galaxy and several others in your
telescope. They will appear as small,
fuzzy clouds. Only very large telescope
will reveal spiral or elliptical details.
You will also be able to see some nebulas
with your scope. Nebula means cloud. Most
nebulas are clouds of gas. The two easiest
to see in the Northern Hemisphere are the
Orion nebula during the winter and the Triffid
nebula during the summer. These are large
clouds of gas in which new stars are being
born. Some nebulas are the remains of
stars exploding. These explosions are called
supernovas.
you may not see many features on the
surface of Saturn, its ring structure will steal
your breath away. You will probably be able
to see a black opening in the rings, known as
the Cassini band.
Saturn is not the only planet that has rings,
but it is the only set of rings that can be seen
with a small telescope. Jupiter’s rings cannot
be seen from Earth at all—the Voyager
spacecraft discovered the ring after it passed
Jupiter and looked back at it. It turns out, only
with the sunlight shining through them, can
the rings be seen. Uranus and Neptune also
have faint rings.
Optional color filters help bring out detail and
contrast of the planets. Meade offers a line of
inexpensive color filters.
What’s Next? Beyond the Solar System:
Once you have observed our own system of
planets, it’s time to really travel far from home
and look at stars and other objects.
You can observe thousands of stars with
your telescope. At first, you may think stars
are just pinpoints of light and aren’t very
interesting. But look again. There is much
information that is revealed in stars.
The first thing you will notice is that not all
stars are the same colors. See if you can find
blue, orange, yellow, white and red stars. The
color of stars sometimes can tell you about
the age of a star and the temperature that
they burn at.
Other stars to look for are multiple stars.
Very often, you can find double (or binary)
stars, stars that are very close together.
These stars orbit each other. What do you
notice about these stars? Are they different
colors? Does one seem brighter than
the other?
Almost all the stars you can see in the
sky are part of our galaxy. A galaxy is a
large grouping of stars, containing millions
or even billions of stars. Some galaxies form
a spiral (like our galaxy, the Milky Way) and
other galaxies look more like a large football
and are called elliptical galaxies. There are
many galaxies that are irregularly shaped
and are thought to have been pulled apart
because they passed too close to—or even
through—a larger galaxy.
You may be able to see the Andromeda
Fig. 10
eyepiece
barlow
Looking at or near the
Sun
will cause
irreversable
damage to your eye. Do not point this telescope at or near the Sun. Do not look through the telescope as it is moving.
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