Telescopes 101 How to Get Started and Avoid Hobby Killers - Presented By Celestron

Discover the night sky's secrets and sidestep the amateur astronomer's blunders with Dave from Cosmos Safari and  Rob the Last Minute Astronomer. In this latest podcast episode, Dave and Rob unfold a treasure map of knowledge, pointing the way to stellar success. Whether you're a seasoned star chaser or your telescopic journey is just beginning, the shared insights and personal stories in this podcast will illuminate the path, highlighting the power of preparation and the benefits of tapping into the collective wisdom found within local astronomy clubs.

Journey through time with us as Dave and Rob trace the evolution of the tools that bring the heavens within our grasp. From the revolutionary refractor telescope to the innovative Origin Telescope, we discuss how each leap in technology widened our window into the cosmos. The conversation also reveals how the familiar tech in your pocket may be all you need to start capturing the majesty of the night sky today. With Dave's expertise, you'll learn how advancements like the Origin Telescope are not just enhancing our view but making astronomy more accessible than ever.

As our cosmic conversation draws to a close, Dave and Rob leave you with pearls of wisdom for optimizing your stargazing experience. Embrace the dark—both in the sky and in your vision—for a deeper appreciation of the universe's grandeur. Plus, don't miss Dave and Rob's exciting anecdotes from dark sky sites and the basics of astrophotography that'll have you reaching for your camera.

Cosmos Safari's monthly episodes are your ongoing ticket to the stars, so join us every third Tuesday, and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share, keeping our community of celestial enthusiasts ever-expanding.

A Special Thanks to Will Young at https://www.deepskydude.com/ for the right to use his awesome music. 

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Check out the video version of this podcast on the Cosmos Safari YouTube Channel www.youtube.com/c/cosmossafari

Transcript

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 0:00

I'm Dave from Cosmos Safari.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 0:01

And I'm Rob, the Last Minute Astronomer Welcome new amateur astronomers into the hobby. We want to revisit the mistakes that we made and talk about the various hobby killers that some people get tripped up in and how to avoid those types of potholes.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 0:17

Yeah, I think this is going to be a really important episode to listen into, no matter what level you're at, because sometimes it's important just to kind of reflect on where you've been and how much progress you've made. So, even if you're someone who has listened to, you know a lot of things and you've read a lot of things and you you know you're pretty advanced at this point. Sometimes it's good to just reflect on how much you have grown. So, whether you're at the very beginnings of your journey in astronomy or whether you're very happy with where you're at in astronomy and you've been successful, this might be a great podcast to kind of just think about.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 0:57

Yeah, we all start somewhere and I've made my fair share of mistakes over the years. I've been frustrated quite a bit over the years at times and in the end it's a journey that we just all have to go through. But if we can help you in any way, we'd like to do that with this podcast. Try to learn from our mistakes and maybe we can help you out. Make sure you get the advancement you'd like in the hobby.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 1:24

Dave, I know one of the things I love to do with the astronomy is to try to help other people get into the hobby, because you know you can get somebody in the hobby but then they sort of get lost and there are some pitfalls and such. So in the spirit of trying to help people get in the hobby and stick with the hobby, what was your big success? Like what helped you actually get started and continue going?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 1:49

So one of the most important things that I did early on is I somehow heard about a local astronomy club that met at our library and I went to the library on one of their nights, where they were just having a discussion, and met some people that became very, very good friends over the years, one of which, lane Davis, helped me to get into astrophotography, and also the other is you, and together we were learning this.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 2:26

You know the process of how to use a telescope from people that had been doing it for many, many, many years, and their knowledge and their willingness to help us was, I think, the most important thing for me. To have that individual, that local person that knew their stuff. You know we ended up finding ourselves in these roles as kind of like leaders of the club, but that's because of how much it helped us. I think it really was a reflection upon, like the club itself, as to how important these types of organizations are, and I highly encourage anybody who's interested in astronomy and is just getting started. The first step is go to a local astronomy club and introduce yourself and be OK with the fact that they're going to know a lot, and try to find that person in the club that's willing to help you at your level.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 3:28

They might want to tell you more than you want to know. So make sure you ask targeted questions.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 3:35

So even within the club there's oftentimes a group of people who are more into the actual observational astronomy with telescopes and there's other people who are more like just interested in the astronomy as a topic. So if your interest is in telescopes and observing, you want to make sure that you're kind of involving yourself in any outings that they have. Oftentimes they'll have little get togethers with the telescopes and when you're out there you can look through a bunch of different types of telescopes too, which is kind of nice. You don't even have to own one yet and I think for me that was one of the important things is I look through other people's scopes to kind of get an understanding of what, what progression you know, should I be doing and where are my interests and what, what is too big to carry around, and listen to those people. And it really does help to try to go out and do the actual observations before you make a purchase, I think.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 4:40

Yeah, yeah, and every club runs differently. And even from time to time, yeah, yeah, and every club runs differently. And even from time to time I remember in our club like there were times when we were more outreach focused and times when we were more astronomy talk focused and times when we were more. I remember one of the best parts was one of the members of our club I had.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 5:10

Let's see, my wife bought me a membership into the club as a Christmas present after I had to start teaching and I was like, hey, you know, I'm getting this grant soon and I'd like to buy a telescope and the right equipment with this grant for my school and I don't know what I'm doing. Like, help me, tom, help me do this. Okay, and he asked me what am I looking for? How much money do I have? And I think that was probably the best part for him. He's like, ooh, he's got this much money. Here's an engineering problem. How can I get him the best stuff and give him the right stuff? And I still have that equipment to this day and it still works and I am always grateful to Tom for that. Aside from the clubs, you know the clubs help us out and you have people to talk to. What kinds of problems did you face, like what hurdles did you have to get over? What frustrations did you find that kind of nudged you away from it a little bit?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 6:30

I think the biggest mistake that I made early on was trying to go out while it was already dark instead of getting outside before it got dark and getting things set up while there was still daylight. Especially when it comes to focusing the telescope if it's out of focus significantly and you don't have a bright object to look at, um, it's, it's challenging. The same goes for your finder scope. That should also be done during the daytime. So find something at least a hundred feet away, um, try to get that object in focus in your telescope.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 7:04

I I oftentimes go for things that are clearly like one shape, so like the top of a telephone pole, for example, like there's only one way to look at it, versus like trees with leaves or something that are all you don't know exactly where you're looking. And this way you have your telescope in focus and also on the object, and then you can move your finder scope to that same place with the little knobs on the finder scope and get it all aligned so that once nighttime comes, you can use your finder scope. Because if you don't have a finder scope, good luck Right.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 7:45

It's tough. I remember many, many nights I'd be, I pointed at the right spot and I think it's in the right spot, and then I'm like just sort of like going like left up, right down, left a little more up, a little more right, a little more, and it does not work that, yeah, that finder scopeer scope is absolutely key. In fact, what I do have is I do have a list of hobby killers and I'm wondering I'll tell you what I rank them. You give me something that you think is a hobby killer in astronomy and I'll tell you where I ranked that, if I ranked it.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 8:29

The first one. I think the one that becomes the most frustrating to me, even as someone who's trying to help others who are just getting started, is low quality tripods, that the tripods are not of a high quality. They're shaky and they break easily, and I oftentimes get people who are feeling like somehow it's their fault that it's not working properly and they start to think they're doing something wrong. And the reality is is that the tripod that they have is not significant enough to be able to hold the telescope in place.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 9:12

Right right.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 9:13

And the adjustment knobs on it are confusing and difficult to use and inaccurate.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 9:20

Yes, I would agree. I put that as number two, the bad mount, right? I mean, I've had plenty of people donate me telescopes right to the school and they come in and it's almost always one of the worst types of mounts. Like you said, it's the shaky ones, so ones with the knobs that you have to twist. I never quite got a handle of those knobs that you have to twist. I never quite got a handle of those. And yeah, it just. It's really frustrating because you just breathe on it wrong and the moon is fluttering through your eyepiece.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 9:52

You mentioned, tom, who also was the person who helped me from our local astronomy club, and he actually takes these telescopes that have poor quality tripods and mounts and he creates a Dobsonian out of them, which he did for me One of the telescopes that I also had donated to the planetarium. I told him, I said this thing's hard to use and he said give it to me and I'll see what I can do. And within a few weeks he called me back up and he said hey, I have it, you know. Within a few weeks he called me back up and he said hey, I have it, you know, set up for you. And I got there and he had made out of wood a base for it that was extremely sturdy and my love of Dobsonians came pretty quickly as it was now easy to use. You know, you just kind of push it where it goes. Once it gets there. It doesn't move a whole lot without you wanting it to, and it just made it intuitive.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 10:51

So, yep, bad, mount is number two. Let's see, you did talk about the finder scope right, and how you want to set it up during the daytime, so that whatever is in the finder is in your telescope during the daytime. So you're looking in the right spot. I find that with whenever I send one home people who use it, they just like that is a big key, because if you can't put it in the scope, it's not going to help you.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 11:18

When we get back from this short break. Rob challenges Dave with another round of last minute trivia.

Andrea Worshill - Celestron: 11:23

Rob challenges Dave with another round of last-minute trivia Unlock the power of your smartphone to help you navigate the sky with Celestron StarSense Explorer. The telescope works with your phone, using patented sky recognition technology to pinpoint its exact position in the night sky. Select an object to view and follow the on-screen arrows. The bullseye turns green when your object is visible in the eyepiece. It's astronomy made simple. Learn more at Celestroncom slash explore.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 11:57

Can I interest you in another bit of trivia?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 12:00

I did pretty well in the last one, so I will say yes, but I have a feeling you're going to turn up the heat on me.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 12:07

Yes, I am, we've talked about the first telescope, right, it was a refractor invented by Hans Lipperhey or Zachariah Janssen or Jacob Mettius, depending on how you read the history. Jacob Medius, depending on how you read the history. But my question now is when was the first reflector created?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 12:32

I know it was Isaac Newton.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 12:39

I thought you would know it was Isaac Newton.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 12:41

That's why I didn't ask that. I asked when. To try to get you, I want to say the, I want to say the mid-1700s. Final answer.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 12:54

Yes, no, I'm sorry, 1668. Hmm, yes, but you were right, it was Isaac Newton, and he was trying to get rid of the chromatic aberration that was going on with the refractors. Right, because it's going through glass, uh, the spectrum. Just look at a pink floyd album, dark side of the moon. You know, the light comes in and it sort of splits a little bit because of different angles of refraction, and so you get a little red on one side and a little blue on the other side chromatic aberration, and that was common in the refractors. And you know, fun fact about this, once Isaac Newton introduced the reflector, he was immediately elected to the Royal Society of London. Of course, like it was that big of a deal, right, yeah, yeah, calculus, nah, but a telescope, nice, yeah, they got him in. And in fact John Hadley further improved it by using a parabolic curve instead of a spherical curve. And that happened about 50 years later, which is about the time period you were. You guessed so okay, but, but yeah, isaac Newton, good job.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 14:15

You know, I always found it interesting because Isaac Newton and Galileo never actually lived at the same time. Isaac Newton was pretty much like, right after Galileo died was when.

Lance Lucero - Celestron: 14:30

Isaac.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 14:31

Newton was born, and I always find it interesting because, in a lot of ways, isaac Newton carried on the work of Galileo. I mean, galileo was doing work with motion of Galileo. I mean, galileo was doing work with motion Uh, he was rolling balls down ramps trying to calculate things, and his insights on physics, uh, were really the the foundation for Isaac Newton's work. Um, in some ways, I almost feel like Isaac Newton is like Galileo 2.0. Like he wasn't done. He just wanted to finish his job and he had to get a whole second life to do it and he lived through Isaac.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 15:13

Newton. It just feels like that sometimes with the amazing work that both of those uh folks did. When you get into those reflectors, the kind of important thing to keep in mind is almost all of our modern observatory class telescopes. They're all mirrors, almost all are mirrors, and there's a good reason for that, and that's because you can support it from underneath. You can do that with a lens, and when you get to very large sizes, not only does it become very heavy and very expensive, it also sags under its own weight. You know you think of glass as something that is solid, but it does have tendencies to sag, and so when you've got that big lens you know I think we talked about 43 inches was our podcast trivia- last time, yeah, I think so.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 16:09

Largest of all of the different lenses ever created. Any bigger than that, it starts to sag and it no longer can hold its optical shape. Because you have to move the telescope at different orientations, and so you can't even design it to be sagging in one particular location, because as soon as you change the orientation of the scope to look at a different place in the sky, the whole lens shifts as well.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 16:38

Exactly, yeah, so that invention by Isaac Newton.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 16:42

Not only did it get rid of chromatic aberration, it also was what permitted us to build these enormous telescopes that we see today.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 16:50

Yeah, yeah, Just a huge, huge step forward. Now there was another step forward Four years later. This is your second one. Four years later, in 1672,. What kind of telescope was invented?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 17:07

I thought the first one was a Newtonian reflector.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 17:10

Yeah, so you had the refractor with Galileo and Lipperhey, you have the reflector with Newton, and then four years 1672. What's the next kind?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 17:22

A folded optics Like includes both lenses and mirrors. Like, almost like a Schmidt-Cassegrain, but maybe a slightly different design.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 17:33

I'm going to give you half a point on that. 1672, the Cassegrain was invented. So you had the reflector, but you had a small convex secondary mirror to reflect the light back down through a hole in the main mirror Right, so not quite so basically the SCT. Yeah.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 17:53

I did not look. The Schmitt corrector is the glass at the front. Right, right, and it did not have that, but it did have the Casagrain focus down below through the mirror, so there's a hole in the center of the mirror. What that does is effectively folds the light right and increases your overall focal length by quite a bit correct nice, nicely done, not bad, not bad.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 18:21

How do you feel about that round?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 18:23

uh, not quite as good as the first one.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 18:27

I don't blame you. I had to look all that stuff up anyway.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 18:30

When we get back from this short break, Rob and Dave talk about the future of beginner astrophotography.

Lance Lucero - Celestron: 18:39

Introducing Celestron Origin stargazing and astroimaging redefined Origin is completely autonomous. Simply choose a target in the app. Origin captures it with ultra-fast Rasa optics, perfects it with AI imaging processing and delivers it to your device. The results are better than what you'd see in a much larger telescope under much darker skies. Experience and share the night sky like never before. Learn more at Celestroncom slash origin.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 19:09

Let me tell you a little bit about my favorite telescope. Okay now, my favorite telescope like we said, the best telescope is the one that you're going to use, and the telescope that I have used the most is my DSLR camera. That's just my thing. I do love the telescopes and I like taking pictures through telescopes, but just using DSLR camera that's the one that I use the most because I can take that out anywhere and get good pictures. It's essentially a telescope, right, but it's just easier to use Digital. It's all automatic, like just instant gratification.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 19:55

You know, all I had to do was learn about ISO and shutter speed and f-stops, Shutter Speed and F-Stops, and there I really have a really good start to actually taking good pictures of the night sky. So that's really been my favorite. In deep, where you are and have been, Dave, where you're really stacking, you're taking tons of pictures and stacking them up and adjusting in Photoshop. I don't know just me, I don't have the patience for that, but I have always enjoyed having my DSLR camera out there and just being able to take pictures of anything whenever I want to, and that's about as deep as I've really gone. Dave, tell us more about what you've done with telescopes and cameras, because I find it really interesting.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 20:56

Well, before we get into the weeds with that, I think I want to try to keep this the astronomy 101 here.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 21:05

Personally, I think you know having a DSLR is is great and all but you. Most people have a cell phone in their pocket and a lot of these modern cell phones are capable of some pretty cool things with their night modes and you can also get an adapter for your scope and you can place your you know phone up to the eyepiece for mostly for bright objects like the moon or planets. But I have a feeling that as we continue to see cell phone camera technology improving and as as as software on cameras uh, for your phone get better as well, I think we're going to start to see that the results that we're going to be able to get as, uh, amateur astronomers, even if they're just getting started, through the eyepiece to your camera is going to be improving and it's already pretty good. So, oh yeah, for me, I think that to first start off with that is where you really want to be, and you mean starting off learning this stuff through the phone.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 22:20

Is that what you're saying?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 22:21

I think the phone is the right step.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 22:23

yeah, because, because you already know it is.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 22:26

Yes, Most people have them already. Yeah, I don't necessarily think that the DSLR is the right choice. Personally, I think there are other options out there that are significantly better. I feel like it's a sidestep and if it's something you already own, by all means you should be using it. But I wouldn't recommend going out and buying a DSLR for the purpose of doing astronomy at this point, because there are so many great options that are out there now and they're only going to get to be more and more affordable. And you know, we just talked about Origin in the last podcast, the usability and just set it up and it starts doing the imaging for you that technology is only going to become more mainstream in the years to come. So I think that it traditionally was a pathway of going through a DSLR, but I don't see it as being something that's going to really be as prominent in the future.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 23:35

Yeah, I can see that fading away. Yeah, I think I think it'll get better and better. I don't think it's going to fade away that quickly, because I think there still is, because as as the sensors in the phones get better, the sensors in the cameras also get better. Now they might be getting diminishing returns as they go, but I don't know of, get a telescope that you're going to use, right, and just have fun with what you got and what you can afford and really use what you have to the max is my opinion.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 24:13

Join Dave as he gets first light with the Origin Telescope in this month's InCocus product spotlight. So I'm out here in my backyard and right behind me you can see the constellation of Orion, the Hunter, and I'm about to take the brand new Celestron Origin telescope out here, which is a home observatory. Effectively, I can just pull it outside and within a few seconds I should have it up and running and imaging I'm going to be trying for the Orion Nebula. I also might look at the Horsehead Nebula while I'm here in the Orion area. I'm going to go grab my iPad and we're going to try to connect through my home's Wi-Fi system. I'm going to then head inside to the studio and we're going to try to run it from my TV.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 25:05

Currently sitting in the studio and I'm enjoying a beautiful image directly from the origin, which is outside right now. We've got about 2,300 or so seconds of exposure and you can see, know, the great Orion nebula. Here. Some of those brighter stars are notoriously difficult to actually image because you not only have the bright stars but you also have faint nebulosity here, some faint nebulosity over here in these stars, and so to be able to show this level of sophistication in the way that the images are being processed and taken, especially when you account for what I'm seeing here on my ipad screen, this image is not something that I truly expected to see. In the time that I have allotted. We can do some editing right here within the app. Oh, that's nice, so I'll change some of the brightness settings here. Okay, the contrast settings? Oh, I don't like that settings. I don't like that. That's pushing it too much. So you got to find a happy medium. One thing to try not to do is that you don't need to make outer space completely black. That's one of the biggest things that people who are just getting started with imaging try way too hard to make the sky black, and by doing that you're effectively chopping off a huge amount of the darker data. There's my live view. So with the live view, you get a sense as to how this whole process starts.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 27:02

Man, I really wanted to take a look at the Horsehead Nebula, and this is the beauty of Origin is. I can just kind of come over here, select it, center it, and once it's centered, I can do a live view. I can stack for a little bit. It's outside, connected. I'm warm. Let's take a look. Doesn't look like much. Let's start imaging. See what happens. It looks like just stars. I don't see any indication that there's anything here. I'm starting to make out some faint images here on my iPad screen images here on my iPad screen.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 27:49

It's going to take some time for this image to come out and be visible like what we saw with the Orion Nebula, but this is one I've actually wanted to image for a very, very long time and I've never actually done it, and I just did it because I wanted to. I just decided, okay, that's when I want to see quick before I move on. And now I've got an image of the Horsehead Nebula I've never gotten. The productivity that this provides me is worth the sacrifice of all of those years of challenging work that I tried and tried to do astrophotography. But this is just next level.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 28:27

I've been imaging the Markarian's chain now for over half an hour. However, it's impressive nonetheless. I want to try out something different, so I'm going to just download and save the Markarian's chain image. So what I'd like to do now is I would like to actually schedule a number of things to be imaged throughout the rest of the evening, and tomorrow morning I'll wake up and I'll retrieve the scope. So this is me signing off for the night and we will see in the morning.

Lance Lucero - Celestron: 29:27

The Thank you.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 30:09

Can you tell me a little bit more about you? Know what? What matters to you when you're picking an eyepiece, just at at the scope, and when you're picking one buying, picking one out when you're buying one.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 30:21

So when I went to start to get some additional eyepieces not just the ones that came with the telescope, but I was specifically going out looking to buy an eyepiece One of the first things I did is I looked through other people's scopes with their eyepieces and one night, I remember I was at a local dark sky site and I asked one of my friends from my astronomy club if I could borrow one of their eyepieces and put it into my scope. And as soon as I put that eyepiece in, put my eye up to it, it was completely different. It was like having a brand new telescope, because the optical system is only as good as its least performing piece and if that is the eyepiece and it doesn't matter how good of a telescope you have if you put a poor quality eyepiece in it, you're going to get poor quality results and that taught me in that moment that an eyepiece needs to be part of your budget. And one of the things that I've found over the years is important to me is something called eye relief the ability to have your eye not be directly up against the eyepiece to give you some distance. And the reason is because I wear glasses and I have an astigmatism. You don't technically have to wear glasses to look through a telescope if you do not have an astigmatism, because you can focus with the actual focuser and you can correct for any normal vision. What you cannot correct for is the misshapen eyeball, which is what an astigmatism is.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 32:07

Glasses can and you can get a special lens to place over some of the eyepieces that are out there, uh, but that stays. You know the same if your prescription changes you're going to have to get a new one. You know you're going to get new glasses. So having that extra eye relief allows you to wear your glasses, which is nice. Um, also, it's just more comfortable when you're out there viewing to have that extra, you know, eye distance because you have the little cup that covers up your eye and that cup kind of blocks the light out and it's just a much better feel than having your eye like straight up against the glass trying to see through it. So eye relief is important. The other thing is the actual size of the opening. A lot of the ones you get from, you know, the manufacturers. When you buy a telescope, initially the eyepiece is actually a fairly small little thing and then most of the manufacturers have upgradable eyepieces and they're much larger and easier to look through. Especially with kids, it's a lot easier for them to focus their eye when there's a bigger opening Right.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 33:26

And the last thing to look at is and this is kind of specific to deep sky is the apparent field of view.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 33:36

So with a deep sky object, one of the things that you should always consider is that you don't really need or want necessarily to be zoomed in, and so for that you know you want a higher millimeter eyepiece which will give you a wider field of view. But then within the eyepiece itself there's this apparent field of view which is like kind of like how much of a range of vision you have, and with a very wide field of view it almost feels like you're looking through a portal, like out a window of a spaceship. It's it's a much different experience. Other eyepieces are better for you know, more like planetary, where the object is very small and bright, and there you want to be more zoomed in. So you want a low millimeter eyepiece where the apparent field of view isn't quite as important as it would be with the deep sky object, because you're trying to focus on something that's very small and in the center of the eyepiece right you know, and so it depends once again what you're trying to accomplish.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 34:41

if you're trying to look at planets, you want to have a planetary setup, you want to have eyepieces that are specific to that, and if you are going deep sky, you're going to want to have more of those wide field versions of the eyepiece. And then there's some in between where you know kind of a hybrid middle ground.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 35:07

What would you say about between the one and a quarter inch or the two inch? Which ones do you typically prefer?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 35:15

I personally want my telescopes to include the two inch eyepiece whenever possible. I have had a number of two inch eyepieces and one and a quarter inch eyepieces over the years and I've seen good quality in both one and a quarter inch eyepieces over the years and I've seen good quality in both. So I wouldn't say that that is necessarily a you know deal breaker. If it's a one and a quarter inch eyepiece, don't guarantee that that's going to necessarily give you better views than a two inch. But I would like my telescopes to have that option. It just opens up more doors. You can always put something in to make it smaller and adapt it to the one and a quarter inch.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 35:58

Not even just the knowledge of the eye pieces. You want one that fits you and you're observing. But I find that just knowing what to do and how to operate the telescope, but more particularly like one of the things we hear a lot, is I'm looking through this telescope and I can't see anything Like what is going on.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 36:20

Right, and we've already talked about some of that. Right, some of it is you have to have it actually looking at something, so line up your finder scope. You have to have it in focus, right, but then you know what are. What are some of the other things that you find people get frustrated with? This is number three on my list just knowledge of the night sky and how the telescope works. What do you think gets people tripped up the most?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 36:57

the most. Well, when you look through a telescope, the image is inverted number one, and that initially throws a lot of people off, which is once again why I highly recommend people start during the daytime. That will all be very obvious when you're looking at things around that are normal terrestrial objects, and so getting some practice with it while you're outside during the day is something that not only can you put it in focus, not only can you get your finder scope set up properly, not only can you get just a basic feel for it. You'll have that same knowledge going into the nighttime when you do have problems, if you do have problems at night, and you'll have solutions for those problems because you've practiced.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 37:40

Um, one of the things I would do is I would start with the wider field eyepieces. Even if you're going to be going um to do planetary work, for example and I said you know you should be more zoomed in that isn't the first step, right? So if you're looking at this little patch of sky, any motion in that telescope is going to make a huge difference in what you're looking at because you're so zoomed in, the magn is too high and by starting with one of those higher millimeter eye pieces that are lower magnification. It provides you a wider field of view, which gives you more of the night sky to work with and you can find those bright stars and get them centered and then zoom in. You know, and once you or whatever object you're looking at, right and the also the thing is, when you zoom in you're losing the. The light level is going down Right, if it's a dim object, you might not want to be zooming in and it's possible you're putting in too high of a magnification right off the bat.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 38:51

Yeah, that's something that actually got me one of the first times, like I really noticed it. I was trying to zoom in on Saturn, right, and because Saturn is so bright when you have it really tiny in your scope right, like it's almost too bright where it's blowing itself out, and then I did like I think I did like an eight millimeter Nagler on a Barlow or something like that, and it was big, but I'm like this is kind of dull, you know, and it really surprised me. But the idea is, no matter what, you have the same amount of light coming through, you either have the light concentrated and it's smaller for a smaller zoom and a wider field, or you just kind of spread that out a little more thinly if you're zooming in.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 39:36

The other thing to consider, though, is as well when you're zooming in on something, you're also going to start to see some of the atmospheric effects.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 39:45

There is a limiting factor based on your atmospheric conditions at that moment, and you know some places are are great, Uh, like the location itself generally has better, uh, atmospheric conditions for viewing. We call it seeing conditions, um, where, basically, it's the turbulence in the atmosphere that's affecting your ability to see. You know objects, clearly. I liken it to, on, like a hot summer day, how you see the effects of the heat rising from the asphalt, but that's happening up in the atmosphere also, and that would be atmospheric seeing. There's also, even if there's not cloud cover, there is transparency, you know there's moisture in the atmosphere, and that can affect things a haziness effect, and so as you zoom in, you're going to pick up more of the seeing, and sometimes you need to really check to make sure that what you're observing isn't the result of the atmosphere at that moment. That it's not your optics, you know. And so even if there's not clouds, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a good night to observe.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 41:06

Right, exactly, and you, I found this it was really interesting. Right, exactly, and I found this it was really interesting. The first time I really noticed it was it was a Thanksgiving a long time ago and I brought my telescope back home to show my parents and check it out and there was this moon. It was, I think, almost a full moon and it was coming up off the horizon. And of course, when it's right low on the horizon it's orange, right Like it looks super big and it's orange. But because it's low on the horizon, you can see all the little wibbly, wobblies, the wavies, right, and I was like what, what is going on? This can't be good. And then I realized no, that's just the heat in the atmosphere, that's the different temperature pockets of air, and since it was low on the horizon, I was looking through more air.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 41:51

You're looking through about a hundred times more atmosphere when you're looking towards the horizon than if you're looking directly overhead, at your zenith, to point directly over your head.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 42:00

Now don't let that. You know newbies, don't let that fool you Like it doesn't have to be perfectly above you. Whatever you're looking at to be good, you just have to find that balance. I know Don't let perfect 20 degrees.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 42:13

15 to 20 degrees above the horizon is like I mean, unless it's something that you're not going to see otherwise, like, for example, the Triffid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula where I live in Northern Hemisphere, you know Pennsylvania 40 degrees latitude, that doesn't get much higher than that.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 42:29

It doesn't. No, it doesn't get any higher. You're going to either not look at it or you got to deal with the atmospheric effects, right. But if it's an object that does rise higher, you might want to look at some other things before bothering to observe it. You know, depending on what time it will take, and you know there's many astronomy apps out there that you can use to look at when those objects are going to rise higher and such.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 42:55

I think we're down to the very last and what I call the number one hobby killer in terms of astronomy, and that, to me, is the expectations not matching the reality. Yep, is the expectations not matching the reality, right? And so I think of this as some people go and they buy a telescope and they see, oh, 200 times, and then they think they're going to look at the ring nebula and see what a Hubble Space Telescope picture is, right, sure, that's just not going to happen. You know, the expectation is the expectation you should have should be closer to reality. Where you're looking at faint fuzzies in the sky, right, like, it is not going to look that great, unless you're doing the photography, and that's a dangerous place. There be dragons, okay, but if you're doing visual astronomy, just be aware it's going to be black and white. It's going to be black and white because, a we're not getting enough light, b your eyes are going to be dark adapted, so I forget if it's rods or cones or whatever, but it switches to night vision after about 20 minutes in the dark, so you can only see in black and white anyway, right? And you're probably not going to have the most powerful telescope. You don't have a Hubble telescope. You just don't. And even the Hubble telescope isn't just visual, like it's taking photography, so just know that, like you're seeing something as it is, and that's still incredible.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 44:32

The thing that I like to sort of meditate upon when I'm looking at stuff in the sky is, of course, I want to look up how big the thing is, what kind of object it is is it a cluster or whatever? But the thing that I like to do is I like to look at how far away is this object? Because if I'm looking at the Andromeda galaxy and it's what? Two and a half billion light years away, I think something like that Million, million, million, yeah, million, okay, so about 2 million light years away, like you're looking at light that left that galaxy 2 million years ago.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 45:09

You're looking back in time, galaxy 2 million years ago.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 45:11

You're looking back in time. Yeah, like that is incredible to me and that's where I get the satisfaction out of this. Yes, I also get it by taking cool pictures, but I get the satisfaction of the like. I'm looking at this, I'm looking back in time, I'm the only one seeing those photons. Those photons traveled 13 million or 2 million light years to get here, right, and I'm the one that's seeing them. So if you can sort of try to match reality to your expectations, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I think you're going to have a lot of fun in this hobby.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 45:48

You said a few things that I want to circle back to. The first one um had to do with dark adaption. So I think most people are familiar with the fact that if you know you wake up in the middle of the night after having slept for a while, that you know you turn on the bright lights of, like, your bathroom or something, it's going to blind you for a moment. Right, that is effectively what we're talking about. Is your eyes become more sensitive when, maybe 20 to 30 minutes, as Rob said, where you shouldn't be? You know, looking at your phone screen, you know you should try your best to avoid that. You should try to use a red flashlight only when you're trying to do things and try to keep it as dim as possible so that you can maintain your dark adaption. And if you ever watch any sort of thing where they're trying to operate machinery or a jet or something or any military operations, a lot of times they will use red light to do just that to keep their dark adaption.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 46:58

Yeah, I would recommend getting a headlamp, one of the ones that goes around your head. Those have been. I have had one of those since I was a camp counselor in college and those things are just phenomenal on many fronts, absolutely, because whatever you're looking at is where your eyes are and those things are just phenomenal on many fronts?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 47:11

Absolutely, because whatever you're looking at is where your eyes are, and that's what matters. So the other thing you mentioned was like your rods and your cones, and not to get into the weeds with this, but I do want to clarify. So your eyes do have rods and cones. The rods are your black and white vision, they're also on the outside of your retina, whereas the cones are your color vision and they're concentrated towards the center and then in the very center of your vision is actually a spot on your retina that is where your optic nerve connects to your brain and there's no ability to see anything there, and so when you're looking through an eyepiece, especially at something that is a faint fuzzy, you want to make sure that you're actually not looking directly at it. You want to look off to the side a little bit of your eyepiece, like towards the edge, and use your peripheral vision we call it adverted vision. Look through it using those rods rather than trying to look at it through the cones, because, a they're more sensitive and, b there's many more of them Instead of you know, a few hundred thousand of them. Like the cones, there's many, many millions of rods, and so your sensitivity goes up dramatically and the objects will start to come into focus.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 48:37

It takes some practice. It's not something that's easily done early. I wouldn't recommend it for kids, you know right away. But you know as you practice. Try to use adverted vision and you'll see things more clearly than you thought. The last thing I want to kind of circle back to that has to do with red light and dark adaption, is dark sky sites and what to expect in your own neighborhood, depending on your, your own individual light pollution levels. Some objects are simply not bright enough to be able to compete with light pollution and your eyes are not capable of separating that signal and that noise from itself. Right, you're going to have all of that light pollution coming into your eyes as well and, as a result, you will not see the object, even if you try your hardest. So yeah, try to, you're not really going to see the andromeda galaxy.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 49:41

If you're in the city, like you might be able to do some photography, but you're, you're not going to be able to just see it, like in the big cities. You're kind of stuck with planets, the moon and bright stars.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 49:53

Would you?

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 49:54

agree.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 49:55

Yeah, to some degree. It depends on the size of your telescope and you know you can get filters.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 50:02

There are filters that you can use for your eyes, to light pollution filters and such, or ones that are, you know, specific wavelengths of light that your eyes are capable of seeing the visual parts of the spectrum.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 50:15

But you really need to be in a dark sky site to see things properly. The faint fuzzies at least, yeah, and I realize that not everybody can get to one of those easily all the time, and that should be taken into consideration. When you go to purchase a scope, try to keep in mind what you're going to be using it for. If you don't think it's something you want to try to put into your car and drive across many miles to get to your dark sky site because it's just too big, then maybe you should buy a smaller scope, you know. Or if it's something you're going to never be able to do, maybe you should focus on planetary for a little while, get used to the process, make sure it's something that you know you know very well, prior to taking that next step towards deep sky objects. So, rob, if you had to pick one object to look at for the rest of your life and that's the only object that you could ever look at, what would it be and why?

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 51:24

That's a tough one, because part of me wants to say the moon, because at least you can see a different part of it all the time and it kind of varies. However, I feel like Jupiter would be a little more entertaining just because it's small. I can get better at actually seeing it, I could learn planetary astrophotography and I'd love to be able to see more of the transits and, yeah, transits of the Galilean moons going across it and the shadows of those moons going across it. So it's easy to find in the sky, it's easy to locate. So I would probably say Jupiter.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 52:09

What about you say Jupiter, what about you? I had a really interesting experience. I was at Cherry Springs State Park in Potter County, pennsylvania, one of the darkest places on the east coast of the United States and it's an international dark sky site. And while I was there there was someone on the astronomy field who had a 36-inch Dobsonian, and Al Nagler was there with Telview and their one optic is actually a night vision optic and it's sensitive in the infrared parts of the spectrum.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 52:53

And what we did is we placed that eyepiece in the 36-inch telescope and we pointed it at basically an extremely dense part of the Milky Way, only visible in the summertime for us in the Northern Hemisphere time, for us in the northern hemisphere, right towards sagittarius, uh, the basically the center of our galaxy, and the view that I was able to see it sticks with me to this day. It's very, uh, much like almost like a spiritual moment for me and I I really can kind of take myself back to that moment when I'm under the stars, and especially if I get a chance to look at the Lagoon or Triffid Nebula, because that's what we mostly looked at while we were there, and part of me also wants to say the eclipse because, if that's allowed in our discussion here, the eclipse was probably the most moving to me and probably the most spiritual I've ever felt.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 54:00

Yeah, yeah, I can't really disagree with you there. I'm excited for the next one.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 54:07

It's within what? Two weeks of our podcast here. We're quickly approaching it. I'm kind of still not realizing how close it is, and you know I'll be traveling to indiana in just a few days and it's gonna be amazing.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 54:24

So the eclipse yeah, it's kind of nerve-wracking, I'll be honest, because I still have a lot, have a lot of work to do for my automation and stuff, but I do have a lot prepared. I'm trying to give myself some positive vibes too. I do have a lot prepared, but I know the programming and the I don't know. I get very anxious at these sorts of times.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 54:46

By the time this podcast airs, it will have already occurred, and I think it's important that we have a discussion afterward about our experience.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 54:54

Absolutely.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 54:55

Stick around to find out if Dave survives a final round of last minute trivia.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 55:04

So let's do some more trivia. I have three more questions for you. We're going to switch back to the refractors. Okay, what major development happened to them in 1733?

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 55:21

I would guess that in 1700s they started to put multiple lenses together to make doublet and triplet telescopes, which would help to reduce the effects of chromatic aberration.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 55:40

I'm going to give that to you. I'm going to give that to you. The correct answer is the achromatic lens. Yeah, it's a doublet, which is basically a doublet right. So the idea is that once they did that, they were able to again, like you said, reduce the color aberrations and it allowed for shorter and more functional telescopes. And it first appeared in 1770, sorry, 1733 in a telescope made by Chester Moore Hall, and he did not publicize it at all. I couldn't tell you why, but then John Doland learned of the invention and then began producing telescopes using that in commercial quantities, starting in 1758.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 56:27

So just to clarify chromatic aberration is the effect of when you see colors that shouldn't be there, especially with bright objects, where it almost gives you this rainbow effect, because what's happening is the different colors of light are passing through the glass and as they pass through the glass they're spread out just like a prism. And that effect is not desirable, right, it's not something you want, and so just to fix that they take more than one lens and they pancake them together. Um, sometimes they're spacing between them, sometimes it's like stuck together. Uh, sometimes they have oil in between, sometimes it's just air and there's all sorts of different designs. But the whole point of it is getting rid of those rainbowy like effects, right, pretty much I've actually seen them.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 57:22

Uh, even with like a little reflector, that I've had a little 50 reflector, that is pretty good for a basic amount. Uh, you can actually look at j, at Jupiter, and you can see a little blue on one side and red on the other side, like that. That happens All right. So now, second question After the Casagrain reflector and the achromatic lenses, what was the next big redesign of the telescope? And I have a hint, if you get stuck it was invented around 1910, but not widely adopted until after 1950.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 58:00

It was the Schmidt corrector.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 58:03

No, although I bet you that probably happened after, but it's not as big as this one. What was the hint? From what I can tell, the hint is that it's used on the Hubble Space Telescope. Ooh, stumped him.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 58:15

I don't know.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 58:17

All right, it is the Ritchie-Cretin variant of the Cassegrain Reflector, like I said, invented in 1910, adopted after 1950, and, yeah, they start using this a lot more, especially on many modern telescopes. It gets a wider field of view than the classic cassock rain.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 58:40

Okay, if you have an interest, something that you really would like to learn more about, please consider asking us in the comments. We're more than happy to try to make sure that the podcast is moving in the direction that you guys, our viewers, our listeners are interested in. So please feel free to contact us. If you're interested in ever asking any questions of our guests, we also have a Patreon. And if you're interested in asking asking any questions of our guests, we also have a Patreon and you know, if you're interested in asking a question, we'll kind of list who's going to be on next over on Patreon so that you can know what's coming and get a chance to ask questions of the experts.

Rob Webb - Last Minute Astronomer: 59:25

All right. So, as we're wrapping up the podcast, Dave, I would just like to leave the audience with just one last piece of advice, and I know mine would be to get a telescope that you're going to use and go ahead and use it. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Dave Farina - Cosmos Safari: 59:45

I would say that you need to be patient with yourself and to try to find others to enjoy the hobby with. That can either learn with you or help you with the process, and those local astronomy clubs are one of the best places to start. If you're still listening and like this podcast, please consider becoming one of our Patreon patrons. Memberships start as low as $3 per month, with benefits including opportunities to ask questions of our guests. Also, please consider liking, subscribing and sharing this podcast to help us bring the universe even closer than you think. The podcast will be available every third Tuesday of the month.