UKC

I have bought my son a telescope for his 10th birthday. I bought it on a whim with no knowledge (took advice from a specialist shop over the phone) as he is learning about space and the solar system at the moment in school and has loved going out into the garden at night on a clear evening to look and draw some constellations.

It's this one - https://www.celestron.com/products/starsense-explorer-dx-130az

I am a total novice and am hoping our first clear night in back garden is semi successful (I must be able to point it at the moon right? lol) but am nervous it might be a bit of an anti climax if I am struggling to find something great to look at (the starsense app with this scope sounds like it will help in this regard fingers crossed) 

Any advice, things to avoid, good books or you tube channels to try? I'm sure there will be a budding astronomer or two on here. Thx in advance

This may help: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/722449-managing-expectations/

Planets, moon and stars will be good, nebulae/galaxies need a lot of expectation management!

I’ve found these links to be helpful.

https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/xmas-telescope-buying-guide.h...

Thanks! that's great - sounds like Saturn and Jupiter are not too hard to find and see, i'm sure that will be pretty exciting when we manage it!

Jupiter is around at the moment and will look good. Try Venus also, that shows phases like the moon.

Stellarium is a fine program for finding your way around the sky on computer, and there is a phone app as well. 

Enjoy!

It depends on the time of year if it is good to see the planets.  We are just getting towards the end of planet season.  A really simple app is on IoS it's called Planet Finder, just point your phone at the sky and it tells you where all  the planets are.  If you are out early evening at the moment Jupiter and the moons of Jupter will be visible. He will have to wait until the Autumn to see Saturn (I think) as it currently sets at just after 5pm and it won't be dark enough then.

The moon is always spectacular.

Uranus is easy to find with a good reflector

Agree with you on all counts. I was viewing Jupiter and 4 of its moons with my 5 year old last night. Ganymede was particularly easy to spot. 

Stellarium is also excellent. No need to pay for the paid version. Free phone app is fine for casual sky viewing.

Have a look at this site - https://stellarium.org/

It is a free download and can be tailored to your location. It takes a little work to get the best out of it but it will show you what is visible at any time of the year.

Another good source is https://in-the-sky.org/

Again it can be set to your location and lists a number of things that can be seen and also indicates if they are naked eye objects, or if you need binoculars or a telescope.

At present, from the UK, the constellation of Orion is about due south at around 7:30pm. It is a large and bright constellation so easy to spot. Jupiter is towards the west at the same time which should look good through your son's scope.

Dave

I agree with the advice given so far.

Some of the other things that are easy to find include:

M42, which is nebula in the sword of Orion and should easily picked out with a small set of stars forming a trapezium in the middle.

The Pleiades (Seven Sisters) always look like a sparking jewel box through a telescope or binoculars.

You can also have a go at trying to see the two stars Mizar and Alcor in the pan handle of the Plough which, to the naked eye, appear as one.

With the moon the best views are usually along the edge of the shadow (terminator) as you'll be able to see the 3D details better.  If it's anywhere near a full moon it's very bright and a moon filter (or sunglasses, I kid you not) might be an idea or leave the moon until the end of your session.

Wrap up warm and have fun.

Gavin

Yep, that will be a great telescope for both of you. Its not a lemon. 😀

I have a more compact version, with the same size mirror, with a teeny tiny mount compared to your tripod. Mine collapses when not used but it has the same specs as yours and I'm very happy with it.

I've seen the Andromeda Galaxy, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Uranus. I strongly suggest that you get a Moon Filter because the moon is so freaking bright that it is painful to look at.

I suggest that you manage your expectations about how big the planets will look. Saturn will be a couple of millimetres across depending on how powerful your choice of eyepiece is. And Jupiter will be about the same size but you will see its horizontal clouds and four moons very clearly.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Skywatcher-Heritage130P-FlexTube-Dobsonian-Telesco...

The only things you need to buy, should you progress are eyepieces and they can be as expensive or cheap as you want. One bit of advice which I would have liked to have known before buying a Newtonian telescope, like yours is, it does not matter if you get a 130mm telescope or massive 250mm Dust Gatherer, the images are still the same size from both telescopes. The main difference is that one telescope will hide under a bed while the other will hide in the corner of a room pretending not to exist.

Check out the Stellarium website https://stellarium.org/

And the Clear Outside app for cloud cover

https://clearoutside.com/forecast/50.7/-3.52

The scope I have bought comes with Starsense. This is Celestrons own app and they have a range of scopes with the attachment for your phone. You attach your phone to the dock on the telescope, you calibrate it, then you pick a planet or galaxy you wish to view and the phone guides you to point the scope directly at it. The couple of shops I spoke to said it's a brilliant system and perfect for children. I haven't tried it yet because his BD is at the weekend and it's a surprise, but am hoping it's as good as they say it is at finding celestial objects to view.

If you do want to buy something that will give bang-for-buck, then I suggest a 2x Barlow.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/barlows/astro-essentials-125-2x-barlow-wit...

It doubles up the power of the eyepieces that come with your telescope giving you four magnification options to play with.

If you do go down the road of eyepieces then don't fall into the trap of getting the highest magnification you can, thinking that everything will look bigger. The high magnification eyepieces not only magnify your target, they also magnify the earth's atmosphere and if its a warm night then you will be spending most of your time cursing those warm thermals creating a shimmering haze spoiling your view. Also unless you have a bombproof tripod/mount then the slightest movement will send your target out of sight instantly and you then have to spend ages trying to locate it again only to nudge your telescope moments later.

On a smart phone, try Google Skymap or Skyview (used to be called Skeye?) - allows you to find/identify panets and constellations, etc.

If you're on Twitter, look up a guy called Andrew McCarthy: @AJamesMcCarthy

As this isn't a motorised tracking mount you will be surprised at just how quickly an object will transit the eyepiece (obviously much faster with the 10mm) so take some time to get very good at using the slow-mo controls. Also, take some time to work through the starsense app to understand how it works and what it does. 

Thx. Excuse my ignorance, but why would a high magnification eye piece act differently to a barlow lens that is adding magnification?

The eyepieces that you have with the Barlow won't cause the effects I mentioned but if you got an eyepiece of say 8mm then you'd be frustrated in what you could see. Not only would you have to contend with UK cloudy nights spoiling your playtime, you would then have to contend with an 8mm eyepiece battling the earth's own atmospheric weather conditions of dirty warm thermals moving and swirling around.

I made that mistake and returned the eyepiece within the week and settled on a 15mm eyepiece. For me, as an occasional viewer, this was my sweet-spot giving me a x43 magnification and when I used the Barlow, then I got an x87 magnification.

At the time the BBC Skywatcher magazine recommended this bad-boy many years ago. Not been disappointed for my once or twice a year outing.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bst-starguider-eyepieces/bst-starguider-60...

Ah ok thx! This has a 25mm and a 12mm eyepiece. Guess I will find out how useful that 12mm is soon enough

Sounds like the StarSense app is going to do a lot of the work for you. It sounds like it does all the things I thought it would be nice to have on a telescope about 35 years ago...

12mm plus Barlow and you are all set. 😇

I'll also recommend joining stargazers lounge.  https://stargazerslounge.com/   There's a host of experts and no-one ever belittles beginners (unlike some forums). 

Ah, I see you have some aids to finding interesting things and understand you can't try it yet.

Fingers crossed you get a clear sky at the weekend for your son's birthday.

Just now the Moon does not rise until late into the night, but as its rising is on a monthly cycle you and your son will not have long to wait for the next easy view. Any where between the new Moon and first quarter gives some excellent shadow detail.

Dave

But the 250mm will gather 3.7 times as much light so you'll see far more faint objects with it - so would be useful for people like comet watchers I would have thought. Also if you're into astrophotography, it will require shorter exposures to get the same amount of light hitting the sensor so less problems with trails/tracking etc.

Whether those qualities are worth the extra cost and extra size is of course a personal judgement - I'd be with you going for more compact (I'm having enough trouble "hiding" my 50mm spotting scope 😁 )

Will the images be any bigger or the same size?

When I first thought about buying a reflector/Newtonian telescope, I naively thought that a bigger mirror got me a bigger image. Thankfully somebody from Stargazers Lounge set me straight because a 250mm reflector telescope takes up a fekin lot of space. 🤣

Too late for Saturn this winter, will be back next summer but then you have to stay up late until autumn. But, seeing the rings of Saturn with your own eyes is a great experience, even though I've only seen them as handles on each side of Saturn (on several occasions now) I'm still thinking "I have actually seen Saturn's rings" 😁

Jupiter is still good, if you can see it on several nights then maybe get your son to make sketches of where the 4 Galilean moons are so that he can appreciate them orbiting Jupiter and maybe see if you can work out how long their orbits are (it's what Galileo did but it might need a lot of dated sketches).

I can just about make out a band on Jupiter with my compact spotting scope, so with a reasonable astronomical scope you should be able to see bands properly. 

No idea, but my understanding (without practical experience) was that mirror size (or objective lens size for refractor scopes and binoculars) determines the amount of light getting in. Things like magnification are all determined by the eyepiece and the relationship between its focal length and the dimensions of the scope it's in.

A quick google shows me that magnification = scope focal length / eyepiece focal length (which I probably knew when I did physics A-level so long ago)

A bigger mirror will have a bigger focal length and therefore will produce a bigger image for the reason MH has posted.

Also more light collected means that a larger image is possible before detail is lost.

Really?

So a tiny mirror will make me look small, and if I stand in front of a mirror the size of a gable wall then I will also be massive?

Nope, focal length (and hence image size) will depend on the curvature of the mirror not its size.

Correct, bigger mirror gives the potential for useful higher magnification, but I don't think it's a direct relationship.

A tiny mirror can give huge magnification but be effectively useless.

Yes, I am familiar with the relationship between fl and curvature. I should have been more careful with how I phrased that first sentence. Oh well.

We've all been there and done that 😁

I totally agree, my wife bought me the telescope Lidl have every now and again and one night I dug it out, looking at the picture of Saturn on the box, thinking, really though, really?

There it was, a tiny little globe with a ring.  Amazing!

The other good advice I’ve heard is the quality of the tripod/stand really matters.

Cheers

Toby

Seeing the shadow of the planet on its rings with your own eyes is absolutely breathtaking.

130 mm diameter and that focal length should be great for moon, Jupiter and Saturn. For deep space you need wider apertures but you may be able to explore astrophotography.  With a decent digital camera and good tracking you will be able to take relatively long exposures, which brings out details and colours in deep space objects. It is great fun.

Not difficult to find, but I found it a bit disappointing - maybe just need much, much better kit.

Agreed, loads more than the 6 or 7 visible to the naked eye.

You can easily see these two with the naked eye - but apparently (only just found this out from Wikipedia) Mizar is two stars; Mizar A & B, and each of the three are close binaries themselves so there are actually 6 there although that's not for amateur optical observation.

It's always surprising how unflat the moon is along the terminator.

So yesterday the gift was finally received , and how lucky were we with the weather!  As evening fell, the clouds disappeared and an amazing sky full of stars (with no moon) presented itself. Coats on, and phone aligned with scope we started star gazing. First up Mars. Slight orange hue distinguishing it as the planet rather than a star. We found it straight away aligning the scope using the starsense app. Gasps of amazement suddenly made the cost all worth while I showed my son how to do use the app to guide the scope, immediately he wanted to find more, perfect! Next up we went for Andromeda galaxy. Ambitious, but why not? Struggled with the 25mm eye piece so switched to the 12mm and managed to see - if i'm honest - not a lot. A tiny whiteish smudge if I am being fair. So we moved on. This time to the Orion nebula. This was the evenings jackpot. We could see a clear mass of light with stars. My daughters came out to have a look, my wife, my parents, my BiL, my sister .... all agreed it looked amazing! I am now totally buzzing, as is my son. Another half an hour of looking at the north star, beehive cluster and then back to Mars and we called it an evening (a bit cold).

This was one of those BD gifts that will live long in the memory. Magical, and I highly recommend for any parents out there with young curious minds in the house. It was so easy to find what we wanted, total engagement and not much frustration. Can't wait for our next clear night.

Get a Moon Filter, otherwise your eyes will bleed at how bright it is. 😀

What set up did you finally purchase? I’m still bouncing around trying to decide what to buy. It’s probably the hardest choice I’ve ever tried to make, there’s just so much choice.

I have one , bought a set of filters of amazon. Hopefully do the job (they were not expensive)

I bought a Celestron Starsense Explorer DX130AZ.With a 25mm and 12mm eyepiece and some coloured filters including moon filter.

I did quite a bit of research and a couple of telescope retailers recommended the Celestron Starsense range due to the adoption of technology to allow easy finding of objects to view. There are quite a few telescopes in that range from £150 to approaching £1000. I went in the middle and opted for a reflector over a refractor (again on advice from a couple of shops). The Starsense app on your phone (which is attached to the scope) makes it cool to use, especially for tech savvy kids.

I have a similar scope with the same optical specifications as yours, minus the interesting phone app feature. However its about £200 less and relies on you hunting around Star Hopping with a Mark One Eyeball.

It does not come with a tripod, but rather a small turnable mount where it swivels about with a nudge of your hand. It can rest on the ground, a table, chair or even car bonnet.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/heritage/skywatcher-heritage-130p-flextube...

Thanks. I’ll maybe finally commit by the time the skies too bright to see much!!

Last night was clear again and we got a fantastic look at Jupiter and it's moons. It was small but we could just make out the bands. 

I think I need a bit more magnification to be able to see it properly. If my sums are correct, the 12mm eyepiece with 650mm focal length = magnification of 54x. I have bought a barlow 2X lens today which should double the size of the image next time we get a chance to view it. Reading online forums, it seems you want around 150-200x magnification to get a decent sized image in the view finder. I can already tell it will take a delicate hand to find and focus on an object with that magnification judging by our efforts at 54x magnification. 

cloudy until sunday by the looks of things .... this is a lot of fun! 

Check out Astrobiscuit on that there YouTube. He’s quite interesting.😀

I'm pleased to hear you enjoyed your sessions.

If you want to compare eyepieces and fields of view https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ is a good place to start.

One bit of caution, just because you can get magnifications approaching 200x with your telescope doesn't mean that you want to view at these high powers.  You'll need very good and still skies.  I have the same aperture and focal length on my telescope and find the 5mm eyepeice at 130x is about as much useful magnification as you can get, and maybe not even that on some nights.  The collector in me got a 3.2mm eyepiece to complete the set, but it's my least used.

https://stargazerslounge.com/ is a really good resource (especially if you use the search function!) and some very knowledgeable people on there happy to pass on their experience.

Thx very much Gavin !