Meade land and sky telescope?

Question

I just got the meade land and sky telescope and i dont really know how to use it. I was dissappointed to not observe any planets! Where do i look for the planets? What time of the day are they out? How do i see teh really detailed stars and planets through the telescope? Thanx

Answer 1

Okay. Please be more descriptive about your telescope. And first whoever said mars is in the northwest. You are right. For you! not for everywhere else. i Live in PA in the US. and it is in the East. Ok.

i hope i can help you.

1. Depending on your telescope which i would imagine is a lower end telescope you will not be able to see much detail on most of the planets. On mars it will most likely be a reddish dot. thats it. Saturn will be the best with its glorious rings. which are easily identifiable. and Jupiter will be nice also. Venus looks like the moon and you will just see it as a white ball. (Venus goes through phases just as the moon does since it is closer to the sun then we are.)

(I have a Meade etx-105 and i can barely see detail on mars. so dont be disappointed)

2. I use the program called Stellarium to help me find stuff across the night sky. www.stellarium.org

3.Stellarium will tell you when everything is out from planets to globular clusters.

4. There is no such thing as a detailed star. Now i think you mean detailed constellations. Once again stellarium will help you there.

I hope i answered your question.

Answer 2

The bright star high in the northwest early in the evening this month is Mars. Mars is a tough target though, It is pretty small so you need at least 100 power. And it is very bright and washed out looking. The polar ice cap is easiest to see, but many beginners cannot even see that.

I suggest you start with the Moon. It is far more impressive visually than Mars. The Moon will rise late tonight. It should be well up by midnight. And Saturn will be a medium bright star close to the Moon. Only tonight though. By tomorrow night the Moon will have moved quite a bit and will rise much later. Saturn will rise a few minutes earlier each day. It will rise early and be high in the sky most of the night by March. Next to the Moon, Saturn is the most impressive thing you can look at with a telescope.

Venus is the VERY bright star visible in the southeast at dawn. Get up early and give it a try. It will not show any detail buy you will see it is not a full disk because Venus goes through phases like the Moon.

If you get good at using the telescope, try the Orion nebula. It can be seen naked eye in the sword of Orion. Orion rises pretty early and is up high enough by 10:00 or so. It is the brightest constellation in the sky and is very distinctive for the 3 equally bright stars in a straight line forming his belt. The sword hangs below the belt and the nebula can be seen as a hazy patch in the sword.

Use a sky charting tool like the one in the source to help find things in the sky. The Orion nebula will be marked as M42 on the chart in the source.

Answer 3

To find planets you will have to look at a Sky Map for your particular location and time/date of the year. Pick out one such as Mars or Saturn and begin reading to find the
correct azimuth and elevation you should use to point your
telescope to. This will require a good compass and some
means of measuring elevation angle.

next you need some observing position which is free of
night time security lights and street lights because they
will make your observations much , much more difficult.
Do not use any white lights anywhere around your telescope.
Doing this will cause some night blindness that takes about
30 minutes to return to normal...wasted time.

You failed to mention the size of this telescope...such as a
60 mm or a 90 mm scope. Need to know the size of the light gathering lense...Always tell this fact to people so they can understand right away what size scope you are talking about.
From the "Land and Sky" description of your scope, I assume that it is one of the beginner series scopes and possibly something like 60 mm, 90 mm, or 100 mm. These scopes are useful in making all kinds of views of earth bound subjects (if you use a diagonal to invert the picture). They are also pretty good for Moon views when the Moon is up in the sky (filter might be required to reduce the glare).

However, it is not reasonable to expect a device this small to produce the breath taking views generated by space based telescopes or Governmental/University observatories. It is just not possible. Your limitation lies in the small fixed size of your light collecting lense at the end of the scope. Good views of planets require lenses or mirrors that are 8 Inches and larger - up to 16 Inches in diameter...those are obviously much bigger and more expensive devices, which, by the way, are extremely heavy, and not at all easy to move in and out of the house, or transport to a good viewing site.

May I suggest that you visit your local Astronomy Club and see if you can join it. use that opportunity to discuss your telescope with other members and learn information from them, check out some of their equipment, and get a better idea of what is possible and what that costs. Club Star Parties are a real blast to attend and at one of them you can gain the opportunity to look through many different scopes and eyepieces to learn more about what is really do-able.

My telescope is a 6 inch Meade refractor on a large Go-To Mount, and it is equipped with 9 different Televue eyepieces which are rather nice chunks of glass, far better than the standard ones furnished with a scope. In my scope, stars are generally pinpoints of light with planets being seen as very small disks. Seeing bigger views of planets and even nebula certainly requires a scope that is bigger than mine...so don't be upset that your unit doesn't yield what you imagined it would...i think some of that was due to the salesman. Use the scope and learn everything you possibly can about it. Then when the time is right, move up into a more powerful unit of your own choosing.

Regards,
Zah

Answer 4

Is this the Meade RB-70 Refracting Telescope?

HTH

Charles