Newbie

In the beginning there was darkness and then there was stuff and things. So I decided to buy me a telescope from lidl. I bought the R-102 €329.99 telescope. That will tell you something about me an astronomy.. I refer to my telescope as the price i paid!!

Anyhow polar alignment degrees. . . MANUALS!! sure they're for ejits I couldn't wait to put it together, which I got done in about 30 mins because I was so excited. I eventually had to move to the darkest part of the garden and point it as near north as I know because it is actually hard to point the thing with out upsetting the 53 degree setting why your supposed to have in Ireland. I was having major trouble trying to align the finder piece with the telescope and I'll wait til the moon is full to do that. BEHOLD MARS.. he rose from the horizon and that enabled me to find it quickly and track it. Here is my question

I used the 2x focal add on I got with my 10mm eye piece. And looked at the red planet. I couldn't really get a clear focus on it. It was a blurry redish bright disc... 15" ???? it looked like a tiny bead in the sky to me! Am I supposed to see it bigger? Was it the position in the sky? Is the blur the air and the atmosphere? Could the heat off the neighbours house cause some blur?

Nowon an interesting note.. When I had it out first it was pointing west to the first bright object I could see. I was all over the shop trying to find it through the scope and while scouring the sky I spotted something like a shooting star. It was bright but slowly faded and got brighter again like it was rotating or burning. the eye piece was the 10mm one and I was looking at far far out obects.. Did I spot a deep space meteor?? Also I saw a lot of shooting stars.. mainly because I was outside from 18:00 to 22:30 and staring at the sky like someone with a lobotomy

yes I was freezing.

anyway I hope to figure out the telescope and finally stare into the heavens as I have long awaited to.. should have bought a telescope years ago

Me from Carlow

Welcome along xual (is that from Ghostbusters? What's your real name? ),
yep, a lot of keen amateurs discovered the light with a superb cheap-offer telescope from Lidl! The R102 is another to add to that list of scopes. From your description of setting it up, sounds like you have done some homework on it.

And was that your first shooting star to be seen? You will see more of them for the next couple of nights, as the Geminids are in full swing now (keep looking towards Mars getting higher in the East during the night, it lies in Gemini).

Seanie.

I used the 2x focal add on I got with my 10mm eye piece. And looked at the red planet. I couldn't really get a clear focus on it. It was a blurry redish bright disc... 15" ???? it looked like a tiny bead in the sky to me! Am I supposed to see it bigger? Was it the position in the sky? Is the blur the air and the atmosphere? Could the heat off the neighbours house cause some blur?

It can be quite difficult to see details on Mars and it could be your location or the atmosphere last night. I suggest you try the Great Orion Nebula (M42) next using just an eyepiece. Detail should be easy enough to see, if you can see it clearly then it's not the eyepiece, scope or location. Having found M42 using only eyepieces check whether you can see more detail using the 2x Barlow and the same eyepiece - to verify that it works OK. Check all three eyepieces the same way on their own.

Also try Mars with the 10mm eyepiece on its own and with the 15mm and Barlow lens. The barlowed 10mm pushes the scope to 200x, which is its limit and the conditions were not the best last night so you might have had too much magnification for the seeing available. In that scope the 10mm gives you 100x, the 15mm & Barlow give 133x. It will be smaller but you may see more.


I didn't get to try mine last night because of work. When I try it on Mars I'll be waiting until it's high in the sky because seeing conditions around here do not favour a good view when it's rising.

Align the finderscope with the main scope in broad daylight with the scope trained on a distant point source at high magnification.

Train yourself on the scope in daylight.

You only drive a car at night after you have practiced driving in daylight for a while.

Peter.

Train yourself on the scope in daylight.

You only drive a car at night after you have practiced driving in daylight for a while.

I'll give you that one Peter, about the best thing that made sense from your typing fingers in a while!

A "while" being......about 5 minutes of course Seanie.

Peter.