Personal Blog

Couple of months ago i got the idea of observing the sun using a solar filter. I ordered a cheap solar filter from Israel and  placed it front of the telescope. Note that you have to adjust the filter in front of the the telescope not between the body and the eyepiece because high temperature can be developed inside the telescope's tube. The next step was to point to the sun. Compared with the night sky it is really hard to target the sun, as you can't look (or you shouldn't) directly to the sun. The easiest trick is to align the body of the telescope with the sun to minimize the shadow created as shown in the next two pictures: Aligning the telescope to the sun using its shadow. Finally, we align as perfect we can the telescope. I aligned the telescope without the eyepiece because it was easiest to move it. The final result, note the sunspot on the right. Not perfect aligned and not the best quality, but for the 20$ price tag of the sun filter is ...

The T2 mount is finally here. I was able to use it with my Celestron Travel Scope . The T2 mount took almost 40 to receive it from China. I replaced the eyepiece and removed the mirror prism, and suddenly I had a lens 400mm. Of course, the quality is much worse than the actual lenses, and I will need a lot of post-processing, but the price I paid it was less than 100 euro. Nikon D3200 attached to the Celestron travel scope 70 using a T2 Mount. Here is my first impression: I need a good tripod. Even the light wind I had on 4th floor makes the images blurred. The tripod I way too cheap for this work, and the exposure more than 5 seconds does not forgive. Anyway I also did some daylight tests, here are my results: View from my camera with 55mm. View using the travel scope. Here is one plane, note that I had to increase the ISO due to darkness. My next target was the second most bright object in the sky: the moon. Again the quality was not the best, and I think it ...

When someone buys a new telescope his first question is what i can see with it. The second is what is the highest zoom i can achieve. Although the maximum zoom can be an attractive measurement when buying a new telescope, the buyer should focus on the aperture size: how much light i can gather? This is the main difference from theoretical to practical highest zoom. So, what can you expect to see with this telescope? During the tests i did, the average seeing conditions with medium-low light pollution. These two factors can really improve your experience or.. to destroy it. In my place i would categorize the light pollution in class 5, based on Bortle 's scale . I also tried to improve the lenses by blackening the edges, as i described in earlier post . A quick note here before discussing my personal views on the topic. Planets and stars have different brightness that we call it apparent magnitude . Lower the number is, brighter the stellar object is. The practical limit of...

Recently i was looking to buy a second smaller telescope, ideal for traveling. I concluded on Celestrron Travel scope 70 that has the best value for money. During my research about the quality and the characteristics of the scope, i  came up to a page that was commenting how to improve the quality of the scope . Here are some thoughts about my scope: - The quality of the tube is slightly better, but still it has some issues. - You also have some bolts inside the tube, but not  many as the travelscope. - Collimation is an issue also here. You should use a collimator to fix this. However, in my case i wanted to avoid buying anything new. - Lenses are not blackened (neither in eyepieces) Collimation without tools: Collimation is usually not an important issue in refractor telescopes compared with the reflector, but it can improve the views and the experience of star gazing. You have to disassemble the telescope without caution. Take care the lenses! The easie...