Weekend spotting

tomcosgrave

Hi all,

This weekend, I took myself off to the family cottage in Wexford, where it is nice and dark.

Got very lucky with a clear sky on Friday night / Saturday morning, so myself and my father fumbled about with the telescope - the first time in well over a year that we bothered - I've started to take this hobby more seriously lately - it's his actually, but he never really got into the hobby (he likes the hobby, dislikes the time it takes!) - it's a Helios 6 inch / 150mm Newtonian reflector, on an EQ mount. Got the moon spotted pretty much straight away, and it looked amazing - very bright - too bright, I need to get a filter of some sort for that.

After much fumbling about (spot the rookie!), I found Mars, long after everyone else had gone to bed.

After that, I decided to take a chance and see if I could find what I thought was M15 - I estimated it to have been about 30 degrees to the south of Mars (I'm not sure of the exact orientation down at the place where I was), and I believe I found what I was aiming at, and it came across as a tiny blueish smudge.

After that, I lugged the scope around to back of the house and got a glimpese of the Pleides.

Saturday / Sunday was better for Mars as the moon was obscured by cloud, but I still had the same results. Then the clouds came in and that was the end of it for the weekend.

Now, here's where I could really use advice from those with experience. I was very pleased to have found Mars, although it it was merely a pale rust coloured disk - maybe a hint of the northern polar cap as it was whiter down the bottom of the scope (north being down), but not a lot else aside from a pink / red colour.

I'm not sure what this is - chief suspicions would be a lame eye piece (10mm Plossl) and a lame 2x Barlow. These came with the scope, and I should probably look at getting other ones. The other eyepiece, a 25mm Plossl seems good). A set of filters would probably be a good idea, although I have no idea what ones.

The other idea I had was that perhaps the scope needs collimating - although the moon appeared absolutely fine, and I could see stars as well. Just Mars appeared less than what was hoping for.

Anyone more experienced got any advice?

Thanks in advance!!

Tom

jArgHA

I finally got my first view this year of Mars last Thursday night through a Celestar 8" SCT, and was pretty impressed at the size of the disc and the polar cap, but likewise could not observe any other surface features on the face of the planet.

I was observing Mars with a 25mm SMA and 12 mm Plossl, to give views at 81x and 162x. From reading this month's feature article on Mars observation in Astronomy & Space I believe the best filter to get would be a red eyepiece filter, couldn't give you the Wratten number off hand, this filter brings out a lot of surface detail.

It would also be well worth investing in a couple of quality eyepieces and/or barlow to give higher magnification views of Mars, with a six inch scope you should theoretically be able to use up to 300x magnification with reasonable clarity.

Celestron have an offer at the minute with six eyepieces (ranging from about 6mm up to 30mm or so) and six eyepiece filters for E400, whioch is fairly good value.

With regards to collimation, afraid I can't offer too much advice, I never owned a Newtonian so am unfamiliar with collimating one.

Slán,
jAH

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