![]() ![]() But by January 4th or 5th the Moon returns to the evening sky as a crescent, growing thicker each night for the next week and a half. Tonight (December 25, 2021) the Moon doesn't rise into good view until after midnight, and it's highest and best before the first light of dawn. An amateur telescope and a good Moon map can keep you busy forever. That's a hundred times closer than the nearest planet ever gets. It’s our nearest neighbor in space - big, bright, starkly bleak, and just a quarter million miles away. The Moon is one celestial object that never fails to impress in even the most humble scope. Here are some suggestions for starting off. Sky & Telescope's This Week's Sky at a Glance has suggestions for both telescopic and naked-eye viewing of the brightest stars and planets. On the other hand, the Moon and the naked-eye planets are bright and easy to find! They make excellent first targets for new telescopic observers. Much of what the universe has to offer is subtle and, again, extremely far away!īut the longer and more carefully you examine something, the more of it you'll gradually discern. Moreover, our night vision sees dim things mostly as shades of gray. Too many first-time telescope users expect Hubble-like brightness and color in the eyepiece - when in fact most astronomical objects are very dim to the human eye. Spend time with each sky object you're able to locate, and really get to know it. Then recheck again that it's still in the center of the main scope's view, in case you may have bumped it off in the process. Use the finder's adjustment screws to center the crosshairs (or red dot) on the same treetop. Aim the telescope at a distant treetop or other landmark, center it in the view, lock the mount's motions if the mount allows this, recheck that the treetop is still centered, and then look through the finderscope. Switch to a higher-magnification eyepiece only after you've found your target, got it centered, and had a good, careful first look.Īlso: If the telescope has a little finderscope or a red-dot pointing device attached to its side, daytime is the easiest time to align the finder with the main scope. So you'll always want to start off with the lowest power. The lowest power also makes it easiest to find what you're trying to aim at, thanks to that relatively wide field of view. For instance, you'll quickly find that a telescope's lowest magnification (the eyepiece with the longest focal length, meaning the one with the highest number on it) gives the brightest, sharpest, and widest views, with the least amount of the wiggles. Second, take the scope outside in the daytime and familiarize yourself with how it works on distant scenes - treetops, buildings - to get a good feel for what it actually does. That way you don't have to figure out unfamiliar knobs, settings, and adjustments outside in the cold and dark. Read the instructions, and get to know how it all works - how it moves, how to change eyepieces, and so on - in warmth and comfort. Here are three crucial tips for starting on the right foot, to avoid frustrations and move quickly up the learning curve.įirst, get your scope all set up indoors. However, most of them are so far and faint that just finding and positively identifying them is the challenge - and the accomplishment! Whether your new scope is a long, sleek tube or a compact marvel of computerized wizardry, surely you're itching to try it out. Congratulations - you could be on your way to making lifelong friends with stupendous, faraway things in your night sky. Maybe you just got a shiny new telescope to call your own. ![]() ![]() When the Moon is waxing, it shines in the evening and grows wider each night - as the terminator (the line that divides night and day on the lunar surface) unveils more and more of the blasted, alien landscape. ![]() The Moon changes phase from night to night, revealing new lunar landscape every step of the way. The waxing Moon just before first-quarter phase, as it looks in an amateur telescope magnifying about 40 times. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |