New Stargazer - Barlow

Hey all,
My brother got the scope that was suggested to him (Orion XT8) by a web
form (i think you guys) on e-bay.

We went out scopin' last night and had a BLAST. Wow what a great scope,
so easy to set up. We are two complete beginners at telescopin' and
within literally 2 mins the scope was up and we had venus on the
viewfinder (pretty bright little sucker isn't it).

We also saw jupiter and saturn, we were looking through with a 9mm
eyepiece. He has a couple of other ones.

But when we tried to put a 2x barlow on, we couldn't really focus the
image. The image looked exactly like the y=|1/x| curb like kind of like
the old "Atari" simbole. We couldn't get it to focus properly. Any
idea what we did wrong? We tried the barlow with a weaker eyepiece also
and it did give us our 2x, but with the weaker eyepiece it was pretty
close to what we had with our 9mm.

Any idea what we were doing wrong?

Also i took a couple pictures holding up my Sony digital camera (2Mpix)
to the eyepiece. The pictures are a bit blurry but reasonable. Does
anyone have a better technique for doing this?

Thanks!

Hi,

With 1200mm focal length, a 9 mm will give 133x. With the barlow, that comes
out to 266x, which may have been pushing it with the seeing that night.
However I would also consider the collimation. I don't know how much you
know about collimation, but a good site is
http://skyandtelescope.com/howto/sco...icle_787_1.asp

If you have any trouble, you can find a local astro club at
http://skyandtelescope.com/resources/organizations/ Then you can take your
scope to a public night and get some help on collimation. It takes a bit to
get the hang of it, but once you've walked through it a time or two, it all
starts to make sense. And at f/5.9, your scope is not as sensitive to
collimation issues as some are, but it is still vital.

Additionally, the scope will need some time to cooldown to the outside
temperature. I'm not sure what the mirror end of the XT8 looks like now, but
make sure plenty of air can get to the mirror. You may also want to put a
small fan to blow across the front of the mirror.

The useful magnification on any given night will be determined by
collimation, cooldown, seeing condition and optics quality.

Hope this helps.

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/
And the Lunar Picture of the Day http://www.lpod.org/
************************************

"Yoyoma_2" wrote in message
news:M4Afc.130111$Ig.99437@pd7tw2no...
Hey all,
My brother got the scope that was suggested to him (Orion XT8) by a web
form (i think you guys) on e-bay.

We went out scopin' last night and had a BLAST. Wow what a great scope,
so easy to set up. We are two complete beginners at telescopin' and
within literally 2 mins the scope was up and we had venus on the
viewfinder (pretty bright little sucker isn't it).

We also saw jupiter and saturn, we were looking through with a 9mm
eyepiece. He has a couple of other ones.

But when we tried to put a 2x barlow on, we couldn't really focus the
image. The image looked exactly like the y=|1/x| curb like kind of like
the old "Atari" simbole. We couldn't get it to focus properly. Any
idea what we did wrong? We tried the barlow with a weaker eyepiece also
and it did give us our 2x, but with the weaker eyepiece it was pretty
close to what we had with our 9mm.

Any idea what we were doing wrong?

Also i took a couple pictures holding up my Sony digital camera (2Mpix)
to the eyepiece. The pictures are a bit blurry but reasonable. Does
anyone have a better technique for doing this?

Thanks!

CLT wrote:
Hi,

With 1200mm focal length, a 9 mm will give 133x. With the barlow, that comes
out to 266x, which may have been pushing it with the seeing that night.
However I would also consider the collimation. I don't know how much you
know about collimation, but a good site is
http://skyandtelescope.com/howto/sco...icle_787_1.asp

Ah i see, thank you very much.

If you have any trouble, you can find a local astro club at
http://skyandtelescope.com/resources/organizations/ Then you can take your
scope to a public night and get some help on collimation. It takes a bit to
get the hang of it, but once you've walked through it a time or two, it all
starts to make sense. And at f/5.9, your scope is not as sensitive to
collimation issues as some are, but it is still vital.

The scope is really easy to use. (It's my brother's scope) but i think
we can get the hang of that quickly enough. Thanks for the URL.

Additionally, the scope will need some time to cooldown to the outside
temperature. I'm not sure what the mirror end of the XT8 looks like now, but
make sure plenty of air can get to the mirror. You may also want to put a
small fan to blow across the front of the mirror.

Yes actually it was in the trunk of the car, when we got it outside we
started looking around with it. But we tried the barlow at maby 2 hours
after we initially started looking, it was -5 out so maby that could
have affected the mirror. I don't know exactly how it works (need a
better optics background hehe). Although i'me starting to think that i
want a 'scope too and i should build one

The useful magnification on any given night will be determined by
collimation, cooldown, seeing condition and optics quality.

Hope this helps.

It does greatly, thank you!


Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/
And the Lunar Picture of the Day http://www.lpod.org/
************************************

"Yoyoma_2" wrote in message
news:M4Afc.130111$Ig.99437@pd7tw2no...

Hey all,
My brother got the scope that was suggested to him (Orion XT8) by a web
form (i think you guys) on e-bay.

We went out scopin' last night and had a BLAST. Wow what a great scope,
so easy to set up. We are two complete beginners at telescopin' and
within literally 2 mins the scope was up and we had venus on the
viewfinder (pretty bright little sucker isn't it).

We also saw jupiter and saturn, we were looking through with a 9mm
eyepiece. He has a couple of other ones.

But when we tried to put a 2x barlow on, we couldn't really focus the
image. The image looked exactly like the y=|1/x| curb like kind of like
the old "Atari" simbole. We couldn't get it to focus properly. Any
idea what we did wrong? We tried the barlow with a weaker eyepiece also
and it did give us our 2x, but with the weaker eyepiece it was pretty
close to what we had with our 9mm.

Any idea what we were doing wrong?

Also i took a couple pictures holding up my Sony digital camera (2Mpix)
to the eyepiece. The pictures are a bit blurry but reasonable. Does
anyone have a better technique for doing this?

Thanks!