Observing planets: optimising your views 

agreed

Ukraine2011 How is it called? ✌🤔

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery

Nice! Hope by now you've gotten your telescope and had good viewing. I'm ordering one this week as a Christmas present to my siblings and myself.

Here’s a very useful tip: The maximum magnification your telescope can handle before the image goes blurry is the aperture of the telescope doubled. To make sure that you don’t go over that limit, you divide the telescope’s focal length by the eyepiece. For example, if you had a 70mm telescope, and a 10mm eyepiece, you get 7x magnification. If it’s a 5mm eyepiece, then you get 14x magnification so on and so fourth.

I heartily agree with your principle. Perhaps I should have said in the video; it's better to observe the night sky through a dirty window and a fly screen, than not at all! But just remember not to blame the scope for poor views. KR RJD

Jim Connoy Jim, look up AAVSO, members regularly contribute to the field of astronomy! I'm sure there are others as well

Absolutely correct Jim, ground based telescopes contribute and provide a lot of data astronomers and scientists need. They don't just depend on the high tech orbital telescopes and satellites to gather data, a lot of the data is provided by amateur astronomers. Also as you know already, some significant discoveries were made by amateur astronomers using 8" to 14" telescopes :)

Many discovers have been made by back yard astronomers like us! There is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000+ stars in the sky. Nasa can NEVER find them all

Many new comets are discovered by amateur astronomers. Variable star magnitude brigtness tracking by AAVSO too.

+ Alice By no means only NASA. On the contrary :)

I wish i had a telescope any suggestions maybe?

Pass Sha you can get Celestron travelscope 70 or 76/700 reflector telescope

Gary McKinnon how much money?

Pass Sha they both are below $70

so do i that's why im saving up.

TheGalacticWolf Playz took me 6 months to save up for mine,.....just keep on saving and stay determined, you’ll get it 👍🏻

Srry for ur loss... jk im sure if u save up u will get it!😀

Finally got my first a 70mm for 15$ USD on craigslist used.. So happy I got at least that to finally look through

I want a telescope

Hi there, and well spotted. It is indeed a Rob Miller/Astro Systems creation. It's as much about what they left out as what they put in that made them great scopes. There's an attitude of economy and minimalism in the design, and it's done with a near perfect touch. Get it wrong and the instrument is stark, utilitarian - and lumpen to use. Get it right, as they did, and the result is a simple and beautiful instrument that is a lasting pleasure to use. KR RJD A&NTV

Astronomy and Nature TV I remember asking Rob why there were no easy collimating adjustments. His reply said all you need to know about his engineering philosophy. If you build in adjustment, it will go out of adjustment. And he’d built optics for satellites where there wasn’t an option to go and adjust them, and had to be made right. So he made his telescopes the same way. Superb lesson I’ve tried to apply to my electronics designs ever since.

+StarTrek123456 When I visited Guatemala I noticed that a lot of homes in the rural areas didn't really have glass windows, just the window opening. Guatemala is considered tropical so I understand the reason for it. I would imagine that in a place like that, pointing your telescope out of the window wouldn't make a difference but in colder climates the mixing of hot and cold air at the open window would definitely cause the turbulence he mentioned and make focusing your telescope a pain in the rear.

Hi there, the large instrument at the start of the video is a TMB 8" (200mm) refractor. KR A&NTV

+Astronomy and Nature TV thank you ;)

@@RocketPlanet I had a D&G 8" f/12 refractor. When the atmospher cooperated gave killer planetary views.

Size does matter people

Hi and thanks for your query. The telescope is an 8" refractor by TMB and the mount is made by Astro Engineering, England (they only ever made two like this). Kind regards A&NTV

Astronomy and Nature TV thanks so much for your reply .cheers .

Astronomy and Nature TV do you know how much it cost?

+Antreas Cy Well - everything has it's price I suppose, and you could buy a pretty good car and a few tankfuls of fuel for the cost of that scope and mount. I've compared the views from both - and each has its strengths (the car is very good for close-ups of the Earth for example) but the tiny mileage costs on the scope are out of this world. And who'd buy a car after it had done a trillion-billion miles? Kind Regards RJD

true

Depends what kind of astrophotography.

+Sreeji Nair I would recommend a refractor with a low f-ratio because it is a lot more forgiving if you don't have really good tracking. A newtonian type telescope is also really good because of it's size, but that increases the weight which can be a problem if you don't buy a pretty expensive mount. I would stay away from Schmidt Cassegrains or "SCT" type scopes because although they may provide really good views, the (normally) high f-ratio makes it really hard to photograph with. Do you have a german equatorial mount? If not, do you have one in mind that you want to get?

@mikegordonbrasov161: The higher the better.

Hi Arthur. Had we drawn special attention to the mount as an exemplar your comment would have some merit. But we didn't. The mount you are referring too ( which I am quite familiar with because 20 years ago I spent 15 months thinking about little else and designed every teeny tiny little part of it - and there are only two of them in the world) has a counterbalance shaft that is 800mm long and 50mm in diameter and weighs 13kg. The 8" refractor it's carrying, though on the large size by amateur standards, has a plastic fibre tube and dew shield and is very light and the weight of it is comfortably offset by just the shaft on its own. I don't know old you are but the creditable use of a real name suggests you are not a teenager - but I still hope you can learn from this. You ain't the only catfish in the sea and it's a good idea to find out something of the facts of the case before making confident but erroneous assertions in public like this. If it had needed a counter weight, you can rest assured I would have fitted one. Thank you for allowing me to clarify this point. KR RJD A&NTV

I've seen Messier 32(Andromeda Galaxy)

yes, the moons are sometimes besides the planets...

Yes. Deep Sky Objects lightyears away can be seen with telescopes.

+Soleez1991 Absolutely, many things. Unless you're observing under a very dark sky, most deep-space objects (DSOs) are tough to see with typical amateur telescopes, especially galaxies (except for the very closest ones), so even finding and observing them at all is a worthwhile challenge. That said, there are a good number of absolutely spectacular DSOs that are quite easy to find and observe in detail, even under a fair amount of light pollution. Open clusters are, next to Solar System planets and the Moon, are easiest type, and especially once you get them framed properly with the right eyepiece, are real beauties to behold. Check out the Pleiades (M45), the Double Cluster (NGC 869 and 884), the Wild Duck Cluster (M11), the Butterfly Cluster (M6), and the Ptolemy Cluster (M7), to name some of the more famous ones. You might have to wait for some of these at the moment unless you observe very early in the morning, but for now you can catch the Beehive or Praesepe Cluster (M44) shortly after sunset, and there are of course many more to see. Globular clusters are a bit harder to find and observe, and require a decent-sized telescope to resolve (at least 5-6 inches, thereabout), but keep observing them and eventually your eyes will adapt and reveal a very unique and stunning (yet subdued) sight and experience that photographs, no matter how brilliant and detailed, completely fail to capture. There are many of these, too, and some of the more famous are M13, M22, and if you're fortunate enough to be able to see it (since it is so far to the south), the "mother" of them all, Omega Centauri (NGC 5139). Then there are various types of nebulae, which are typically composed of glowing gases. They look like clouds, except of course that they are many light-years away and are enormous by human standards. One of the largest and brightest (and perhaps the most impressive of all as a combination of the two traits) is the Orion Nebula (M42). A couple of other large and bright ones would be the Lagoon Nebula (M8) and the Trifid Nebula (M20). A completely different kind of nebula is the planetary nebula, which is the remnant of a dead star of a class similar to that of the Sun. A couple of famous ones are the Ring Nebula (M57), which is fairly tiny but bright enough to be seen in even small amateur telescopes, and the Dumbbell Nebula (M27). By the way, there are narrowband filters that can help greatly with the contrast and visibility of nebulae--they're not cheap but they're worth their cost. Among galaxies, the only really easy ones under some light pollution would be the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). Other galaxies really need a dark sky, although there are some that can be glimpsed, barely, under suburban skies. And finally, we can also observe the Sun, although we have to be very careful about it. This should be common sense, but do NOT simply point your telescope at the Sun and look through it! Doing so could very well cause severe eye damage, including permanent blindness, almost instantaneously. You need a special solar filter in order to observe the Sun in white light in your regular telescope, and this will let you see sunspots in detail, along with granulation, faculae, and maybe some other features; this is also a great way to view the rare transits of Mercury and Venus. In addition, there are specialized solar telescopes that observe in very narrow wavelengths (hydrogen-alpha being the most common), which allows you to observe additional features, such as flares. I've personally done all of these things (and the Solar System planets and the Moon, of course) with a single telescope (plus a small hydrogen-alpha telescope). One more thing is that individual stars themselves can be interesting targets. Some are actually doubles that are a challenge to separate, such as Antares and Sirius, and some doubles are just pretty to look at because of the color contrast, such as Albireo. Another type of star some amateur astronomers enjoy observing is carbon stars, which are exceptionally colorful, deep-red stars, some being described as a "drop of blood in the sky." Check out La Superba (Y CVn), Hind's Crimson Star (R Leporis), V Aquilae, and T Lyrae (a personal favorite, despite it being so dim). I'm sure I haven't covered everything.

Somewhat late in seeing this comment. As my flat gives me a fair view of Brisbane Airport, using my Sky-Watcher Heritage 130p, I sometimes view passenger jet aircraft on approach or departure. With my telescope, keeping an aircraft in view, using a 2x Barlow and a Sky-Watcher 15mm Kellner eyepiece, it's doable.

Hi and thanks for watching. The telescope is an 8" (200mm) TMB - and you are quite correct, short focal length high-power eyepieces are not essential with this instrument. A&NCTV

Astronomy and Nature TV i remember when thomas beck was alive and built your telescopes' lens you are very lucky to have an 8" apo..i doubt he made more than 10 of them and they where 5.000$ in 1999 just for lens i think he made a #1 12" apo thats at some rich guys house in florida clear skies dave zdrojewski boston ny usa

Whats your budget?

Ryan Zaleski ferguson orrery bro

sundararajaperumal Anandhakrishnan I would like to know this also? ta

sundararajaperumal Anandhakrishnan hmm, It's called an "Orrery" I am told.