A Comprehensive Guide to using your Telescope — A Beginner’s Guide!
An Inspiring Preface 🔭
Never before a homo sapien had the ability to explore the vastness that is the universe right from their backyard.
Now with a telescope, you have the best eye for the job, right?
Well, telescopes are pretty simple until you encounter a problem. This guide should help you start fresh or learn new things to master your “eyes to the universe”
Congratulations!
Firstly congrats on the best buy! If you haven't already, go get one from Amazon or borrow one from your Astro — Buddies!
Table of Contents
How to use this guide?
This guide is a compilation of my experiences using this particular telescope and also helping people all over the internet. You can go in chronological order or just jump to the section you are interested in.
You might encounter difficult problems for one reason or another, but always remember to have fun! That’s what got you here in the first place! 😉
- 🛠 First setup and test
- 🌒 Finding Celestrial Objects
- 📃 Make an Astronomy Journal
- 📷 Improvements
- 🌃 Keep track of future astronomical events
- 🦺 Safety Guide
- 🤔 FAQ
Also, If you find this helpful, please drop a like (or clap) 👏 or Buy me a Coffee ☕ to fuel my next Star Gazing Session! Article Last Updated 🛠 — 30th Dec 2021
1. Setup of the Telescope 🛠
In general, if you can’t see anything, one of these might be your problem: The bellow only works when the setup is right.
- You are pointing at the wrong thing. Use Stellarium or google sky map to find your desired object first. Then use the finder scope to align your telescope.
- Your focusing is off. Please test your telescope during the day to figure what the “focus” dial actually does.
- It’s also important to put the lens in the correct order.
Again if you are seeing white light that mostly means it’s not in focus or you haven’t put the lens in the right order. (first to last, below)
Opt 1: Tele → Prism Lens → Objective Lens( 20mm,10mm )
Opt 2: Tele → 3X Barlow Lens → Prism Lens → Objective Lens
The best thing to do is to use your telescope (set up) during the day and check if everything works out. Then without disturbing the setup use it at night. so that you can get a hang of the focus and lens setup. Honestly, it’s pretty easy. you can do it. Good Luck!
Introducing the Finderscope:
First: Align the Finderscope
In a telescope with high magnification, the field of view (FOV) decreases quite a lot. This means it will get difficult to point at small objects in the sky as they drift. Enter Finderscope:
A finderscope, aptly named is there to help you point at an object in the sky with a very high FOV. Looking through it you will realize that it has two lines intersecting at one point. This is called a crosshair. It’s used to mark the centre of the scope.
So your first job should be to align this because it’s centre is not the true centerline of the telescope pointing to.
So, take your telescope out in daylight, and find a network tower or bird sitting quietly. First view it through a 20mm lens and make sure that the object of interest is in the centre of the scope. Then fix your telescope and get back to finderscope and tinker with screws on it, until the crosshair (intersecting point) is exactly at the centre of the object of interest.
Voila! you can now just use your finderscope to find and point at objects first.
Remember to never change the configuration you left it in, otherwise, it will be misaligned.
2. Finding Objects 🔎
Look up and point and you shall find something worthy
Ancient astronomers relied on star charts which were manually built over years to make sense of the wonders of heaven. We stand on the shoulders of giants and hundreds of years of innovation and progress. Put simply, you can download the entire star map on your smartphone right now, in seconds.
I use Stellarium. It’s free, cross-platform and comes with a very big database.
- Easy Objects 🌔 — Moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter.
- Deep Space Objects 🌌 — Andromeda Galaxy, Orion Nebula, Star Cluster — Pleiades.
- LEO 🛰 — Near earth satellites, ISS
Moon
The Giant Planets
Deep Space Objects
3. Astronomy Journal 📜
Maintaining an Astronomy Journal is as important as keeping a record of the amazing things you see. Chances are most of the things you see won’t be captured via the camera. So the only way of keeping a record is to sketch it. You can use this template to start, later make your own if you would like to. 😄
4. Improvements 📷
The Telescope is now set up but could do with these new improvements ⚙
- Smartphone Adapter for Telescope — (Easy)
- Telescope DIY Mount (Rpi) — (Moderate)
- Make it Automatic — (Hard)
Smartphone Adapter for Telescope
This is the best adapter solution to attach a smartphone to a budget telescope-like such. I have gotten some of my best Astro shots with the mount in use. It’s very easy to align the smartphone’s camera with the objective lens of the telescope. This can be used on binoculars and microscope as well :D
This video was entirely shot with the help of that adapter. Check it out.
Telescope DIY Mount
You can DIY anything anywhere. This one is quite simple but comes with some preexisting problems.
Using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ combined with a PiCam V2 with RPi Cam Web Interface forms a good setup for wireless use. The Rpi cam has timelapse and many other interesting features that can improve your experience.
The RPi Cam isn’t really ideal for astrophotography. The pixel resolution is enough, but not the sensor size for such a low-night operation. There are too much noise and lots of halo in prime mode (the lens is removed and attached directly in-line with the prism output)
Also having to align and place the sensor at the right position is a nightmare, a simple solution would be to 3-D print this mount, from Thingiverse
Make it automatic
6. Safety Guide 🦺
Keeping Safety in check when using a telescope.
- NEVER point any telescope/binos at the sun directly. 🌞
7. FAQ 🤔:
- Can I see galaxies?
Yes! You can see but you would need to have a clear night sky. I managed to see the Andromeda Galaxy with some light pollution with the same setup. - Can I see Solar Events?
Yes! but extra equipment needed is. Solar filters to protect your eyes and your telescope. Please never point your telescope directly at the SUN with a proper solar filter. 💀 - Can I use it in day time?
Yes! That’s my favorite thing to do with the telescope! Bird watching is honestly the most peaceful thing I do with the telescope. - Why can’t I see anything?
In general, if you can’t see anything, one of these might be your problem: The bellow only works when the setup is right. - I see a white blob when I look through the lens
Fix your focus and/or exposure - * faqs are incomplete. Will complete it soon…comment down with questions.
Spread the Word!
Be the Galileo of your squad, spread the word about how awesome these simple pieces of equipment are. Invite them to use and allow and extend the knowledge of the heavens.
Gallery
About Me
Website — https://curious-nikhil.github.io/
Twitter — https://twitter.com/curiousnikkhil
Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousNikhil
