Orion 130ST EQ instruction manual Using Your Telescope- Astronomical Observing

Out of collimation Collimated

Figure 12. A star test will determine if a telescope’s optics are properly collimated. An unfocused view of a bright star through the eyepiece should appear as illustrated on right if optics are perfectly collimated. If circle is unsymmetrical, as in illustration on left, scope needs collimation.

may be perfectly aligned. It is critical to keep the star cen- tered, so over time you will need to make slight corrections to the telescope’s position in order to account for the sky’s apparent motion.

7.Using Your Telescope— Astronomical Observing

Choosing an Observing Site

When selecting a location for observing, get as far away as possible from direct artificial light such as street lights, porch lights, and automobile headlights. The glare from these lights will greatly impair your dark-adapted night vision. Set up on a grass or dirt surface, not asphalt, because asphalt radiates more heat. Heat disturbs the surrounding air and degrades the images seen through the telescope. Avoid viewing over rooftops and chimneys, as they often have warm air currents rising from them. Similarly, avoid observing from indoors through an open (or closed) window, because the tempera- ture difference between the indoor and outdoor air will cause image blurring and distortion.

If at all possible, escape the light-polluted city sky and head for darker country skies. You’ll be amazed at how many more stars and deep-sky objects are visible in a dark sky!

“Seeing” and Transparency

Atmospheric conditions vary significantly from night to night. “Seeing” refers to the steadiness of the Earth’s atmosphere at a given time. In conditions of poor seeing, atmospheric turbulence causes objects viewed through the telescope to “boil”. If, when you look up at the sky with just your eyes, the stars are twinkling noticeably, the seeing is bad and you will be limited to viewing with low powers (bad seeing affects images at high powers more severely). Planetary observing may also be poor.

In conditions of good seeing, star twinkling is minimal and images appear steady in the eyepiece. Seeing is best over- head, worst at the horizon. Also, seeing generally gets better

after midnight, when much of the heat absorbed by the Earth during the day has radiated off into space.

Especially important for observing faint objects is good “transparency”— air free of moisture, smoke, and dust. All tend to scatter light, which reduces an object’s brightness. Transparency is judged by the magnitude of the faintest stars you can see with the unaided eye (6th magnitude or fainter is desirable).

Cooling the Telescope

All optical instruments need time to reach “thermal equilib- rium”. The bigger the instrument and the larger the tempera- ture change, the more time is needed. Allow at least 30 min- utes for your telescope to cool to the temperature outdoors. In very cold climates (below freezing), it is essential to store the telescope as cold as possible. If it has to adjust to more than a 40° temperature change, allow at least one hour.

Let Your Eyes Dark-Adapt

Don’t expect to go from a lighted house into the darkness of the outdoors at night and immediately see faint nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters—or even very many stars, for that matter. Your eyes take about 30 minutes to reach per- haps 80% of their full dark-adapted sensitivity. As your eyes become dark-adapted, more stars will glimmer into view and you’ll be able to see fainter details in objects you view in your telescope.

To see what you’re doing in the darkness, use a red-filtered flashlight rather than a white light. Red light does not spoil your eyes’ dark adaptation like white light does. A flashlight with a red LED light is ideal, or you can cover the front of a regular incandescent flashlight with red cellophane or paper. Beware, too, that nearby porch and streetlights and car headlights will ruin your night vision.

Eyepiece Selection

By using eyepieces of varying focal lengths, it is possible to attain many magnifications with the SpaceProbe 130ST EQ. The telescope comes with two high-quality Sirius Plössl eye- pieces: a 25mm, which gives a magnification of 26x, and a 10mm, which gives a magnification of 65x. Other eyepieces can be used to achieve higher or lower powers. It is quite common for an observer to own five or more eyepieces to access a wide range of magnifications. This allows the observer to choose the best eyepiece to use depending on the object being viewed.

To calculate the magnification, or power, of a telescope and eyepiece combination, simply divide the focal length of the telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece:

Magnification = focal length of telescope focal length of eyepiece

For example, the SpaceProbe 130ST EQ, which has a focal length of 650mm, used in combination with the 25mm eye- piece, yields a magnification of

650mm = 26x 25mm

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