Telescopes

Using a telescope

Tip! 1994--the telescope took pictures of a comet collision, and detailed photos of Pluto, as well as giving us a greater knowledge of Neptune and Uranus.

Now that you have gone out and bought a telescope and have no idea what to do with it, here are some ideas for you.

Go out into the night sky and look for the brightest objects you can find. They are the best to start with because they are easy to find. Then after that, the sky, quite literally, is the limit.

With a special filter, you can see the sun and count sunspots. Observe the milky way or the moon. The moon has many large craters and you may see "rays" coming out from them. These are from when a crushed rock exploded from meteor impact. Streaks are formed in a radial pattern out from the crater itself.

Charles Messier was a comet hunter. One day, he noticed some fuzzy objects that didn't appear to be moving. These were actually the nebulae of today. Some people think it is fun to take a single night and see how many deep sky objects you can find on Messier's list in a single night. There are 110 you can find.

upiter can be quite interesting to observe at night. It is one of the most easiest to find besides the sun and moon. Some small telescopes might even get a good picture of Jupiter's small satellite moons. They are usually in a straight line and appear as very bright stars. Given Jupiter's rapid rotation, you can view nearly all the planet in a single night.

Tip! Its formal name is Celestron CPC 800 Professional Computerized Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope. This Celestron telescope cpc 8 offers easy and quick alignment and GPS, with quality of optics that is unbeatable.

The simplest thing you can do is look at the stars. Sometimes, you may see a "double-star." What looks like a single star becomes two when using a telescope. These are quite popular because of the explosion of color you will find between the two of them.

The important thing is to have fun and spot the brightest stars first and go from there. This can be a rewarding hobby after you have had time to get used to the telescope and what it can do.

About the Author

Terry Baeseman is a freelance writer, contributor, and editor of My Telescope Store and can be reached at My Telescope Store.

My Telescope Store provides information about astronomy telescopes, binoculars, telescope accessories and more.