By following my simple tips, you’ll be able to get a great view of the planet and all of its rings. Once you’ve gotten a good look at Saturn, you might just be inspired to explore more of the night sky. The first step is to find a star chart or planetarium app that will show you the current night sky.
Because as you see a smaller portion of the sky, small movement of the telescope moves the view a lot which makes it challenging to find the objects. You can look for the movement of objects in the sky, like satellites, planets, and stars. You can also track moon phases to help observe deep-sky objects and look for bright objects that can be easily spotted, even in areas with high light pollution. I prefer a German equatorial mount that can track the planets well at high magnification for an extended period, but for different reasons than when imaging deep sky objects. Tracking and imaging planets for an hour or two on either side of their highest point in the sky allows you to sift through all the data later and find the times when the seeing was calmest. This can greatly increase your ability to take advantage of the best seeing.
If you are observing without optical instruments, it is, of course, impossible to discern any details on Mars as you would with a refractor or a reflector telescope. On the other hand, Mars will appear a lot more prominently during opposition and look like a star with a reddish hue, offering beautiful visual pictures when it gets closer to the Moon. Even with binoculars, its interest remains limited, with no extra details being visible.
Moon and Back® is a free, informational resource for kids and adults to learn all about astronomy. Get all the latest info on the best telescopes, astronomy binoculars and more. All product reviews and recommendations are based on unbiased testing by our team of experts. If you haven’t already, make sure your finder is attached securely to the optical tube and insert the lowest magnification eyepiece into the focuser.
Our current design is in fact not a single telescope, but a constellation of 35 individual telescope units. After the meeting, I returned to the University of Arizona and decided to explore whether modern technology could produce diffractive lenses with better image quality. Lucky for me, Thomas Milster—one of the world’s leading experts on diffractive lens design—works in the building next to mine.
A single flash from a strobe does less damage than a bright light lasting a second or more. At night, your eyes are most sensitive to red light, which means that for a given brightness, you’ll see more using this color. Use a red flashlight, adjust its intensity to the lowest usable level, and then only use it to gaze briefly at the object it illuminates. Besides a telescope, it doesn’t take much to observe the planets. A good way to start is to check out “The Sky this Month” in each issue of Astronomy. Before you know it, you’ll have made seven new celestial friends.
Earth orbiting satellites can also be observed using amateur telescopes. The International Space Station, which is the largest of them, may even show glimpses of details (such as solar panels) during its closest approaches. Deep sky objects (DSO) is a general name for galaxies, nebulae and star clusters – objects beyond our solar system. Unlike with planets – observing deep sky objects does not necessarily require using high magnifications. What important is the aperture of your telescope, since you need to gather a lot of light.
I’m a VERY amateur observer myself and my telescope has the exact same aperture as yours. Looking for the best telescope under 200 – Look no further! Take a look at the best telescopes under £200 right here! can all but guarantee that you should definitely be able to see Saturn rings and Jupiter moons (and even some planet bands) through your scope. Like others, I’ve read countless articles about how/when/where to see planets in our solar system. I wish I had a powerful telescope for awesome viewing, but in my part of Florida I’ve found a pair of strong binoculars jury-rigged atop a camera tripod works best due to our variable – and varying – cloud cover.