Me again, Why can't I see star clusters, galaxies, nebulas or planets with my telescope?

Question

My telescope is the Galileo FS-80, it's four years old and I just Started to use it during a meteor shower. I would appreciate it if you could help me. Thankyou.

Answer 1

please take the caps off the lenses.

Answer 2

There are very few Galaxies and Nebulas that are bright enough to see with an 80 mm telescope very well. The planets such as Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn should all be within your telescopes cabability. Remember to hold the magnification to around 100 or less. At those powers you should be able to see the cloud belts on Jupiter and possibly the rings of saturn. As always try to be away from city lights as much as possible. You will also have better luck when there is no moon light. Like someone said before all of these items are very small in the sky and probably the best way to begin is with binoculars. At very least binoculars are a very important tool to use with your telescope.
Skyviewcafe.com has a very good sky chart to help you learn where to look. And remember that it takes patience and a lot of practice. Once you begin to be successful you will have many rewards. Good luck and clear skys.

Answer 3

You need to start with easy objects. It is much harder than most people think just to get the telescope pointed at what you want to see. If the telescope is not pointed right at Jupiter, you aren't going to see Jupiter. You will just see whatever random stars are wherever it is you have pointed your telescope.

Look at the Moon first. It is really interesting. Trust me on this. If you have different eyepieces, try them all. You will find that the lowest magnification eyepiece will give you the best view. A high power eyepiece will make a dim fuzzy image and narrow field of view, which makes it really hard to get the telescope pointed.

Look at Jupiter. It is the bright star high in the southwest early this evening. Even with the lowest power eyepiece you will easily see several of its moons lined up beside it. Depending on how good your telescope is, you may also see some detail on the planet.

I have to say that the Moon and Jupiter are pretty much all you are going to see for now. Clusters, nebulae and especially galaxies really need a bigger telescope. You may be able to see a few of the brighter ones, but they will look very dim and disappointing to you, if you can even find them. It is really hard to point a telescope at something you can't see without the telescope. Venus and Saturn are worth looking at with a telescope the size of yours, but they aren't up now. You will be disappointed by Mars when it is up, but it isn't up now anyway.

And finally, you cannot see meteors in a telescope. To view meteors, just look for shooting stars with your eyes. Even during a shower, sometimes there aren't many. I once looked for 30 minutes in the middle of a shower without seeing a single meteor. But I have also seen 30 meteors in 30 minutes on one or two occasions. It all depends on luck with meteor showers. Some are good and some are a bust.

Answer 4

A regular hobby telescope should allow you to see some good stuff in the night sky.

For that though you really need to be familiar with the night sky and know where to look at to get a good view into the universe.
The telescope, however, captures a very small fraction of the night sky and you have to know not only the location of whatever you are looking for but also know the exact degrees of the night sky object you are looking for. Just a slight move of your telescope can give you a completely different picture.

The best thing, and that is what I did, is to learn where good objects are located that try to find it by approximation of pointing it towards where you know it should be. Don´t get frustrated if you don´t find it right away. It might take a few minutes before you find something but when you find it it is worth having looked for it. With practice you will get very good in finding stuff up there

I wish you good luck!

Answer 5

Didn't you read my previous reply.

You need to know the sky before having the slightest chance of seeing anything.

Your reference to a meteor shower says it all. the last thing you would ever need to see a meteor shower is a telescope.

Your best options is to join an astronomy club, because you really need someone to show you the ropes. It can't be done over the internet.

But more importantly, learn the sky. Buy a pair of binoculars, and get out there.

Answer 6

In addition to the previous answer make sure there are no clouds in the sky.
Plus pro telescopes gather much more light AND are way up to avoid as much of the atmosphere as possible.
You can get much better views, looking at the pictures displayed by astronomers on the web. That's what other professional astronomers do.

Answer 7

Oh you can, they're all just fuzzy balls of light. You can't really tell the difference between stars and nebulae at that magnification. Many of those pictures you seen in magazines are much more detailed than scientists actually see. They also have much better telescopes.

Answer 8

I think most photos you see of those things are done with the shutter open for a while, so more of thier light gets onto the film, its different when you look straight through a telescope, unless it is very high powered, which will make it harded to see things, cause its so shakey. even if you dont touch it.

Answer 9

I noticed that someone else has already tried to explain to you that to observe objects like star clusters, galaxies and nebulae you MUST know how to use celestial coordinates. Clusters-galaxies-nebulae are invisible to the naked eye. They do have celestial coordinates though (right ascension and declination). Until you learn how to work with that stuff you're gonna stay dead in the water!

Answer 10

go out at nite

make sure there a no clouds
take lens cap off..
clean the lens
find out what the objects look like