Bitz & Bobz
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There follows a jumble of my personal thoughts and things I've learned so far. Some I learned by taking notice of people's advice, some I learned by getting it right 1st time, and some I learned the hard way, having ignored people's advice and later found they were correct.
These are only my personal thoughts and experiences and as such are not really advice but hopefully they will help if you're a novice
The main purpose of a telescope is to gather light. Because of this I went for the biggest aperture I could afford, forsaking Goto, setting circles, and some of the other niceties offered by more sophisticated scopes. I decided on a reflector as this design gives the most aperture for a given cost. I spent my limited budget on aperture, and quality optics.
Regarding which 'scope to buy, there are zillions of articles giving advice. My only thought on this is that, having decided on a driven German style equatorial mount & a tripod I'm surprised how often I don't bother using my RA drive, just adjusting my 'scope manually as the target starts to drift. I'm also surprised at how often the back of my scope fouls the tripod legs when viewing near the zenith. This is a real pain, meaning you either forgo the chance to observe that particular target or shift the tripod around a bit, thereby ruining your polar alignment. I therefore wonder if a simple Dobsonian with it's ease of set up etc would have suited me. With my equatorial mount however, I can have a serious go at astrophotography without needing to upgrade so the set up I decided on is a bit more future proof from my point of view. Update - My scope is now on a pier in my observatory and my tripod is used only on the rare occasions when I take my scope to a dark sky site
With regard to GOTO systems, my personal opinion is that whilst they are a brilliant facility to have, they may well mean that as a novice you don't bother trying to learn the sky. Of course, if you've got GOTO, you don't need to learn the sky but I've found it to be an absorbing and worthwhile part of the hobby. When I find an elusive object through reading, looking, and perseverance the sense of achievement is quite something and my decision to initially spend my money elsewhere has proved to be correct, for me at least. After a year of sky learning & star hopping I decided to try a GOTO system with a large object library to make fuller use of the limited amount of sky visible from my obs.
Where am I going to keep it? When you get your 1st scope home, just like your widescreen TV did, it will look massive compared to how it looked in a showroom or on a website. Bare this in mind. My Europa 200 is not a particularly large reflector but it was a right pain to get from it's original home up in the spare bedroom to the garden requiring 4 trips up & down the stairs for the tube, tripod, table, charts, eyepieces etc etc. I've now made alternative arrangements and I can set up in 5 minutes flat and be observing straight away. This is the best improvement I've made to my hobby since buying "Turn Left At Orion"
How portable is it? With regard to the above, if your scope is a pain to set up / break down / store etc YOU WON'T USE IT VERY OFTEN. How are you going to store it at 1:30am without waking the whole house in the process? Think about this before you buy and plan something in advance if possible. Try to store your gear so you can have a quick look through your scope whenever the opportunity arises. To assist in this, try to keep a plan of the next few things you want to observe with your kit. That way you're ready to go at a moment's notice. I've finally got an observatory which was originally just a handy shed in which to store my kit. It keeps the tube at (roughly) outside temperature, and takes all the hassle out of setting up as all my stuff now lives in there. If building an observatory is not an option, then a cheap shed simply for storing your gear may be money well spent.
Don't expect too much!! Nowadays we are bombarded with fabulous pin sharp images of celestial objects of every shape, size and colour, but don't expect to see anything like this whilst looking through your telescope. With practice and some expense you will be able to capture some very nice colour images if you are so inclined but when observing you will for the most part see hardly any colour at all, and most objects will appear white, faint and fuzzy compared to the beautiful images in magazines etc as these images are captured over the course of minutes / hours using sensitive equipment often including coloured filters etc then they are further enhanced by computer processing. All this means that whilst they are great to look at, they mean absolutely nothing to the visual observer as a guide to what one can expect to see. If you can look through somebody's scope before buying I'd recommend you do so.
Magnification is not everything. I had a hard time understanding this and no matter who said it I didn't believe them, until I started observing, at which point it became very clear that this is indeed the case. DSOs especially are often much nicer at low power and they are also much clearer. Barry at Orion Optics advised me not to buy any extra eyepieces until I knew what I was doing. This is excellent advice. My 1st instinct was to immediately get the highest power eyepiece my scope could handle (400x), but I resisted. I eventually bought just one higher powered eyepiece giving 300x and a 2x Barlow, which when used in 1.5x mode would give 450x if I need it. In fact, I'm much more comfortable using a Barlowed low power eyepiece than using a high power eyepiece to achieve the same magnification because the much smaller diameter of the higher power eyepiece lenses makes viewing less pleasurable, for me at least. I'll probably start replacing my current eyepieces with higher quality ones when I'm more experienced. Update - I've done just that. I bought a Moonfish 42mm ultrawide angle eyepiece, a Moonfish 15mm Superwide angle eyepiece, and a Moonfish ED 2x Barlow all in 2 inch. The FOVs through these EPs are superb
Where are the flippin' knobs?? Heck. those slow motion control knobs on equatorials are hard to find even in broad daylight! I Had a good go with my scope in daylight to get myself orientated. You can look at a house chimney down the road or similar (but make sure the neighbours don't misinterpret what you're doing...) to see the relationship between magnification and image quality and to learn about focusing / aiming etc. If you're reasonably comfortable with the basics before you venture out in the dark things will progress much faster, and with less frustration.
AAGGHH!!! It's hard to believe that what is basically a peaceful, relaxing and rewarding hobby can also make my blood boil within 3 seconds of encountering the slightest problem. I'm ashamed to admit I've found myself muttering expletives as I look to the heavens in disgust on quite a few occasions so far. It is now a rarity however so I must be progressing. It can be a very frustrating pastime at first but take it slowly and stay calm. After only a few sessions I began reaping the rewards of my perseverance.
How dark is your sky? You can't change that, but you can improve things somewhat. I now have an observatory but I originally observed between the side of my house and a tall hedge. I ran lines between the two on which I hung thick decorator's dust sheets to block the glow of the streetlights. Quick, cheap, easy. An instant observatory. For a set up with better horizons maybe a cheap gazebo frame in the middle of the garden with dust sheets over all sides would work. I also wear a black tee shirt around my neck (like a neck scarf) and I pull it over my head and around the eyepiece while observing. it blocks out all unwanted light from around the eyepiece and I don't need to close an eye. I find that observing with both eyes open is much more comfortable
Don't wait for the perfect evening. If there's half a chance of seeing something, get out there. Don't wait for ideal conditions or you'll be waiting for ever. When you're at work on nights and it's clear, you'll regret not bothering when you had the chance.
Keep your Bino's Handy. Work out that star hop when you've got a few minutes. Do it when you don't have time to set up your scope
How do I find things? The sky is a big place. There are some good finder charts on various sites and you can also buy an atlas and / or a star hopping book. I bought "Turn Left At Orion" which is invaluable, transforming me from clueless novice to DSO capable novice in a couple of hours. The star hops are so well explained and the diagrams so clear that I'd say anyone who's had a few goes with a scope could follow it. I also bought the "Cambridge Star Atlas" which only goes down to mag 6.5. It's a good general guide with lots of other good stuff in it but it's not much use for star hopping (for me personally). I should have spent more on an atlas going down to fainter magnitudes. These are available by the same author (Wil Tirion) and should be very good as his maps are highly rated. Update - I have now fitted a GOTO system but I don't use it in the field so I'm still very much into starhopping.
You need to know the FOV (field of view), ideally for all your eyepieces, but certainly for your finderscope and your lowest power eyepiece. Knowing this will make star hopping much easier as you can step an accurate number of degrees and know what you should be able to see in one field. I've estimated mine by looking at objects at known angular separations and this level of accuracy has been fine for me but if you want a very accurate method, point your scope at a star which is as near as possible to the celestial equator, then with your RA drive disengaged, time the star as it crosses your field of view. When you know how many seconds it takes to cross the FOV, you simply divide this figure by 240. (Because a fixed celestial object - ie a star, don't use the moon or a planet - will "move" 1 degree every 240 seconds) This will give the FOV in degrees. So, if a star takes 240 seconds to cross the FOV, then 240 divided by 240 = 1 degree FOV. Of course you could just download this great little program for free...
I use a red dot finder for initial aiming & simple star hopping. It's just a basic cheap one but it's worth it's weight in gold. Some people seem to remove their ordinary finder, relying solely on a red dot finder for hopping, but the combination of my red dot and my 9x50 is great so I use both. Red dot finders are normally zero magnification so I would definitely miss my 9x50 if I were to remove it.
Astrophotography is a blast. It is however not particularly straightforward in practice. It costs money and takes time & experience to get right. That shouldn't stop anyone from trying however and if you happen to already have a laptop & CCD webcam or a good digital camera, a 35mm SLR, or even just a compact camera you might as well try it if you fancy it. I have an observatory which is equipped with a PC so I bought a CCD webcam for taking solar system pics and a Meade DSI II for deep sky pics. There are 1 or 2 articles online about beginning with more basic gear like a basic digi camera or a camcorder, and these methods must be worth a try if you've already got the kit. I started with a £35 webcam and a scrounged desktop PC. This setup is a very good way of getting into astrophotography cheaply.
Struggling with Polar alignment of your equatorial mount? Have a go at the simplified Kochab Clock method, Mark Jordan's adaptation of a slightly more complex method. It's easy, quick, accurate, and you won't waste clear skies drift aligning even if you're having a go at photography. 30s exposures (and sometimes considerably longer) are achievable using this method which will take 5 minutes AT THE MOST each time you need to align. Well worth the small amount of time you need to spend setting it up initially
Collimation. Oh My. The C word. I've asked many experienced people various collimation questions and I must say they are often totally at odds with each other, not always even agreeing what the view down the focuser SHOULD look like in a correctly set up scope. With regard to making adjustments some say "always start at the primary", others say "always start at the secondary". Of course, I'm not saying anyone is wrong, (and I'm very grateful to those who have helped me with my collimation. I've had excellent advice from everyone I've asked) just that it sounds like there are a number of ways to approach it. The worst thing for a novice is not knowing if you've got it right. You get everything perfectly centred in the Cheshire, go and make a brew, have another look, and some sod has altered it while you were away! (even though there's only you in the house...). I've found that you can always just give it that extra tweak here and there and never be fully satisfied that it's all spot on. In practice, regarding the collimation of my reflector, as long as it's pretty much ok in the Cheshire I've never been able to detect any difference in visual performance so far that can't be sorted quickly with a star test. (Star testing takes lots of practice and I'm not very good at it but obvious errors in collimation will show as star tails on a focused star and/or eccentric donuts on a defocused star. That's all I look for.) More experienced observers will probably disagree with the above and people have told me that my collimation needs to be exact to get good performance. I would not be so arrogant as to disagree with them, I'm a relative novice after all, but my experience to date tells me that if I'm reasonably satisfied with my collimation, it's near enough as to make no noticeable difference visually. I'll obviously get better at observing and I may end up disagreeing with what I've just written, but the point is, if you can get it pretty close, stop worrying about it and get outside. Your observing session will not be ruined because you're not an expert at setting up your 'scope.
I changed my secondary collimation screws from Philips to Allen screws. They're easier to work with as without a bulky screwdriver to grapple with you can quickly feel your way to any screw whilst continuing to look through the eyepiece. They are much better in the dark for the same reason, but don't forget, there's a lot more leverage with an Allen key so be careful not to over tighten them.
Keep the scope horizontal or as near horizontal as possible when collimating. Have you looked at prices for primary mirrors? You really don't want to drop a screwdriver / Allen key / secondary mirror onto your primary.
I place a piece of white paper into the OTA when collimating and lay it opposite the focuser. This gives a bright background making things easier
Telescope cases & bags are great but expensive. For my 1100mm long, 235mm diameter OTA I use a flight bag for golf clubs. They're widely available (I got mine from E Bay) and they start at a few quid, going up to whatever you want to spend. The dearer ones are better padded if you plan to travel regularly to an observing site but my 10 quid one does me nicely. They are ideal for your tripod as well so buy 2 if you want to keep your gear in A1 condition when travelling.
