First time with new telescope.

[Razz]

Well, finally got a chance to try out my first telescope last night. I'm just getting over a head cold and it was very cold so I only stayed out for about 1.5 hours. The moon was bright and I spent a bit of time looking at that thru various eyepieces. I've seen many pictures of the moon but I gotta say it's very cool to see it for yourself. I checked out a couple of stars not too far from the moon. If I used Stellarium correctly, they were Capella and Aldebaran. Then I tried for Jupiter but it was just below my tree line and I couldn't get it into view. I ended the session just checking out random stuff in the sky. I'm happy with the SvBONY sv503 80mm scope. I didn't bother star aligning the az-gte mount, I just manually pointed it using the hand set but I'm happy with that, also. 

[Nightspore]

3 hours ago, Razz said:

Well, finally got a chance to try out my first telescope last night. I'm just getting over a head cold and it was very cold so I only stayed out for about 1.5 hours. The moon was bright and I spent a bit of time looking at that thru various eyepieces. I've seen many pictures of the moon but I gotta say it's very cool to see it for yourself. I checked out a couple of stars not too far from the moon. If I used Stellarium correctly, they were Capella and Aldebaran. Then I tried for Jupiter but it was just below my tree line and I couldn't get it into view. I ended the session just checking out random stuff in the sky. I'm happy with the SvBONY sv503 80mm scope. I didn't bother star aligning the az-gte mount, I just manually pointed it using the hand set but I'm happy with that, also. 

 

Sounds good. To be honest at this stage of the lunation you'd be lucky to see anything other than the Moon. I went out about an hour before the Moon reached transit. With the Moon this high and bright it's the only target easy to observe. As the terminator tracks across the Moon it can reveal features hitherto bleached out or too dark to see. Apparently due to the 178 year nutation and libration cycle you can never see the same feature of the Moon exactly the same twice. I went out with my 102mm Mak (and a Baader Zeiss Amici prism) deliberately to see Schroter's Valley and Gassendi.

 

 

After about 40 mins the OTA had cooled enough to get 217x. You may find LROC useful. 

[Nightspore]

Filters are useful on the Moon, particularly with lower magnifications. I use single and double polarising filters mainly as it cuts glare. Although over about 100x I don't use filters nowadays. Light blue and light yellow filters can be useful for contrast on the Moon. Neutral Density filters have a similar effect to polarising filters and are the most common type of Moon filter. Double polarising filters are useful for seeing cloud detail on Venus. Baader Neodymium filters are often recommended for the Moon. Although personally I think they act very similar to a Wratten 82A as they attenuate some of the yellow end of the spectrum. The Lumicon version is very subtle and one of my favourites. Light blue filters are useful for revealing Martian polar caps if they aren't easy to perceive.  

Edited January 16, 2022 by Nightspore