If you were on Santa's nice list and found a new telescope under your Christmas tree, you can have a lot of fun with it, but it can also be very frustrating. Let me help you with some tips about how to use your scope that may not be with the instructions. Let me also suggest some great initial "first light" targets in the local sky.
Telescope tips
1. Let it cool off. Thee most important thing to remember this time of year is to put your telescopes and all the eyepieces outside for a good 30 to 45 minutes before you use it. The optics have to acclimate to the lower temperatures, or you'll be treated to really fuzzy views of our universe. By the way, you never want to poke your telescope out a window because the warm air escaping your house will do nothing but foul up your image and raise your gas bill.
2. Not all clear nights are created equal. The stars may be shining brightly, but high winds in the upper atmosphere and/or near the ground causes what's called bad seeing conditions. Except for the moon, most other targets, like planets, nebulae, and galaxies, are susceptible to bad seeing resulting in poor resolution that might lead you to believe that you have a bad scope. One sign of bad seeing is that the stars will be twinkling more than usual. A great website to check on seeing conditions for your location is called Clear Sky Clock at http://cleardarksky.com/csk/
3. Make sure your finder scope or device is synced up with your main scope. You'll probably have to check the directions that came with your scope. Most scopes come with small telescopes that ride piggyback on the main scope. Some scopes, though, have other finding tools like lasers. Whatever you have for a finder, make sure it's lined up with your main scope or you'll have a devil of a time getting celestial treasures into your eyepiece. The best thing to do is to use a bright prominent object on your horizon like the light on radio tower or a lit up American flag. With a low power magnification eyepiece, center the main scope on the land object like a lit up Old Glory. Then, adjust your the finder scope or device so it's also centered on that same flag. Then, when it comes to finding a celestial target, you can be assured that when your target is in your finder it'll also be in your main scope and you won't have to flounder around in the dark!
4. Take your time! Whatever you're observing through your telescope, make yourself comfortable and take long continuous looks through your target, at last five to ten minutes at a time. You need to get use to the light level in your eyepiece field and you also want to wait for moments when seeing conditions get extra nice and you get calm patches of atmosphere between your scope and the celestial target. This especially goes for viewing the planets.
Also, use your lowest power magnification eyepiece first and work your way up to higher powered eyepieces. It's natural for the images to lose some their clarity and sharpness as you increase magnification.
Now for some easy starter targets.
Best targets
1. The Moon: This week, we have a new crescent moon in the early evening western sky. It'll be a great time to actually view the moon because you can really see a lot of details like craters and mountains and the longer shadows, which will really give you perspective about how high some of these mountains are. Your best views will be right around what's known as the terminator, the line between the sunlit and darkened part of the moon. Full or near full moons are tough to look at because of the brightness that washes out details on the surface and can literally give you headache!
2. Jupiter: Currently, Jupiter is lighting up the southeastern sky and is the brightest star-like object in the night sky. You should be able to resolve the disk of the giant planet and easily see up to four of Jupiter's brighter moons. If it's clear enough with good seeing, you may also see some of Jupiter's cloud bands and even the great Red Spot. I'll have more on Jupiter's moon and atmosphere later next month in Skywatch.
3. Pleiades Star Cluster: This is the best star cluster in the sky. It's easily seen with the naked eye in the mid to high southeastern sky. Through even a small telescope you can see dozens of very young stars over 400 light years away. One light year equals almost six trillion miles.
4. The Perseus Double Star Cluster: This is wonderful. It's nearly visible to the naked eye. Aim your scope very high in the sky between the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen and Perseus the Hero as you can see on the diagram. It's one of my very favorites as you'll see two distinct clusters of stars side by side. They're both 7,000 light years away. I know you'll love what you see.
5. The Orion Nebula: This is simply wondrous through the eyepiece of your telescope. You can easily find it with the naked eye as a fuzzy middle star in the three stars that make up the sword of Orion the Hunter. Through your scope you'll see a glob of gas with a little bit of a greenish tint to it. It's a giant cloud of hydrogen gas around 1,500 light years away. Within it you should be able to see four faint stars arranged in a trapezoid. They are very young stars, some less than 50,000 years old. These stars are producing so much ultraviolet radiation that they're causing the surrounding nebula that they were born in to glow like a fluorescent light.
6. The Andromeda Galaxy: The next door neighbor galaxy to our Milky Way is nearly overhead in the constellation Andromeda the Princess. Check out my January star map on my website www.lynchandthestars.com for details that will help you find it.
(Lynch is an amateur astronomer and author of the book, "Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations." Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.)