WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT TO SEE IN A DOBSONIAN TELESCOPE?

finally after a week and a half of clouds and rain it's clear tonight so I've taken out my adoption and we're going to see what we can see in a dovesonian telescope [Music] hello I'm Sula host of sula's Big Adventures and this episode is about what you can see in your dobsonian telescope I'm making this video at the request of one of the viewers Raymar sorry it's taken me so long dobsonian telescopes were invented by a monk in San Francisco named John Dobson and he learned how to grind his own mirrors for Newtonian reflector and he would use port windows for World War II ships that were abundant in San Francisco at that time and he would make his own mirrors for a Newtonian reflector and then he would put them in cheap too sometimes just cardboard and he would place the tube in a simple rocker base like this or Daisy wheel that just goes up and down and left and right his friends encouraged John Dobson to patent his idea but he wasn't interested in that he wanted to bring amateur astronomy to the general public and that's what he did he taught classes on how to grind a mirror for a Newtonian reflector and he would set up his telescopes on the sidewalks of San Francisco and let strangers look through them he did a lot to popularize amateur astronomy and now almost every telescope company carries a telescope that's in adoption dobsonian style dobsonians are the type of telescope most often recommended for beginners and the reason is that the telescopes are very cheap compared to other types of telescopes you get a lot of aperture size of the primary mirror for not very much money for example a six inch or 150 millimeter Sky Watcher dobsonian is only 390 dollars the Orion star blast four and a half inch or 115 millimeter telescope is 320 dollars and that's not much money for that much aperture and dobsonians don't require learning how to Polar line and they're very easy to use and set up and when you use it you have to um learn the sky you have to find everything yourself and so that makes you learn the sky and it's very easy to assemble when it comes in the mail you just put the base together and put the tube on there and that's about it and for all of those reasons dobsonian is the most recommended telescope for a beginner I think all amateur astronomers should own a dobsonian telescope before you get started you need to make sure your dobsonian is well collimated all Newtonian reflectors need to be collimated from time to time the other thing is that dobsonians since the mirror is at the back take a long time to cool down so be sure to give it plenty of time to cool down after you're done collimating then take out your collimation cap and put it in a safe place because you do need to check it from time to time put your armpiece back in next you need to line up your finder scope or your Red Dot finder with your telescope so point it at a distant object and it helps to have a eyepiece with crosshairs and get it dead center and then look through your finder scope and make adjustments to these screws until it's in the center of the finder scope or your Red Dot binder or both then once those are lined up and it's cooled down you're all ready to start now one thing you might want for your dobsonian is one of these this is a coma corrector all Newtonian reflectors suffer from coma which is where the stars on the perimeter of of what you're seeing through your eyepiece look like tadpoles or kind of curved and this will eliminate that so you might want to think about investing in a coma corrector but it's not necessary now we're all ready and waiting for Darkness to fall it's the end of spring and beginning of Summer so I've chosen some objects visible in late spring and early summer and one reason I've taken so long to make this video is that what you can see in your dobsonian depends on the size of the aperture of your primary mirror of your dobsonian to learn more about factors that affect what you can see in your telescope you can see my video on factors affecting what you can see in your telescope and I'll put the link below Ma dobsonian has a 10 inch aperture but I think that the classic size of a dobsonian is six inches or 150 millimeters my 10 inch dobsonian has almost three times as much light Gathering Power as a six inch top Sony and Telescope so I can see far more in my 10 inch dotsonian than in a six inch dobsonian and you can even get little table top dobsonians that are only four and a half inches and my dobsonian can gather over four times as much light as a four and a half inch topsonian telescope can so really what you can see in your dobsonian is very much a function of the aperture of your telescope regardless of whether it's a dobsonian a refractor or a cat dioptery telescope however I've selected some objects to view with my dobsonian that you should be able to see in a six inch dobsonian and even in a four and a half inch dobsonian the objects I've selected are mostly deep Sky objects Because deep Sky objects are what dobsonian telescopes excel at much more so than the planets while you do want the biggest aperture telescope you have to view the planets you also want a telescope that can get a high magnification and that requires a long focal length for that reason cata dioptric telescopes tend to be better for viewing the planets either a Schmidt cassegrain or a maxutoff casa grain telescope they're better for the planets than a dobsonian but for deep Sky objects the preferred telescope would be a dobsonian so other than Venus we won't be looking at any planets well there aren't any to look at anyway and Venus can be viewed with even a pair of binoculars but all the other objects are galaxies globular clusters nebulae and a couple of double Stars double Stars require telescopes that have enough resolving power to split the double stars or resolve them into their component parts and resolving power is solely a function of the aperture of your telescope but you should be able to split all the double stars that I've selected one more thing I want to mention before we get started is expectations you can see a lot with a six inch telescope but your expectations should be reasonable what you will see will not resemble in any way the photographs you may have seen of any of the objects I've selected those photographs are very long exposures of minutes at a time and there are many many of them all stacked together in special software to bring out details not visible to the human eye so depending on the size of the aperture of your telescope the things that you see might just be dust balls there's nothing wrong with that and part of the thrill is finding each object and also the thrill of even seeing these objects at all with your own eyes objects that are so incredibly far away that it's spectacular that we can even see them also regarding colors you probably won't see much color not for Galaxies anyway and maybe not for nebulae either unless you have a very large aperture telescope in which case you may see some colors blue or green or gray and double Stars you'll definitely see colors but nothing like the Astro photos that you may have seen on the Internet or on YouTube so keep that in mind and just enjoy the thrill of seeing other galaxies that are light years away and nebulae where Stars Are Born and beautiful double Stars okay enough lecturing let's get started okay I'm looking at Venus it looks like a round of cheese that somebody took a bite out of and it's very cool and you don't need a telescope nearly this big to see the phases of Venus and I'll have a 24 millimeter eyepiece in so not very high magnification to see the phases of Venus Mars is available it's next to Venus this is a very pretty lineup of the Crescent Moon Venus and Mars is to the left and above a little bit very pretty but Mars is pretty far away from us and it won't look like much in the dobsonium okay I'm looking at Mars as you can see it's not very dark it's 10 30. and I'm looking at Mars and it's very small I cannot make out any detail and it's not the fault of this stop Sony and it's just far away from us and Mars is hard unless it's at opposition so I'm not going to sketch it I'll sketch Venus where I'm not going to sketch pores because it'll just look like an orange Dot so now we're going to look at M65 m66 and and in GC 3628 those are three galaxies found in Leo the Lion known as the Leo triplet and it's pretty easy to find you find regulus the brightest star in the backward question mark or sickle the asterism and Leo and behind regulus is another bright star denebula and then there are two dimmer Stars between regulus and denebula and those two stars are Iota and churton and and M65 is in between Iota and churton and Iota and churton make a triangle with denebula so that's how you find it so I'm going to point my telescope I'm going to turn that light off to look for it be right back ugh look at this Dew on my telescope's terrible I got them in the telescope M65 is the brightest and it's kind of roundish m66 is a little more elongated and Below those two is a is the line that's in GC 3628 it's more like pencil shape but pretty easy to find better to look a little earlier in Spring than now it's pretty low and it doesn't get dark till late and Leo's gonna set um but that's an easy one to find and a good one for your dobsonian so let's go to the next object next we're going to look at some more galaxies M60 to M90 in the Virgo cluster of galaxies also known as markarian's chain and to find it we're going to go to denebula the tale of the Lion that we just looked at and we're going to find dark tourists go to the handle of the Big Dipper and from there you artarcturus and then you go down you speed the speaker speaker Arcturus and denebula make an equilateral triangle and we're going to start there once you've found those we need to look for a star in Virgo because these are in Virgo these galaxies to look for a star called vendamietrix then the metrics is a third magnitude star and it'll be inside that equilateral triangle you'll be able to see it and once you find vendametrics get that in your finder scope and once you have it in your finder scope you're not going to be able to see the Galaxy in your finder scope but you just want to get vendametrics in there and then you're going to move your telescope about four degrees toward denebula and North a little bit and you should come to M60 the the first of the galaxies and then you'll be able to go from that galaxy to the other ones all the way to M90 so I'll be right back while I dark adapt again and get venomatrix in there and then M60 I don't know if I mentioned it but then demetrix is about halfway between the nebula and Arcturus but lower if that helps and if you get it in the finder scope and put vendametrics in the lower left hand corner you might have M60 in the top corner of the telescope if that helps and then from M60 which is probably the brightest one I think uh it looks looks like a bright spot in the middle with the oval shaped patch around it then you go about another three degrees toward the nebula to get to M59 which is dimmer and then from there you keep moving towards the nebula to m58 and then you keep going and next you'll come to m89 which is um this is still a little bit dimmer than M60 and then lastly to M90 which is fairly bright patch and those are all part of markarian's chain and they're all in the Virgo cluster of galaxies now we'll look for another galaxy m64 the black eye Galaxy in coma baronisus to find the black guy Galaxy what you want to do is find our tours and then you'll see a star near it mufred and once you find mufred head towards vendomeatrix and you'll see a fourth magnitude star and that's Alpha Como bernesis put Alpha coma Bernice is in your finder scope in the Southeast corner of the finder and in the northwest corner should be an almost bright star 35 coma baronesses move the fonder the center that and you'll see a sixth and seventh magnitude star nearby and that's what you want to aim for because the Galaxy is near the seventh magnitude star okay I'm going to turn the light off and get dark adapted again and get it in my telescope the black eye Galaxy fine art tours and that store below it is mufred and you keep going south to that's vendamia tricks in the lower part of the screen and above it in the center of the screen is Alpha coma baronisis and then the black eye Galaxy is going towards my lot 111. and that's about all I can show you on here because it's hard to find I'm not gonna lie okay I'm not gonna lie to you and that is hard as hell to find m64 the black guy Galaxy I'd say it took me 30 minutes when I went in the house to get my eyes dark adapted and to warm up I looked at the temperature and it's 36 degrees it's the summer solstice for God's sake oh my God it's so cold out here anyway it's very cool if you couldn't find it I completely understand you should be able to find m53 though the globular cluster because it's just one degree away from the alpha star but the black eyed Galaxy my God was it hard to find but very cool very cool Galaxy now let's find something easy Cora corolli beautiful double star you just find okay the last star in the handle of the Big Dipper and go south the blue stars magnitude 2.8 I was going to say three and the yellow stars magnitude 5.5 is a beautiful double star and easy to find find M3 next thing we're going to look for a little Big Dipper to the handle okay then from there art to Arcturus that bright star in the center of the screen M3 is in between Arcturus and core curly core curly is the double star that was just below alcade that star in the middle so that's where we're gonna look Rollies on the right hand side of the screen in the center and Arcturus is on the left hand side of the screen in the center and in between there's where we'll find M3 okay you should have been able to find M3 beautiful globular cluster and kindness but not to see and I had a hard time finding it but that's because my finder scope is got due on it so I can only use the Red Dot finder not only is it 35 degrees but the humidity is 77 so conditions are not ideal but I've had cloudy for a week and a half so I'm gonna keep going for our next object we're going to look at a double star in booties ozar or it's a multiple star system but just find our tourists and then go North to another fairly bright star the next one and that will be Azar and then may not be able to see that it's a double star at the lowest magnification so raise your magnification until you can split it so there's Arcturus the bright star in the middle of the screen and just go north and that star in the center of the screen is Azar so for everything else we've looked at tonight I had been using this Tel Aviv 24 millimeter pan optic but I couldn't split as are so I put in this nine millimeter but the CN is horrific it's just awful but I could split it uh tonight they look they both looked White uh and one of them is smaller but I was able to split it now let's go to the next object which is a spectacular globular cluster the most spectacular globular cluster in the night sky M13 the Hercules cluster also known as the Keystone cluster it's in Hercules and it's easy to find you just find the Keystone or the trapezoid that makes up Hercules and in between the top of that trapezoid is M13 is closer to the one on the left and it's going to be high in the sky this time of year so let's have a look at M13 alrighty I have M13 in here it's spectacular but it's gonna look even better with this nine millimeter is very easy to find almost as easy as eyes are and so let me turn this light off and enjoy the Hercules cluster for a moment before we go to our next Target to find M5 you go to Corona Borealis the semi-circle and go below that and that will be serpents could put and the brightest star and serpents could put is a nuclei and M5 will be about four and a half degrees Southwest of a nuclei that's how you find it Well it's not quite a spectacular there's M13 but it's a beautiful object for the dobsonian and it's spectacular next we're going to look at our beautiful double star and Hercules Russell gethi it's the brightest star in Hercules and it's also going to be high in the sky and if you can see the Milky Way you want to go down towards the Milky Way and it's very close to the alpha star of ophiuchus so head Southwest until you see the brightest star of Hercules and that's wrestle get the Russell get the is not as bright as the alpha star of ophiuchus so I hope you got on the right one and as with most double Stars you will need to increase your magnification so I put in my nine millimeter and I was able to split it and see the color in it and it to me is red and green what color is it to you well whatever color it is it's beautiful now let's go to a double star in Lara the harp Epsilon lyrae the famous double double any telescope will show you the two stars but the trick is to split those two stars into two more stars so let's find it it's close to Vega the brightest star in Lara and they started Jody Foster went to in the movie contact it's very late it's 2 30. and so Lara's way overhead and had to get an arm on my hands and knees to get it in the Red Dot finder but I got the two stars in there so now go to your go to a higher magnification until you split those two stars in the two stars and if whatever magnification you go to doesn't split it and go to a higher magnification but you you should be able to split it with your dobsonian I mean they're tough they're they're close pairs but you should be able to split it I was able to split it with this nine millimeter pretty neat huh next we're going to go to something else in Lyra nearby the famous Ring Nebula M57 it's a planetary nebula and Lyra underneath Vega is a parallelogram and and you want to go to the lower set of two stars and M57 is in between those two stars so let's find Lyra go back to your low magnification okay I got the Ring Nebula in there and it's not real clear I've seen it better I I'm gonna see if I can see it a little better with the higher magnification but I can see a little bit of blue can you see some blue in it okay that looks a little better so try a little bit higher magnification and see if that helps okay next we're going to go to the Lagoon nebula M8 beautiful nebula that has a star cluster inside of it in Sagittarius okay I'll be right back wow it's spectacular I just love it defined it find cows Borealis which is the top of the teapot or the peak of the roof of the house and just go east about a fist length and you should be able to see it if you don't get stuck looking at a bunch of other star clusters on the way it's just beautiful spend a little time there before we go to our next two stops oh boy I've been going on and on about NGC 68 26 the planetary nebula in cygnus blinking planetary nebula and M57 maybe I'm not sure and M27 the dumbbell nebula and volpecula and then it turned out it's so darn cold out here to my microphone battery died a long time ago so there's no audio I have to cut all that so I think it's a pretty long video anyway so let's end on the Lagoon nebula that's an excellent object for a dobsonian telescope I hope you enjoyed it I'll see you soon until then get outside and enjoy the night sky Dark Skies forever Sula signing off

Channel: Tsula's Big Adventures

Views: 21,928

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Id: hlkUgbiF_-U

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023