Any stargazers?

deemus said:

A friend has an electronic scope that has a base that rotates. I want to say he paid around $12K for it . It has a computer program using GPS that dials the scope into the right spot for planets, etc. Its pretty amazing. He has several eyepieces for it. He lives in the boondocks, so the stuff to see is just endless.

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Yea I definitely do not have 12k for a telescope lol

I used to have a Meade telescope when I was probably 12 (I think it was a 114mm same as the one I just got). I used it a bit for looking at the moon and planets but lived in N Ft Worth at the time fairly close to downtown and the skies there were terrible.

Recently I got into a fun debate with someone who was a NASA skeptic and sorta bought into Flat Earth. They had done alot of research into FE but weren't totally sold on it. In the process of destroying every argument they brought forth I ended up finding a video of some cool time lapses taken by Cassini showing saturn and it's moons rotating. It made me really want a telescope setup again so I could hopefully see even close to that level of awesomeness through glass and mirrors instead of and LCD screen.

After some research I decided to go the bare bones as far as mount (short of a dobsonian) to maximize my aperture on a budget. I also didn't want to go so big that I didn't want to drag the thing on some of my climbing trips where I go places with amazing night skies. The idea from the start was to just get a good tube and the equatorial mount and spend more money on lenses. Got the Celestron 114mm aperture 900mm focal length f/8 reflector on the basic equatorial mount (probably going to add a tracking motor at some point, they are only 40 bucks). Cost me 150 bucks.

So far I have really enjoyed using it. First night out I missed the moon (woke up from an unexpected nap at 1 am) but managed to fairly quickly find Jupiter and was greeted with not only the planet and two distinct tropical bands but 4 moons that were just points of light. Next night I spent alot of time looking at the moon. Stand is not quite so rigid and very light so I'm going to do a mod to hang a jug of sand off it to make it more sturdy and hopefully less prone to the wind as well. The lenses that came with it were a 20mm (about 45x) a 4mm (about 180x) and a 3x barlow lens. The 4mm is complete junk but the 20mm and the barlow have been pretty nice to mess with especially if just looking at the moon and seeing if I can ID craters. The barlow is a shorty though so it can introduce some chromatic aberrations and shortens the eye relief a bit more.

After doing alot of research and shopping around and reading reviews I finally decided on lenses. I managed to find a brand called Agena that made daul ED lenses (they basically gives you a wider fov with shorter focal lengths that give you higher zoom with no aberration) for 60 bucks with free shipping. There are some peoples comparing these to lenses 3x the price. So I got a 12mm (should be about 75x) and an 18mm (should be about 50x).

I then got a few more things over at Amazon. Picked up a Meade 40mm Plossl lens (touted as best bang for buck low zoom lens should be about 23x). I also found a metal body full sized 3x barlow lens for a good price so this gives me essentially 23x, 50x, 69x, 75x, 150x and 225x (which also happens to be the theoretical max for my telescope specs) to fool around with. In addition I got a laser collimator, a phone mount and a smart phone button on a cord thing that basically gives you a shutter remote. Here in about a week my telescope will have gone from 150 bucks to 400 bucks

For 100 bucks that seems good value but the tripod is probably pretty flimsy. To steady a tripod, hang some weight below the center. Fairly low .

This is an old photographers' trick. Used to do this with long lenses and my 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras. And I used excellent tripods.

Army 1911 said:

For 100 bucks that seems good value but the tripod is probably pretty flimsy. To steady a tripod, hang some weight below the center. Fairly low .

This is an old photographers' trick. Used to do this with long lenses and my 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras. And I used excellent tripods.

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That was essentially my plan. Seems there are alot of mods for turning okay mounts into pretty damned decent mounts.

Bought an early Meade 90mm ETX when Hale–Bopp made it's pass. My understanding is that Meade improved the tracking and added a "Go-To" function within a year or so of my purchase. Mine gets primarily used as a spotting scope now (removed from it's celestial mount and using a 7mm-21mm zoom eyepiece and image erecting prism).
Ended up playing Optics Technician as the adhesive ring holding the secondary mirror sunshade slid halfway across the mirror from the scope laying on it's side in storage. All better now and it gets stored resting upright on the objective dust cover.

Got my new lenses yesterday and was excited to check them out. Unfortunately it was fairly cloudy last night so I wasn't able to do a ton of observing. I did at least get some good views of the moon for a while and even a few quick views of Jupiter. I was occasionally able to make out a fair amount of detail on the Jovian clouds even.

Here is a good picture I got of the moon through the 18mm (about 50x).


Edit: damnit, looks like I have to wait for the facebook post I put that in to be approved by the astronomy group I put it in ><

There we are.

rushthezeppelin said:

Recently I got into a fun debate with someone who was a NASA skeptic and sorta bought into Flat Earth. They had done alot of research into FE but weren't totally sold on it. In the process of destroying every argument they brought forth I ended up finding a video of some cool time lapses taken by Cassini showing saturn and it's moons rotating.

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I believe it!

Jupiter has been great this month. Had a few really good nights for viewing too.

Anybody else still watching the skies?

I saw the ISS fly overhead @ 0532 yesterday. Otherwise just watching the moon mostly.

Some old users in this thread I forgot about.

Saw some sort of satellite shoot by why looking for a star cluster earlier. No idea what it was and went by too fast to track it.

Wasn’t a plane though. And mostly sure it wasn’t a meteorite.

Missed the ISS flyover this evening. Went out to try and catch it but I was a few minutes late and it was early in the evening.


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Not on y'alls leave with a telescope, but back when I was hunting in Africa I always brought night vision. Looking up at the night sky from the Southern Hemisphere is very different. Doing it with no light pollution & night visions was even better.

Younggun said:

I was pretty surprised with what I could get from a cheap one. This was another attempt at photographing Saturn. Took video with my phone and pulled a screen shot. Still not getting good pics.

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Invest in a bracket mount for your cell phone or a SLR camera to capture the best pictures. The brackets generally clamp around the eyepiece to hold them on.

edit: I didn't realize how old this thread was when it popped up in the recents. I would love to get more into night photography with the use of a telescope. I have read many forums and posts about it. My conclusion then and still is that I don't have the disposable income to afford a good telescope right now. So for now I'm just using my DSLR on a cheap tripod with a long lens.
I live in a town with lots of light pollution so I have to take a weekend trip out of town to have enough time and darkness to observe the clear sky.

I’m using a 5” reflector now that was under $200 but have a new one on the way.

Also have a T-Ring and adapter coming for the DSLR. I don’t have any tracking so it won’t be useful for any galaxies or star clusters, or long exposer wide angle views. Should be good for Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon though.

If I ever invest in a tracker for the 5” it would work there also, but that’s a big investment that I don’t plan on making. At best a small auto rotate motor for the EQ mount but the set up is a pain if you want any hope of proper alignment.


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Found out a nearby observatory was doing an open house last night so took the kids and a nephew. Pretty awesome.

Kids had a blast and my son got to move the telescope around a little bit manually which scared the hell out of me since I’d already asked what it cost. We got to look at Saturn and a couple deep space objects in amazing detail.










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Younggun said:

Found out a nearby observatory was doing an open house last night so took the kids and a nephew. Pretty awesome.

Kids had a blast and my son got to move the telescope around a little bit manually which scared the hell out of me since I’d already asked what it cost. We got to look at Saturn and a couple deep space objects in amazing detail.

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Thanks for visiting. Glad you had a good time. That’s my observatory.

oohrah said:

Thanks for visiting. Glad you had a good time. That’s my observatory.

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What observatory? I need to make a trip.

Www.centexastronomy.org - public Open House third Saturday of every month.

oohrah said:

Www.centexastronomy.org - public Open House third Saturday of every month.

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Thanks