Telescope Reviews: Seeing More

I am posting this in response to many questions I see on the various forums. These questions are from people noew to amatuer astronomy. They are in the form of which XXX will let me see the most. Or in the form of if I sell my xx inch and get a yy inch will I see more.

The best way to see more is to VIEW!! Experience is the greatest aid to seeing more. I have stood beside someone viewing Jupiter. The first night they saw 4 moons. After a week, they saw a couple dark bands on a whiter orb. After a few months, they were seeing festoons. All of this was with the same scope and eyepiece. I have seen the same happen observing details in galaxies or nebula or in observing globular clusters. About the only subjects where I have not seen experience improve views is open clusters.

Now some of you are going to want to know why this is so. And perhaps to find if there is a way to speed the process. There are mutliple things that happen with experience. First is "training" your eyes. In actuality, you are training your brain to see under conditions unfamiliar to you. An example is looking at the moon. The first time you look, you will see circles on a smooth surface and perhaps some lines. It is impressive the first time. As you look, your brain developes a pattern of this image. The next time you look at the same part of the moon, your brain will go to this image it has stored. There will not be that unconscious reaction, "what the heck is this?" The brain will recognize the image. So this time it will not be saving and cataloging. This will enable you to see more detail. Perhaps you will notice the edges of those round things have rough edges which are different on each one. As this continues, it will reach a place where you can see more craterlets in the craters (especially Plato). And more detail.

There are too side effects of this "training" your eyes (really your brain. One is that as you become able to see the festoons, etc on Jupiter, you will see them almost every time you observe - even when they are not visible. The brain knows what to expect and so it sees it. This characteristic of the brain has been studied often. The studies are one reason many police departments discount most of an eye witness account. The other side effect of this is attemping to answer the "what can I see" questions. It depends on your experience.

So far I have dealt with a bright object, the moon. And mentioned Jupiter. It is also the reason you can view Saturn for awhile and then suddenly see the Ccassini division for the first time - or the planet detail, etc.

There is another part of viewing. This is viewing the DSOs. The effect above is still active. But here there is more at work. Your eye consists of 2 kinds of detectors in it. One of these is the what detects color in the daytime. The other is what detects dim objects at night. Actually these both work all of the time. It is the ratio that the brain combines them in that changes. The rods are what detects low light levels and movement. The rods are very sensitive to light. However, cones are predominate in daytime seeing. The brain in most people is trained to utilize the cones primarily. Besides the training mentioned above, the brain also controls chemicals in the body (unconsciously). The rods require a chemical to see low light levels. When you go to view at night, the brain slowly switches to utilize the rod recptors over the cone ones. This takes an amount of time. This is "night vision" or dark adaption". The first time you go out to use a telescope at night, this will take quite awhile. The brain knows this is temporary and you will soon be in light. So it is slow to utilize the rods.

If you stay out until you can see well at night, the next time the brain remembers the first time, and switches quicker. Only slightly quicker the first time. But after a time, your night vision will come sooner.

I mentioned above a chemical the rods need to operate at their greatest efficently. The brain is not used to sending this chemical to the rods when you start out in astronomy. As you spend more time observing, the brain begans to order increased production of this chemical and to send it to the rods sooner. This means your night vision will become more acute over time and you will see dimmer things. The more experience you get, the dimmer objects you can see, the quicker your eyes can see them after going out, and the more detail you can see.

The detail I explained at the start. But there is another part to it. You do not want to observe every object for day after day to finally see it in detail. The good part is you do not have to. As your brain builds up a catalog of objects, it will compare what you are seeing to what is in the catalog. When it does not find a match, but finds one close with a difference, it processes those differences. Because the brain is processing them, you can see them. So as you look at globular clusters (for example) you will notice the texture of each and subtle differences. The same with galaxies, etc.

Now that you have seen you are training your brain, how do you use this knowledge to see more? First you are continually training your brain. The time you train it for observing through binoculars or a telescope is a small porportion of the total time you are training it. The first thing to do is increase the ratio of time you are observing. If you observe 1 day a month, increasing your seeing ability will take a long time. Because you are teaching the brain this is a low priority in the things you want your body to do. If you are out every night, the the percentage of time spent observing goes up greatly. The brain assigns a higher priority to it and learns faster. Once the brain learns something it remembers to a degree. This means that if you observe every night to acquire good observing vision, you do not have to spend as much time to keep the level of observing vision you have achieved. If you quit completely for awhile, your brain will began to refile the ability among other unimportant knowledge. When you then commence viewing again a few years later, the brain will have this memoory and as you observe, it will recall the memories. This will make a quicker acclimation than the original time you trained it for astronomy.

All of this is a long way to get to what I said at the start. To see more observe every chance you get. The best accessory for any scope is experienced eyes. This is the #1 thing you need to fully utilize your scope. On cloudy nights, you can still find dark areas to improve your night vision. Try to spend every night in dark. Even turning off any night lights, pulling blinds, etc will help to improve your night vision. Night vision not only is good for viewing DSOs, it will also help you to now trip over that tripod leg on the way to your site.

And the reason I went into such length has to do with training your brain also. The more you feed it a piece of information, the more the brain acts upon it. To get something into the subconscious you need to repeat it often in different ways. This post is not only meant to inform you. But to push your brain to believe it and act upon it.

If you are new to amatuer astronomy, time spent outside viewing will help you see more than searching for the next scope to buy.

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Wayne

80 mm refractor to 8" newt