Got a new telescope...?

Question

just picked up a celestron 130 slt. pretty good soo far. Whats the best for viewing deep sky? Do I need a better eye piece than the one it came with? Kinda confused.

Answer 1

Is your scope the same as the one reviewed at the link below?

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/public/im/cel130SLT.html

The reviewer there mentions a 25 mm eyepiece and a 9 mm coming with the scope. I'm not particularly experienced but I'd say that you need to be realistic in your expectations of deep sky viewing. You are not going to be seeing things like you see on websites and in photos. These are long exposures, generally with larger telescopes and will show detail you will never see with your own eye at the eyepiece.

As a general rule the bigger the aperture the better for deep sky viewing. You need that to gather as much light as possible. It can then be a bit of a trade off with the eyepieces as greater magnification can spread the image out and make it harder to pick up but can also darken the background and improve the contrast. Globular clusters can usually stand a bit of magnification but nebulae and galaxies less so.

Answer 2

Yes, this is a nice telescope. The optics are decent, and the goto computer works well. A few things are sub par, such as the flimsy finder, but you really only need it for the initial alignment.

As to deep sky observing, I've seen more than half the Messier objects with a scope this size. Your scope should have come with _two_ eyepieces, a 25mm and a 9mm, both Plössls. If you only got one, contact your dealer and complain! These will do a decent job getting you started. These will give you magnifications of 26x and 72x respectively. Use the 25mm for finding objects and viewing the larger ones, such as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula, and the Pleiades. Use the 9mm for viewing smaller objects, such as globular clusters and planetary nebulae. 72x is too low for the Moon and planets. Rather than get a shorter focal length eyepiece, you'll do better to get a good quality Barlow lens, which will double the magnifications of your eyepieces, giving you 52x and 144x.

Answer 3

All beginners are massively disappointed by their first deep sky views. For the most part deep sky objects do not look anything like the photographs you see on the web, or even on the box the telescope came in. They are dim, colorless, and lacking in detail. But they are NOT small and you do not need high magnification to see them. What you do need is a REALLY dark sky, a low power eyepiece, and lowered expectations. If you want to see the detail and colors, you will have to take long exposure photographs. That is what the professionals do. It is the only way to make these dim objects look bright. A telescope alone will not do it.

Answer 4

Medium to low magnification eyepieces should be used for viewing deep sky objects.

As far as the best telescope for deep sky objects, the more aperture the better. This is why people who do only live deepsky viewing use large dobsonians. For serious deep sky viewing you generally don't want anything smaller than 10" in aperture.

Answer 5

Congratulations on your new scope.
First off, the eyepieces that came with your scope will be quite adequate for now. If you don't have one already, a 2x Barlow lens will come in handy making each of your current eyepieces twice as powerful.
You will need to buy a decent set of star charts before trying to find any DSO's. Here is a very useful link for charts and ephemeris's . http://www.heavens-above.com/
What you can see in the sky depends on where you are located, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, you will see objects that do not appear in the Southern Hemisphere. So it's hard to advise what to look for.
Locate your nearest Astronomical Society and go along to a field night. You'll find a wealth of information there.

Answer 6

http://asktheastronomer.blogspot.com

she is a great one to ask, she is a what to see in your telescope expert!!!



Last night i found more star clusters that she told me of and i found neptune!