Re: A little help needed :)
From: Michael K (none_at_)
Date: 02/10/05
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Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:46:01 -0600
Jan Gustavsson <jangus@foi.se> wrote:
>I am an owner of a Meade ETX-125CE since a month ago. I am both
>impressed and disappointed. The eyepieces that I have are the 26mm and
>(I think) 8mm. I also have some filters for the eyepieces and one sun
>filter for the telescope.
>I also have the LPI.
>
>The 26mm is rather easy to use but the 8mm is really hard to get a good
>focus with. If I happen to get a good focus with the 8mm it goes in and
>out of focus all the time when I get into contact with the eyepiece
>while watching.
It might be that conditions werent good enough (still air) for the
high magnification and you can make it worse by viewing thigns like
Saturn when they are too low in the sky (even more air). If treetops
'move a lot', then the air may not be still enough for high mag.
It can vary night to night. Several nights ago, 58x provided the best
image on Jupiter, but last night seemed much better and was able to
get sharp clear views at 125x. Depending on where you are, ice
crystals in the air can make the image fuzzy or give it a halo.
It is possible some of the fuzziness is vibration from the tracking
motors - I dont know how likely that is for the Meade, but at high mag
just touching (or letting go) the tracking knobs causes my image to
jitter. A steady and cyclical event /sounds/ mechanical, but this
should be easy to determine: just turn off the motor and see if it
goes away.
Some of the standard filter sets seem a bit much to me (too dark) or I
havent found the right use for them yet. Last night Jupe was very
bright and I found that either a light blue (82a) or light yellow (8)
took just enough glare or sheen off it to clearly see some of the
belts. The same ones helped in splitting some double stars where the
main one was VERY bright and the other very close.
>
>I know that it is very important to practice watching through a
>telescope as one does not see much of the details in the beginning. But
>some things as nebulas and galaxies, I cant find at all.
>
>I have so far succeeded in viewing of the: Sun, Moon, Saturn and off
>cause some stars.
>I have had no luck in finding any nebula or galaxy.
I assume the ETX EC doesnt have GoTo (or it is not working right). If
so, start with bright easy objects (skip galaxies for the moment) and
work up to the harder things (I am doing just that).
Two books that can help: _Turn Left at Orion_ and _Star Watch_ have
loads of instructions for locating objects by star hopping. Includes
sketches of what they see (and you can expect) at various
magnifications.
The Astro League has a list of Urban Sky objects
(http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/urban/urbanld.html) which
should be easy to start with.
Their Double star list
(http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/dblstar/dblstar1.html) is also
fun to work out on brighter nights and easier to do than the fainter
Messier objects.
THe web site http://www.davidpaulgreen.com/tumol.html has the Messier
objects mapped out, one per page with a mini map for finding each
(including a thumbnail image of what the target looks like). Lots of
the stuff around Orion and Taurus (eg M42, M45, M50) are easy to find
this time of year. This comes as a program or as PDF to print out and
take along.
In general, I am finding that zipping back and forth all over the sky
(without GoTo) means you need lots of patience to find stuff (hard to
do in the cold) or luck. So, I started with one const (I chose Orion)
and I am working outward to nearby ones, to get familiar with smaller
sections of the sky at a time.
To help learn setting circles (dunno if this applies to ETX EC), I
made up a list of 12 or 15 easy to find/see stars and M objects
(mostly from Gemini across Orion to M45), and work thru the list using
circles to go thru the list as sort of as a drill to get familiar with
how to use circles. All the list targets are things I can tell at a
glance if I did things right and landed on the target because they are
from my current "home" section of the sky. (I still 'get lost' after
the 3rd or 4th target, but expect milder weather wont make me want to
rush thru the drill.)
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