If you are new to astronomy and are clueless as to how to use your telescope, rest assured, you are not alone. However, it’s really not that difficult learning how to use a telescope. It just takes a few adjustments and knowing what equipment your telescope has. You must be familiar with the pieces of the telescope and how each of them work. The rest is easy.
The first thing you will need to know in learning how to use a telescope is does your telescope have a polar axis or not. A polar axis is intended to track. A telescope without a polar axis is merely a point and look, or what is called Alt-Az. Alt means altitude and Az means azimuth, where Alt is the distance above the horizon, and Az is the direction in a circle around the horizon. If you have an Alt-Az mount, just skip the polar alignment step.
If you have a polar axis meaning that your telescope is intended to track the stars, then find north, and make sure the polar axis is approximately lined up in that direction. It does not have to be too accurate, but make […]
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At current estimates, the universe contains 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars! Backyard astronomy allows you to see some of these beautiful sites. A first telescope is always an amazing thing. You get to learn and see new things. As you read this article, discover more about buying your first telescope for backyard astronomy.
If you have never purchased a telescope in the past, then you are perhaps wondering how to buy telescopes. Even though telescopes are scientific instruments, there is nothing stopping you from buying your first time telescope and getting the most out of astronomy.
Before buying your first telescope, you will want to consider some things first. Ask yourself how much of an interest you have in astronomy. Obviously a bigger interest will mean that you can invest more into buying telescopes, than you would, if you simply want to touch upon astronomy.
Setting a budget of $200 to $500, you can expect to get good sights of objects such as our Moon, the planets, including Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Your first telescope can also allow you to see deep space objects, such as nebula, and other galaxies.
There are telescopes for sale with price tags of around $100 or less, but I strongly suggest […]
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Originally dubbed the Next Generation Space Telescope, what is now known today as the James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Scheduled to launch sometime in 2013, the Next Generation Space Telescope is being designed to be bigger and better than the Hubble with many more capabilities.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope. JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. It will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. The next generation in space telescopes will have instruments that are designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.
JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won’t fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once it is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.
When you […]
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