telescope newby question 101

"Colin Dawson" wrote in message
...
Hi Troll hunter.

That four stick thingy, is called a spider. It's job is to house a small
mirror that reflect light from the primary mirror into out of the scope
and
into your eyepiece. You shouldn't be able to see it when the Telescope
is
correctly focussed.
You'll need to learn to correctly focus the scope (sorry if that sounds
blunt). I'd suggest that you pick a bright star. Point the scope at it.
You should be able to be reasonably accurate by looking over the edge of
the
tube. (I'm assuming that your finder scope isn't setup correctly yet)
Then
tweak the fucus knob until the star becomes a bright dot. As this
point
I'd suggest that you spend a little time getting it centered, getting used
to the sky rotation and tracking stars.
Then spend a little time getting your finder scope aligned to your main
scope. This always gives best results when using a real star, and not
just
an object down the road ;-)

The 2 part cover is basically a big lens cap. The idea is that it will
keep
the optics clean and free from dust. The reason that you can remove the
middle bit is that you can leave the outer ring on the scope whilst
obseving
the moon. It's supposed to reduce the glare.

Regards

Colin Dawson
wwww.cjdawson.com



thanks ever so much colin, ive been tryin to align the spotter scope with a
telephone poll - altho the pole is probably half a mile away - ive taken
onboard your views - and must say, i like what i see.
As for the spider, yes i did notice the spider image disapear when focused
better, but unless i knew this.. id assume i was doing something wrong -
thanks again.

clear skys