is my scope & eye pieces any good???

ok here it goes....I live in ballymun and im able to set my scope up on the top of the 8 story building. The last couple of weeks ive had clear skies and tried my best to use it.

Telescope spec: Model, Newtonian 6", Focal length 1400mm, diam 150mm
eye pieces: PL25mm, PL6.5mm & an erecting eyepicce 1.5x.....

Im new to this so i have no idea whats good or bad. With what i have should i be able to see things like the rings of saturn or any near planets in our solor system??

Any feed back would be great...

Hi,
You will be able to see the rings of Saturn and maybe the cassini division. You should also see the cloud bands on Jupiter and it's 4 main moons. Have a look south west just before sunset and you will see venus although you won't see any details but that has nothing to do with the size of the scope you have. It will just be a bright shiny disc but it is a cresent at the moment I think so you should see that. Have a look at this site:

skyandtelescope.com/observing/skychart/article_1220_1.asp

Just put in your time and location details etc and it will give you a map of the sky so you can plan your observing.

Hope this helps,
Keith

Most things won't look like the pictures in the magazines through a telescope (although the planets will look the closest).

To get a good idea of what things will look like, check out the drawings at www.belmontnc.4dw.net/

You'll also want to travel to a darker site from time to time. Dublin has pretty woefull light pollution.

-- Jeff.

Don't forget J, light pollution and air quality from the city may not help either, so expect to have a couple % less light gathering power in your scope.

J, If the building you go on top of is occupied then the its not the optimal place to observe. Heat rising from the block will distort your view through the telescope. Some people think that by going up a little bit higher it will be better . In fact it doesnt make any difference (unless you can go a few thousand feet higher:) Its the old myth I hear a lot that converted attics are a good place to bring a telescope, in fact their one of the worst.

Welcome to the boards:)

Some of my favorite first targets for small telescopes (much smaller than yours) from light polluted skies are:

The moon between 3 days new and quarter (full moon is too washed out)

The inner planets (especially saturn and jupiter, mars in small scopes seldom lives up to expectations Check out www.heavens-above.com or an astronomy magazine to find when and where to find them. Mars and Venus pretty obvious in the early evenings right now, night owls can find more.

The pleides and other bright open clusters (double cluster in cassiopia)

The orion nebula and trapezium.

Alberio in cygnus (The tail of the swan is a blue-orange double star)

The ring nebula in lyra (O.K. this might be difficult from light-polluted Ballymun, but from darker skies near Rush it's not impossible to pick out in my 90mm F5.6 mak.)

Most of this (except possibly for the moon and planets) will look much better from a dark sky location.

As Dave mentioned, roofs and anything giving off heat will really mess up your view! I also found that even though a telescope's view is terribly distorted by viewing through a closed window, opening the window can actually make the image worse. Any indoor/outdoor temperature difference will cause turbulent air to pour past your field of view.

Oh, and don't bother with the erecting eyepiece. These usually put a prism in your light path and you don't need any of the extra chromatic and other aberations that this will introduce. It's easy enough to just imagine what the star would look like upside down