Small Telescopes: Astronomy With Small Telescopes (An Introduction)

Monday, February 11, 2008

Astronomy With Small Telescopes (An Introduction)

(click to see a larger pic)

This site is dedicated to anyone who enjoys using small telescopes.
I currently have a Celestron Short Tube 80 (ST80) refractor
and a recently bought tiny 50mm refractor by Edu-Science from
Toys r Us!

This toy r us scope has surprisingly (!) decent optics for its
price. It has a cemented doublet achromatic objectives, and
looks to me like a single layer coating on the objectives, not
sure if its on both air to glass surface, and has an aluminium
tube, albeit very thin, but nicely metallic painted.

The pic shows my ST80 (top) and my edu-science 50mm
(below), both are hideously stickered over by some fake
'carbon fibre' look-alike decal sheet bought for about S$12.

My interest in astronomy started many years back. These are
some of the scopes I've owned, and eventually sold over the years.

-Celestron C5 (vintage orange tube!) (Sold)
-Celestron C80 f/11 refractor (current scope)
-Celestron C5 (white & black tubes, i got at least 3 of these over the years)
-Celestron C8 (Sold)
-Meade ETX RA (Sold)
-Takahashi FS78 (Sold)
-Pentax 75SDHF (Sold)
-Skywatcher 150 mm f/5 refractor (Sold)
-Celestron SLT 102 refractor (Sold)
-Celestron ShortTube80 (current scope)
-Vixen A80SS (Sold)
-Edu-Science 50mm (this is a fun little toy scope..) (current scope)
-Celestron Nexstar 5SE (current scope)

Price: S$36.90!! Land & Sky Telescope by Edu-Science
At least the box didn't show some silly high 545x magnification!

Welcome aboard!
Jeffrey
SINGAPORE
1 22 N, 103 48 E

2 comments:

Danny TranSeptember 16, 2010 at 1:43 PM
hi , i was wondering if you can help me with my land and sky 90x cause im very new and i want to see how to use it , its all blurry and such
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XenontacSeptember 17, 2010 at 3:50 PM
Hi there,

You have to use this telescope with the enclosed diagonal and not like what you see on the box, eg the eyepiece goes straight into the scope. Are you in singapore?
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Observing with a small refractor

Galileo Galilei didn't actually invented the telescope, but he did improved upon the idea of putting two lenses together that was conceived back in 1608. Even though his telescope back in the early 17th century was no better than my 50mm refractor, he did made some very important discoveries through his small telescope!

My purpose here is not to emulate what Galileo did, what I'm trying to do here is to compile a list of 50 objects that can be seen with a humble 50mm refractor.

There will be no time frame for this personal project of mine. The 50 objects will consists of various Lunar features (but limit to max 10 lunar features), the rest will be brighter Messier & NGC objects, double stars & maybe a handful of asterisms.

----------

Why only 50 objects? Well its only a 50mm scope, and I'm observing from light polluted Singapore. So I guess I'll cap it at 50, one object per 1 mm sounds like a reasonable target.

So let the fun begins....

Objects will simply be rated as follows:

Easy *
(Object instantly identifiable OR
detail immediately apparent)

Medium **
(Object not instantly identifiable OR
object need averted vision & partial detail apparent
OR Object identifiable but partial detail )

Tough ***
(Object barely identifiable,
detail partially/barely apparent OR object seen but no
detail identifiable, very close double stars that barely split)

*Images on posts are for illustration purposes only

Fast Facts

-February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

-In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.

-111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

-Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Halley's Comet came into view. When he died in 1910, Halley's Comet was in view again.

-Only 5 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped in as much detail as the surface of Mars.

-Albert Einstein never knew how to drive a car.

-The Mars Rover "Spirit" is powered by six small motors the size of "C" batteries. It has a top speed of 0.1 mph.

-Jimmy Carter once reported a UFO in Georgia.

-For every person on earth, there are an estimated 200 million insects.

-If you disassembled the Great Pyramid of Cheops, you would get enough stones to encircle the earth with a brick wall twenty inches high.

-The brain knows everything but can't feel a thing.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Astronomy With Small Telescopes (An Introduction)

2 comments:

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