living in Sydney there is no point looking up as you don't see anything, but I'm also looking at getting a better scope and building it into a dedicated enclosure on the farm.

The 10" dob will let you see a hell of a lot, even with the 4.5" I can resolve stuff like Saturn's rings, M31 Andromeda and various star clusters very clearly. When Mars was at its closest a decade or so back I could see its ice caps and a few other features. Just don't expect to see vivid colour; you can get colour through astrophotography but you won't be gathering enough light to see full colour deep space objects. For deep space they are hard to beat for value.

Will the scope be in a permanent location? Finding an object manually is a bit of fun and pretty rewarding, especially when you find something that you just didn't expect to see. Where the computer control really helps is with tracking an object. If you are doing it manually you will be constantly adjusting to stay on target. I could do that easily enough with mine as I had hand controls, would be slightly more annoying with a dob.

[No1Mk3]

G'day Tassie Tiger,
I use a 4" Newtonian on a electronic equatorial, more suited to my needs than a simple Dobsonian alt-azimuth. The evolution of Dobs over the years has been phenomenal and I have been thinking about getting one with the accessory motor drive equatorial mount. Buying guns keeps getting in the way though. Is the one your looking at available with the equatorial mount? Would be interested to hear your opinions if you go down that road, Cheers.

[Daz243]

I have owned a 8" dob for a few years. Mines the manual type so you have to constantly have to tap it to keep with the objects you are viewing.
I had planned to build a cheap tracker to sit the base on but as usual I haven't got to it. There are a few designs to be found on the net.

[TassieTiger]

So I pulled the trigger on a 10” collapsible Dobsonian with GOTO tracker device (Skywatcher) - was between this and a Celestron nexstar8se but I wanted the larger scope in the end and the nextstar was more $$$ than the Dobsonian (guess you pay for the portability) - It will be permanently mounted - may end up building something, it’s some 40kgs so a trolley might be in order - I have a lot to learn with this thing re lenses etc but hopefully the kids get a jolt.

[Daz243]

Try the apps Night Sky Tools and Sky Map they are good beginner tools on the mobile to find stars and planets in the sky.

[Bugman]

All I remember about Astronomy is a poem: "twinkle, twinkle little star
how fu$#ing far away you are"
Sorry. Not much help, I know.

[TassieTiger]

The distance is truly mind boggling....
Light travels around the earth 7 times in 1 second...so how far, does light travel in a year...a bloody long way.(9 trillion klms)
Our own milky way galaxy is 100,000 light years across....even the 6.5 creed more is going to struggle

[AussieCapitalist]

Light years is a unit of distance not time. A lot of people forget that concept and say things along the lines of "X is light years ahead of Y". Very similar to how people use the word weight and mass interchangeably when they are different.

Mass=Matter
Weight=Gravity impact on mass.

[TassieTiger]

First time using new telescope last night - I was bit crook but missus managed to use it without the skyscan computer and checked out a couple edited photos (No real colour in original.)
Lunar scape is just off the show - some huge mountains up there!

[mickb]

Very nice mate, that setup has some serious horsepower. I bought the family a 4.5" newtonian about 20 years ago, and upgraded to an 8" skywatcher newtonian on manual equatorial EQ-5 mount about 10 years later. It was bigger than I realised from the catalogue and the big EQ mount turned out to be cumbersome for female members of the family to lug into the yard. A couple years ago we handed it on and nowadays just have a little tabletop collapsible 5" dobsonian. Its a case of matching the cost/size commitment to the interest level and both times the smaller telescope proved better for our personal situation. If you have the space and interest in the dob it will be an amazing tool. Invite some families over for viewing parties or wheel it out for BBQ's.

[TassieTiger]

I’m hearing you exactly - I didn’t realise how cumbersome or heavy the main mirrors would be.

I’m still very much learning - so, so much and I may end up down sizing after a while. But - it’s simply astonishing what’s up there...I’ve a lot to learn about eye pieces - as the ones I expected to clean up the image did not, in fact it worked in reverse lol. With all the attachments in the eye piece, 2 inch to 1.25”, with extension, add in the Barlow, then a 6.5 wide angle - the eye piece was a foot long lol.

[mickb]

Mate you probably already know, but with eyepieces sometimes less is more. When working out magnification and you take the focal length of the telescope which will be a number provided in millimitres , probably 1200-1500 in your scopes case and then divide it by the mm of the eyepeice( which is printed on it), the magification can end up unworkable or too high. I tried plugging 3mm eyepieces into my scope with its 1200mm focal length expecting to get amazing views of the resulting 400x but the reality was the atmopheric conditions and the light gathering capabilities of the scope were not going to allow that sort of resolution. I found unless I wanted to look at awesome blurry blobs about half that magnification was more workable here in the tropics most nights, and I often enjoyed using a lot less.

Id say with a bit scope like yours you would not need the barlow to double power to get max, using my example above using a 4, 6 or 8mm eyepiece I would get magnification from 300, 200, 150x which took me to the limits of the scope. Using a barlow and the 4mm would increase it to 600x which was beyond the usable limits of its light gathering, everyting became 'highly magnified blurry blobs". Where a barlow is useful is more when you have 'gaps' in you eyepiece collection. For example you might have bought a 10mm, and 24mm. The barlow in doubling power allows you to halve those figures( which double magnification) so its like you now have an extra 5mm, and 12mm to play with by adding the barlow. Its more about flexibility than chasing the biggest magnification

[TassieTiger]

Thanks Mick - you’ve just helped more than you know