Sunday, October 01, 2006

Telescope

I always fancied the idea of buying a telescope but usually decided not to as they were too expensive if you want a decent one and I'd probably end up not using it. So when i was in the local DIY shop and saw one on special offer for 39.95Euros, the price-tag kind of made up my mind.

It is a refractor telescope (focal length 700mm), looks a bit like the one below. I don't know how they manage to retail them at such a low price as these scopes sell at normally 500 and more.
But it works so who cares.















I put the beast together last night, which was more difficult than i expected as it had about 50 parts and Jackson Opticals are definitely not a UK or USA outfit as the instrucions were a little bit dodgily translated....

example: "There lies a mistake conception that it will be better if the magnification is bigger"

The last part of the instruction was to align the viewfinder and the main telescope accurately. So I focused it on a nearby car number plate and used that to sychronise the two.

The car was about nearly a 100m away and I was shocked to be able to read the small lettering from the selling garage under the registration number. I tried taking a photograph to show it but unfortunately it is not as clear as what you could see.









Anyway I am now looking forward to the next full moon and seeing if I can see Armstrongs footprints.

2 comments:

Glynn said...

That's cool. You can get computer programs that tell you what you should be able to see. Or there's the BBC

Polarbear said...

The moon came out on sunday night and i managed to get a few quick glimpses when the clouds broke . Was very cool to be able to see individual craters and the shadows around the edges.