ActiveOutdoorsOutdoor Tech3 telescope setup mistakes everyone makesAre you using your telescope correctly? Here are some mistakes to avoidWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
ActiveOutdoorsOutdoor Tech3 telescope setup mistakes everyone makesAre you using your telescope correctly? Here are some mistakes to avoidWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Are you using your telescope correctly? Here are some mistakes to avoid
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Pexels / Thirdman)
(Image credit: Pexels / Thirdman)
Can you find Vega? How about Betelgeuse? Knowing your way around the night sky can help a lot when using a telescope for the first time, which isn’t something that’s widely advertised.
Thebest telescopesalso require a bit of patience and the commitment to learning how to best use and maintain them; even thebest telescopes for beginnerswill need setting up properly before you get good results. Here are three telescope setup mistakes everyone makes to begin with:
1. Failing to align with bright stars
(Image credit: Unsplash / Brody Childs)
(Image credit: Unsplash / Brody Childs)
Many low-cost telescopes are ‘Go To’ motorised models that will slew to any object you care to choose from a long list displayed on a hand controller screen or smartphone app. Best of all they’ll stay trained on an object as it appears to move across the night sky.
However, such telescopes still need to be aligned to two or three bright stars, so it helps if you know at least the 10 brightest stars in the night sky and how to locate them from memory at specific times of year.
2. Not learning the night sky
(Image credit: Unsplash / Nathan Anderson)
(Image credit: Unsplash / Nathan Anderson)
If your telescope is either completely manual or it’s a polar-aligned equatorial telescope then some basic knowledge of the night sky’s geography is essential because you’ll have to aim it at the object to get it into your telescope’s crosshair and this in your eyepiece.
3. Not being patient
(Image credit: Pexels / Lucas Pezeta)
(Image credit: Pexels / Lucas Pezeta)
If you’ve got a motorised ‘Go To’ telescope then there’s a temptation to go hopping around the night sky very quickly, grabbing a quick look at whatever deep sky objects are ‘up’ that night. Don’t do this. Before you know it you’ll have seen everything you practically can in the night sky and quickly get bored. Worst of all, you won’t have seen much because observing properly takes time and practice.
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Move slowly through the ’tonight’s best’ lists of objects and return to them again and again, because the sky’s transparency – which radically changes – can be decisive. Patience also helps with coping with cloudy skies; sometimes you just have to quit and come back another night… which might be weeks away.
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