So I got a telescope for Christmas...

MagicIRL

Hey all,

I recently got a Celeston(?) telescope for Christmas. It's a deadly little yoke and I've been gazing at the moon and a few stars tonight.

My question is this, and it might be the wrong forum but;

I'm in S. Dublin looking East. I was looking at a star, no idea what it was called, and in my telescope it appeared as a smallish dot with two complete circles around it.

I would hazard a guess and say it looked like this (only the rings weren't "filled in" between each other)

Does anyone have any idea what the hell I was looking at? Was it even a star? I'm a complete novice to this!

aido76

I would guess it was Jupiter you were looking at. The 2 complete circles are 2 of it's moons. You can download a sky map on to your mobile and it will show you the different constellations, names of stars and planets etc. Very handy when your starting out.

The One Doctor

Chinese lantern.

hairybelly

Can you specify what time it was?
How low in the sky was it?

MagicIRL

It turns out it was just me being a novice and not having it set up correctly, I think.

I did manage to get a clear-as-day shot of Jupiter and it's four moon later in the night though, around... 10:30-11:00 sometime. It was epic!