Dipper” connecting the handle to the “dipper”. If you cannot
see Megrez, then you have fog, haze, clouds, smog, light
pollution or other conditions that are hindering your viewing
(Figure 13).
C. Cooling the Telescope
All optical instruments need time to reach “thermal equilib‑
rium” to achieve maximum stability of the lenses and mirrors,
which is essential for peak performance. When moved from a
warm indoor location outside to cooler air (or vice‑versa), a
telescope needs time to cool to the outdoor temperature. The
bigger the instrument and the larger the temperature change,
the more time will be needed.
Allow at least 30 minutes for your SkyView Pro 127mm EQ
to equilibrate. If the scope has more than a 40° temperature
adjustment, allow an hour or more. In the winter, storing the tele‑
scope outdoors in a shed or garage greatly reduces the amount
of time needed for the optics to stabilize. It also is a good idea to
keep the scope covered until the Sun sets so the tube does not
heat greatly above the temperature of the outside air.
D. Let Your Eyes DarkAdapt
Do not expect to go from a lighted house into the darkness of
the outdoors at night and immediately see faint nebulas, gal‑
axies, and star clusters‑ or even very many stars, for that mat‑
ter. Your eyes take about 30 minutes to reach perhaps 80%
of their full dark‑adapted sensitivity. Many observers notice
improvements after several hours of total darkness. As your
eyes become dark‑adapted, more stars will glimmer into view
and you will be able to see fainter details in objects you view
in your telescope. Exposing your eyes to very bright daylight
for extended periods of time can adversely affect your night
vision for days. So give yourself at least a little while to get
used to the dark before you begin observing.
To see what you are doing in the darkness, use a red‑filtered
flashlight rather than a white light. Red light does not spoil
your eyes’ dark adaptation like white light does. A flashlight
with a red LED light is ideal, or you can cover the front of a
regular incandescent flashlight with red cellophane or paper.
Beware, too, that nearby porch and streetlights and automo‑
bile headlights will spoil your night vision.
Eyepiece selection
By using eyepieces of varying focal lengths, it is possible to
attain many magnifications with the SkyView Pro 127mm EQ.
The telescope comes with two high‑quality Sirius Plössl eye‑
pieces: a 25mm, which gives a magnification of 62x, and a
10mm, which gives a magnification of 154x. Other eyepieces
can be used to achieve higher or lower powers. It is quite com‑
mon for an observer to own five or more eyepieces to access
a wide range of magnifications. This allows the observer to
choose the best eyepiece to use depending on the object
being viewed. At least to begin with, the two supplied eye‑
pieces will suffice nicely.
Whatever you choose to view, always start by inserting your
lowest power (longest focal length) eyepiece to locate and
center the object. Low magnification yields a wide field of
view, which shows a larger area of sky in the eyepiece. This
makes acquiring and centering an object much easier. If you
try to find and center objects with high power (narrow field of
view), it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack!
Once you’ve centered the object in the eyepiece, you can
switch to higher magnification (shorter focal length eyepiece),
if you wish. This is especially recommended for small and
bright objects, like planets and double stars. The Moon also
takes higher magnifications well.
Deep‑sky objects, however, typically look better at medium
or low magnifications. This is because many of them are
quite faint, yet have some extent (apparent width). Deep‑sky
objects will often disappear at higher magnifications, since
greater magnification inherently yields dimmer images. This
is not the case for all deep‑sky objects, however. Many galax‑
ies are quite small, yet are somewhat bright, so higher power
may show more detail.
The best rule of thumb with eyepiece selection is to start with
a low power, wide field, and then work your way up in magnifi‑
cation. If the object looks better, try an even higher magnifica‑
tion. If the object looks worse, then back off the magnification
a little by using a lower power eyepiece.
What to Expect
So what will you see with your telescope? You should be able
to see bands on Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, craters on the
moon, the waxing and waning of Venus, and possibly hun‑
dreds of deep sky objects. Do not expect to see as much color
as you in NASA photos, since those are taken with long‑expo‑
sure cameras and have “false color” added. Our eyes are not
sensitive enough to see color in deep‑sky objects except in a
few of the brightest ones.
Remember that you are seeing these objects using your own
telescope with your own eyes! The object you see in your
eyepiece is in real‑time, and not some conveniently provided
image from an expensive space probe. Each session with
your telescope will be a learning experience. Each time you
work with your telescope it will get easier to use, and stellar
objects will become easier to find. Take it from us, there is
big difference between looking at a well‑made full‑color NASA
image of a deep‑sky object in a lit room during the daytime,
12
Figure 13.
Megrez connects the Big Dipper’s handle to it’s “pan”.
It is a good guide to how conditions are. If you can not see Megrez
(a 3.4 mag star) then conditions are poor.
