How To Actually Use That Damn Telescope!

hey what's up guys this is gonna be a little bit different video I'm gonna be talking about telescopes the last five six days I spent pretty frustrated just learning how to use this damn thing and I knew it'd be a little difficult and I went into it you know knowing that it wasn't gonna be the easiest thing yeah it's been pretty fun and I really wish that a video that the video I'm making now would have existed and I would have found it six days ago because it would have you know it would have helped me out a lot so that's the goal of this video is just kind of for first-time users actually setting it up and using it all in one video everything I'm telling you you can find over the course of several videos and a lot of articles and it can be quite frustrating but the thing is is it's gonna take some practice to learn how to use this it's it's a skill it's gonna take some time you're not gonna be able to just set it up run outside and aim it up and all sensi glorious nebulas and the rings around Saturn and it's gonna take some time to really learn how to use it so know that and if you accept that then you can have a lot of fun with it there's five things you really need to know and you'll probably come across all five of those things in separate videos and I'm really hoping to cram them all into one you gotta get your finder scope which is this guy here it has to be aligned my first night out it wasn't aligned and it was just frustrating essentially it's very intuitive you're gonna want to do this in the daylight it's the easiest and you're gonna want to aim it at something that's solid and attached to the earth so don't do this with a star because they are moving through the sky and you're gonna want to do it something that's about a half a mile or more away usually people say that find a catchy top or a flagpole and essentially you're just gonna get that particular object lined up in your finder scope Center dead center in the finder scope and dead center in your eyepiece and use like a low powered eyepiece of course once you get that lined up they're both lined up Center then it's it's set up properly now what do you need to do is get it centered in your eyepiece and then go to your finder scope the screws that are holding it in place can be loosened and tightened in a way that can aim it in different directions it's not very easy to do and it takes a little time and it's a little frustrating but once you get them lined up it's gonna make everything a thousand times easier so do that in the daylight before it gets dark you don't have to be balanced you don't have to be polar aligned those are all things we're gonna get into so speaking of all those things the five things need to know is align your finder scope which is a big one ensure that your tripod is level we're going a little bit more detail about that make sure that your telescope is balanced know how to pull or align your telescope and then don't touch your telescope so we're gonna get it all five of those things hopefully as quickly as possible when we get out to where we're gonna set up where we're gonna use the telescope we need to do these next four steps every time our tripod needs to be level okay and then you're gonna have to take this heavy bastard off on this telescope you loosen this bottom bolt and you lift the Beast off the only way I've found that it's really useful for balancing this there are some videos that show you some clever ways to do it the only way I found is a good old level the level on my phone doesn't work very well you set it on there and you adjust the legs of the tripod until it's level in all directions it's really important or the polar alignment and everything won't work properly alright we've leveled the tripod the second thing we need to do is we need to balance the telescope so what that means is if we loosen these clutches this riotous sanction clutch and this declination which those works but I don't mean anything you they didn't to me five days ago but anyway essentially loosen everything so that the telescope can move freely and once we're polar aligned that's the only way we'll move the telescope on those two axes we will not move the the tripod around to aim it where we want you don't do that okay first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna use this counterweight to balance the tripod and as you can see it can move moves this way in this way we're just gonna lock the declination and we're just going to mess up the right ascension it only moves this direction essentially no matter where I put it we don't want it to move so with it loose I can put it in any spot and it stays level now if I were to put it in a spot and I started twisting this way I would move my weight up and down the shaft to level it I say level I mean balance all right so let's put this way up here if we do this you can see if I let go the tube wants to drop so we know that we need to bring this weight down I'm down here still not quite enough so essentially you want to get it in a spot where no matter where you put it it's gonna stay level and you see right there not super great so drop it down a little bit more and we're looking pretty level so we've leveled the right ascension axis we're going to twist it on a 90 degree angle and we're gonna balance the declination axis which is this one here and we're just gonna do the same thing just twist it and if it were rolling one way or another we would loosen these clamps and we would physically slide the tube up and down until it just was balanced as well and just stayed where we stayed where we put it so we've aligned our finer scope we've leveled the tripod we've balanced both axes of the telescope we're getting really close to actually being able to use the dang thing in order to track the stars as they move across the night sky you're going to constantly be moving the telescope you'll have these slow motion controls and I only have one down here but essentially you hook these up but one will go here or it can go on this side and the other one can go here they're extremely useful once you get locked in on a target you're gonna use these slow motion controls to track the star or the object through the sky and with this equatorial mount which I should have mentioned at the beginning this is all pertaining to an equatorial mount which is this type of mount the way the equatorial mount is designed is once you get polar aligned and set up and locked in on a target to follow that targets curve across the sky all you're gonna have to do is twist the right ascension slow motion control cable which will be hooked up over here and you just slowly turn that and it will just track the star it'll track it in the proper orientation as well the last thing we need to talk about is getting polar aligned so let's get polar aligned we've leveled we've balanced our finer scope is working we need to get polar aligned the telescope as we loosen this bolt here can rotate this way now remember I told you when we're looking at frog nice sky we're only gonna be rotating along these two axes so this is gonna be locked in once we get polar aligned we're gonna get this aiming directly north right at the North Star Polaris and we're going to get in the right ballpark if you look at this dial here it's got zero to 90 degrees set that at your longitude so search I'm in Salt Lake City so search Salt Lake City longitude and it will give you the degrees I meant around 40 degrees so if I loosen this guy and then adjust this guy it changes where I'm set and I essentially want to set that to about 40 degrees we're gonna change that to get lined up with the star that's gonna get us on the right spot so if you aim this guy north and you set this it the longitude of your location you're gonna be pretty much aimed right at the North Star already now we're gonna go into our finder scope and we're gonna look down and we're gonna get the North Star directly in the crosshairs but we're not gonna just any of the slow-motion controls or any of this stuff that's none of that is gonna be adjusted this is all set and centered and locked that's how we normally move throughout this guy but not what we're getting portal in we're gonna adjust by rotating here and adjusting how much we're looking up and down here so we're gonna find out we're gonna look at the North Star and we're gonna realize oh we're a little high so I'm gonna make this adjustment here we're gonna go up and down here and we're not gonna twist this that way and we're gonna move this back and forth and tell her right lined up with the North Star and a look at our eyepiece and we're it'll perfectly line up at the North Star then we're gonna lock this down we're gonna lock this down and we're pulling a line and we don't touch those adjustments ever again until after we've set up in a new location leave the tripod there you'll be amazed at how little how many of the videos you see about polar alignment don't mention that you can't touch anything after that cuz I got polar align my first time and then I wanted to aim it something behind me and I loosened this guy up and swung it around to aim at the things object behind me you can't do that it seems easy enough but you can't you got to keep that locked and keep this guy locked once you're in polar alignment so now we're level our finder scopes tuned we're balanced and we're polar aligned and now we can finally use the telescope so let's say we're locked pull our line we're gonna loosen our declination clutch and our right ascension and we're gonna move remember it should stay wherever we put it because it's balanced now we only have this axis here and this axis here so it's kind of hard to get it exactly where you want it but if you're clever enough you'll get there you can pair it in this way you can come around here and theoretically we should be able to aim him wherever we want now you can see that way over here it'd be really hard to look in this eyepiece so we can loosen these two clamps and rotate our entire tube to get things where they need to be just remember that might get a little out of balance you have to rebalance it back up so that's how you look around you're set up you're not gonna move that tripod you're not gonna gonna change your angle you're not gonna move anything except for these and then once you find it and you get locked in on the object all you're gonna have to do to track that object through the sky is adjust your right ascension knob so you'll be watching it and you'll just be slowly turning that right ascension slow motion control which looks just like this but would be hooked up on the right side and it's gonna track the motion of that star through the sky and once you get it set up it's pretty cool it seems like a lot it seems like a pain in the ass and it kind of is but it's really cool once it works I was gonna go into these setting circles a little bit but I don't have a goddamn clue how they work I've watched a few videos and none of them really make sense supposedly they help you find objects in the sky but I don't really know how to set them up I thought I did I thought one sized polar aligned I put this guy on zero and then I would be able to find objects in the sky it hasn't been working out so maybe I'll get back to you on that I really hope this video didn't make you more confused it's really designed to just say hey these are the five main things you got to do for this to work and if you do I'm gonna work if you want more information on how to do it more precisely there's lots of videos and you can go to those five things but even if somebody would have just told me hey make sure you know how to do these five things before you go out that would have been nice some kind of direction but it's been about five six nights and I'm finally getting it to the point where I can start tracking some stuff so I might stay up all night to try and see Jupiter it's supposed to come up tonight so thanks for watching if I really get into this hobby I'm sure there will be more videos to come have a good one

Channel: Dean Hansen

Views: 445,541

Rating: 4.9111981 out of 5

Keywords: How to use a telescope for beginners, equatorial mount setup, first time, level a tripod, balance a telescope, how to, dean hansen, align a finderscope, finder-scope, finder scope, celestron, power seeker 127 eq, first use, polar align, find objects in the night sky, reflector telescope, basic, easy, fast, setup, properly use, aim, track objects, north star

Id: eoZyR7U8cuo

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 01 2018