59 replies to this topic

[Starman1]

Many thanks to all of you. There are many advices and some really good info. I'll keep going on. now is summer here and at last according to this: https://starlust.org/messier-catalog/

summer is the best time for clusters - at least i saw M3, so i guess i'll be able to see the others too with enough patience.

I'll also check for the doubles and try to have as much fun as i can possibly have.

 

And since the moon is also so generous to show-up quite often, then probably i should try to "map" it too. In fact the moon as the verry first thing i looked at with the telescope.

It was really funny when i first got my hands on the telescope - as beginner, focusing on the moon is dead easy, but then .. since i has no clue what i was doing .. i pointed on jupiter and the started to turn the focuser until i got a nice HUUGE blob of light ). Now i know that this is what you do when you want to check collimation on maks/SCTS/all the rest - NOT to view the planet in "more details". .

Only after suffering a bit i learned what i do wrong - youtube can be quite useful. (i had no clue that cloudynights even exists at that time).

 

NOW ... i know ... just point at some star or moon, focus on it - moon should be as clear as possible, or the star a tiny clear dot .. and then don't touch the focuser again; just leave it be - don't start turning the focuser like a maniac each time you change your target ))).

 

Thanks again for the advices.

 

so ... OIL filter huh? I should drop by a car parts shop

To see nebulae better, use a nebula filter.

But, even better, also employ the "gasoline filter", i.e. the 'filter' you put in your car's tank, and drive the scope to darker skies.

[Moshteaca]

Pardon my ignorance, I’ve only been in this hobby for 44 years.

 

What is an SH telescope?

SH = second hand - cheap used telescope. I still have it and am still using it. I know i cannot ask much from it, but to get me started .. is good enough. I think you understand why i didn't wanted to spend more.

And amazingly enough .. i still like it more than the borrowed mak ... probably because i'm used with it and is heavy like a feather :O.

Edited by Moshteaca, 17 June 2025 - 03:15 PM.

[rjacks]

Front yard - moon, planets, M42, bright planetaries, bright open clusters, double stars, and the very brightest globulars. For everything else you need dark skies. In dark skies, your Mak 127 will show a lot more than a small refractor. Hang in there and persevere!

[Starman1]

One truth:

You will never see less in the sky than you do now.

As your skill in observing improves, with time you will see deeper and see more at the same powers in the same scopes with the same eyepieces than you do now.

 

I can't tell you how many people I've run into over the years that thought the Messier objects were small and faint, only to go back a few years later to observe the Messiers again in order to see objects that were large and bright.

Challenge objects slowly morph into eye candy as you experience grows.

 

Because there is no activity in which you can participate that teaches you how to see faint objects at the limit of your vision other than looking at faint objects at the limit of your vision.

The more you do it, the better you CAN do it.

 

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice.

Edited by Starman1, 17 June 2025 - 04:04 PM.

[Ripvanhalen]

Welcome, new friend. I was where you were about a year ago--struggling to observe DSOs in Bortle 4.5, with my bargain 5" Newtonian manually pointed EQ mount. I see plenty of good advice here, which I am grateful for, and which you should be able to profit from.

 

Much of the game is preparation: having the best weather, the best spot in your yard, the darkest part of the sky, the least moon, the most dark-adapted eye, and sometimes--knowing EXACTLY where to look (with averted vision, no less!)

[Asbytec]

There is a lot of good information about aperture, light pollution, magnification, expectations, etc. above that can affect our telescope's performance. We too often ignore the fact the telescope doesn't observe anything. We do. We can't rely on the telescope to hand us a fine image on a silver platter.

 

Especially with DSOs and planets, we really need to work on our observing skills to make the most of what the scope is capable of showing us. Rather, what we can make of the telescopic image it presents to us for observing. Importantly, we gain experience and take responsibility for what we can see.

 

This is likely why there appears to be no difference between closely matched apertures. We haven't learned to see the modest differences of a more capable scope or a better eyepiece. The scope is a tool, so we prepare it for observing and learn to use it in whatever conditions. We push ourselves, not the scope. 

Edited by Asbytec, 17 June 2025 - 04:38 PM.

[Ripvanhalen]

Welcome, new friend. I was where you were about a year ago--struggling to observe DSOs in Bortle 4.5, with my bargain 5" Newtonian manually pointed EQ mount. I see plenty of good advice here, which I am grateful for, and which you should be able to profit from.

 

Much of the game is preparation: having the best weather, the best spot in your yard, pointing at the darkest part of the sky, the least moon, the most dark-adapted eye, and sometimes--knowing EXACTLY where to look (with averted vision, no less!)

 

M57 (near Vega) is just coming into view. With your borrowed 127mm Mak, I think you should be able to get a nice view of this remarkable object.

[Jay_Reynolds_Freeman]

Based on my experience, I would say that "aperture wins" across the board, but it is a much tougher race when the sky is bright.

 

It would be useful if the original poster were able to compare the telescopes at a dark-sky site. I would suggest that comparisons might be useful:

 

(1) Compare at the same magnification, or nearly so. Choose a magnification such that neither telescope's exit pupil diameter (aperture divided by magnification) exceeds the diameter of the pupil of the observer's eye. Try several magnifications, on several kinds of objects.

 

(2) Compare at the same exit pupil. I personally like an exit pupil of about 1.5 mm for observation of deep-sky objects (possibly a wider exit pupil; that is, lower magnification and wider field of view, for wide objects). Also, if seeing permits -- and that is a big "if" -- try an exit pupil of 0.5 to 1 mm -- which most of us would call medium-high magnification -- on the Moon, planets and some double stars.

 

 

Clear sky ...

[Adun]

 

so ... OIL filter huh? 

 

The Hubble telescope only has 2.4 meters of aperture.

 

While there are over 40 larger optical telescopes on earth, with apertures between 3 meters and 11 meters, Hubble has an advantage, being out in space, that more than makes up for it's lack of aperture.

 

In the same way, your 70mm telescope could show you so much more (including nebula and galaxies) if you take it to a proper dark site.

 

I've seen more through my 80mm tiny traveler telescope than through my 10" Dobsonian, and the reason is the small scope has been to much darker places.

 

So the difference you need to make is not so much a larger scope, but a better observing site, which here is refered to as the "oil" filter that dramatically improves views.

Edited by Adun, 18 June 2025 - 10:55 AM.

[Moshteaca]

Thanks again for the advices.

and yea ... this was spot on:

It IS pretty much what i saw. Since i observed it for a few days in a row as that was the most interesting this i could point at that time, indeed .. at first it was .. of there's the planet and those probably are the moons ... later on: oh .. there are some lines on it.

With time it started to get better and better.

Now that i think about it .. it is like you all say - going out and looking at things only makes things better and better and you cannot do it overnight; it takes time.

until you all pointed it out it wasn't this obvious ... i saw it happening, but never clicked up to now.

 

Thanks for all the pointers and encouragement.

Edited by Moshteaca, 18 June 2025 - 12:36 AM.

[Sebastian_Sajaroff]

Unless you live in the middle of a rural area, you’re not under B5 skies. Most probably B7 or worse.
In those conditions, most galaxies and nebulae will be barely visible or just gone.
Throwing more aperture won’t help much.
From my suburban backyard, M74, M33 and M101 are fully invisible even on a 12".
However, M33 was an easy naked eye object and M74 and M101 were visible on plain 12x50 binoculars from a cabin in the middle of Quebec woods (B2-B3).
You have two options :
Take your telescope on a road trip to a rural spot far from city lights. That will be a brutal improvement.
Spend 500$ on a SeeStar S50 and observe these galaxies on a laptop or tablet screen.

[star acres]

My Sky-Watcher Skyhawk 1145PS Newtonian is not that big. It is precise and I treated it to a hand worked stand. No wobble. When I put a NTSC old TV style camera on it, the images get blown up gargantuan. This is just starting to lead you toward the imaging gear that you are craving. Of course you can do it with a 70 MM Refractor lens telescope. You just need the right camera and make it steady. The SvBony 6 MM Red Band ? I have one and while you have to keep your eye placement steady, it works fine. Start doing some terrestrial viewing. That's the other side of a small telescope.

[Tony Flanders]

... a few months ago a bought a (second-hand) telescope just to see ... a AZ bresser 70/700.
In the end i made quite a few modifications - new tripod and AZ head to be more stable ...

Sounds like a pretty nice telescope once you finished your modifications. For what it's worth, my first "serious" telescope was also a 70-mm refractor, and my first major project was using it to observe all the Messier objects. I started by looking out the window of my city apartment, then moved to my local city park to get a wider view of the sky, then to suburban parks, and finally to my country home to observe the very faintest of the objects.

Unlike you, I had the good luck to start in the winter, when most of the available Messier objects are bright open star clusters that look quite spectacular even through very small instruments. It sounds as though you had the bad luck to start in early spring, at the very beginning of galaxy season. Galaxies are tough for beginners to spot even under dark skies and through big telescopes, and you clearly had neither dark skies nor a big scope. So you started out with a series of failures, which is understandably depressing.

Now that the summer is upon us the sky is dominated by globular clusters, which are relatively easy to spot, bright open clusters that are even easier to spot, and nebulae that range all the way from ultra-bright (M17) to ultra-faint. So things will be getting better for you from now on.
 
After I had finished my first pass through the Messier objects, I purchased a 7-inch Dob, and repeated the whole thing using that scope side by side with my 7-inch Dob. The result was my Urban/Suburban Messier Guide, which I think you will find useful.
 

According to some app, i live in a bortle5 area.

Bortle ratings obtained from apps are invariably over-optimistic, sometimes by a modest amount and sometimes by a huge amount. My guess is that I would rate your site at Bortle 7 or worse. And that's assuming there are no bright lights nearby. All the apps can give you is an estimate of the background skyglow. If there are streetlights or neighbor's lights (or, heaven forbid, your own lights!) shining on your observing site, you will never get sufficiently dark-adapated to see much of anything.
 
There's a fundamental divide between sites where the Milky Way never visible, like my city apartment, and sites where the Milky Way is visible when its brightest parts are reasonably high in the sky. That should certainly be true from any true Bortle-5 site, and also -- with a bit more experience -- from a Bortle-6 site. See here for John Bortle's original article.
 
If your site is too bright to see the Milky Way, your views of most other galaxies are going to be pretty lack-luster even through the very biggest telescopes. All a telescope can do is make an object appear closer than it really is, and no galaxy can be closer than the Milky Way, which is all around us. So if you can't see the Milky Way, you're not going to see the outer regions of any other galaxies, either. And without their outer regions, most galaxies are just tiny, faint, featureless, blobs.
 

Since i was not pleased, i started to look at other telescope options, but i ended up borrowing a AZ go to Skywatcher 127 MAK.
And finally, here is the dilemma i have - at least to me ... with both telescopes side by side ... using my 68 degrees eyepieces i honestly don't see any difference. MAYBE Vega is brighter ...

Individual stars don't make very interesting targets, unless they're doubles or triples, which Vega is not.

The Moon likely should indeed show quite a bit more detail through the bigger scope, but you're probably not pushing either scope very hard there. Which is understandable, because even through a little 70-mm scope, the amount of detail visible on the Moon is quite overwhelming.

 

As for other deep-sky objects, you just don't happen to have hit one yet where the difference in aperture is obvious. Globular clusters like M3 look pretty much the same -- bright circular blobs -- until you hit the threshold where individual stars begin to appear. After that, every increase in aperture makes a big, big difference.

[Tony Flanders]

I believe the OP's issue is due in large part to small aperture. A 5" scope simply isn't going to show many Messier objects, especially from light polluted skies, or with any detail. With time and experience, sure, you could detect them, but I'm not sure the experience would be all that satisfying, at least for me.
... 
Case in point- I have been using my Tak FS-128 5" refractor for a few weeks now under my heavily light-polluted, Bortle 8/9 skies. I was just able to discern M81 and M82, and barely able to detect elongation in M82. Globulars were detectable but not a lot of stars resolved.
 
I switched to my C11, and the experience was entirely different. I was able to clearly see the shape of M82 and even hints of internal structure. Globulars were better resolved, with many stars showing up.

If you are satisfied with the views of deep-sky objects through an 11-inch scope under ultra-bright skies, then you would indeed be not merely satisfied but amazed viewing those same objects through a 5-inch scope under excellent skies. The 5-incher under 22.0 mpsas skies should show almost every deep-sky object much better than the 11-incher under 17.0-mpsas skies. Even on globular clusters, where aperture arguably matters most, the dark-sky 5-incher will likely beat the bright-sky 11-incher.

 

Aperture definitely makes a big difference for viewing deep-sky objects. But in most cases dark skies make a much bigger difference.

[Starman1]

Look!

A new light pollution map with up to date info and FAR more accurate light pollution figures than previous attempts, even David Lorenz's 2024 one.

It is very close to my actual measurements at my dark sites and uses current satellite data.

The best I've seen so far:

https://www.cloudyni...lculations-etc/

 

https://www.darkskysites.com/

Edited by Starman1, 18 June 2025 - 04:55 PM.

[maniack]

Look!

A new light pollution map with up to date info and FAR more accurate light pollution figures than previous attempts, even David Lorenz's 2024 one.

It is very close to my actual measurements at my dark sites and uses current satellite data.

The best I've seen so far:

https://www.cloudyni...lculations-etc/

 

https://www.darkskysites.com/

Interestingly David Lorenz's data almost exactly matches my SQM-L readings, while this new site reports that my skies are darker (18.11 vs 18.53 mpas).

[Starman1]

Interestingly David Lorenz's data almost exactly matches my SQM-L readings, while this new site reports that my skies are darker (18.11 vs 18.53 mpas).

Fascinating.  The data is as up to date as possible according to the OP.

 

For my site, on a very good night I can get a 21.32-21.37.  This LP map shows 21.37.

Lorenz' map shows 21.56.  I haven't seen that dark a measurement in the last 10 years.

Recently, it's been 21.18-21.25 due to the atmospheric glow from solar maximum.

 

On a nearby, brighter site, a great night can be 21.2 and this LP map shows 21.23 at that site.  

Lorenz' map shows 21.35.  It was that dark once in 2006, but not since then.  Recently, it's been 21.1-21.17, so brighter than even this map shows by a bit.

The SQM-L might reach that in the Spring when the Milky Way is on the horizon.  The SQM never reads that dark.  21.23 would be an exceptional night at that site, probably at solar minimum.

No LP map takes atmospheric glow into account, at least, not fully.

[rjacks]

Also, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars are not in good viewing positions right now. You want to observe them in the couple months before and after opposition (they are much bigger when they are closer, not surprisingly). Mars looks like an orange star now.  Lots of good advice and information above.

[Tony Flanders]

Also, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars are not in good viewing positions right now. You want to observe them in the couple months before and after opposition (they are much bigger when they are closer, not surprisingly). Mars looks like an orange star now.  Lots of good advice and information above.

I'd say the real problem with Jupiter and Saturn right now isn't so much their distance as the fact that they're poorly placed with respect to the Sun. Jupiter in particular is right next to the Sun at the moment, and therefore below the horizon all night. Saturn rises after midnight, when most people are asleep, and is still pretty low at the onset of morning twilight.

 

Saturn will be well placed in the evening by the end of summer, and Jupiter will start to show up in the morning sky around the same time. Jupiter will be at its best from late autumn through winter.

 

Saturn is almost ten times farther from the Sun than Earth is, so its distance from Earth only varies 20% (9 times farther than the Sun at its closest, 11 times farther at its farthest), which isn't all that much. Jupiter's distance varies a good deal more, but Jupiter appears so much bigger than any other planet that you can see excellent detail even when it's almost at its farthest -- assuming that Earth's atmosphere allows you to use reasonably high magnification.

 

Mars is the planet where distance matters most. It appears 7 times bigger at its very closest approaches than it does when farthest from Earth -- and it's none too big even at its closest. In practice, it's only possible to see much detail on Mars for a few months during each of its 2.2-year cycles. Mars's next close approach will be in February 2027.

[JoeFaz]

Look!

A new light pollution map with up to date info and FAR more accurate light pollution figures than previous attempts, even David Lorenz's 2024 one.

It is very close to my actual measurements at my dark sites and uses current satellite data.

The best I've seen so far:

https://www.cloudyni...lculations-etc/

 

https://www.darkskysites.com/

David Lorenz's map shows reading for my home and our club observing site that fall within the range of what I have actually measured --- this one is substantially less accurate in my area even than lightpollutionmap.info. More than a full mpsas brighter than my average readings and still much brighter than the brightest readings I've ever gotten. Interesting that it's so inaccurate here.

[JoeFaz]

As to the topic, it sounds like you're looking for a substantial level of detail visible, not just brightness. I hate to say this, because I don't want to tell anyone that I think they bought a telescope in error, but I don't know that a 5" mak was the right step up for what it sounds like you were looking for. You're still in small aperture territory and only knocking on the door of medium sized scopes, at least as I see it (everyone's opinions on what a "small" and "large" telescope is varies). You'll still notice a difference on some objects, but objects like M3, M81/82 would need a bigger step up to show substantially more detail. As others have pointed out, getting to darker skies would change that (for both your 70mm and 127mm); the Bortle 5 estimate, whatever value that might have in the first place, is likely an overly optimistic estimate.

[rjacks]

David Lorenz's map shows reading for my home and our club observing site that fall within the range of what I have actually measured --- this one is substantially less accurate in my area even than lightpollutionmap.info. More than a full mpsas brighter than my average readings and still much brighter than the brightest readings I've ever gotten. Interesting that it's so inaccurate here.

I tried the new map, and it predicted the SQM readings for my "dark" site almost exactly (within reading variability), but it substantially overpredicts light pollution in my surburban site, predicting 19.34 compared to my average overhead reading of 20.05.  

[Starman1]

It does excellently at my dark sites of 21.1-21.6 skies, but fails at my home in Los Angeles.

It predicts 18.7 at my home and the darkest I've ever measured is 18.2 and the average night is between 16.8 and 17.8.

I suspect that the light scatter from moisture in the air (I'm 3 miles from the ocean) is underestimated.

[Moshteaca]

Since i talked about "upgrading" the telescope and you guys also mentioned a few times .. i thought i should share in a better way what i did. Maybe some other people get some ideas out of it.

The telescope normally is like this:

 

 

What i didn't like was: the mount Is OK-ish (has that EQ-ish feature), but is not all that sturdy. At least mine was not.

So ... i decided to replace with these:

and 

 

 

Then ... the guider is also quite bad and i needed to somehow have also a phone to guide me. As a consequence i got a few more things:

You need this to replace the one on the telescope.

this one to be able to set 2/3 things

This one because i didn't like the one of the telescope - was quite shaky.

this thing to place a phone on it.

As i said .. i use my phone as guider - AstroHopper.

... now my telescope is something like this:

 

================

I did not replace the finder yet - reason: it is so bad that you can see only the brighter stars => easy to find them as there are not many to pick from when you look trough it )).

I'm not very fond of red dot finders either.

================

[vintageair]

Finder_Hook.png

I bought one of these but what is that small ring for?