Telescope under urban night sky
I recently posted about my new telescope.I watched the moon (Photos posted in that same blog) first. It was a full moon and craters were easily visible with my 20 mm eyepiece ( 45x magnification ).With this magnification moon was just covered by the viewing area which is about 1 degree in diameter. (Orion's belt is 3 degree's wide.).However the findoscope that rides above the main telescope pipe has a greater viewing area to locate objects and point the cross-hairs to bring it inside the viewing area of the main telescope.With the 4mm eyepiece magnification is approximately 180x and moon's craters were even huge and only part of the full moon was visible at a time with this eyepiece.I just held my small digital camera infront of the eyepiece of telescope and clicked few times , fortunately some pictures came good.It was full Moon but I could not center the camera properly , so the partial image came like eclipse. I need a "digital eyepiece" that connects to a computer or Universal camera adapter , to capture it as we see it.
Magnification of my telescope = Focal length of Objective mirror (1000mm) divided by focal length of eyepiece used.
However there was one more barlow lens which I put with the 20mm eyepiece to get 135x magnification but sharpness was compromised.
After moon managed to see Jupiter and its moons with Jupiter's yellow colored bands at its equator.
Uranus was close by Jupiter but have not got any success yet to locate it with my findoscope because of urban light pollution in Hyderabad, especially Hi-Tech city area same as the case with M31 Andromeda galaxy.
Orion nebulae (M42), M43 , Sirius (The dog star , brightest star as seen from the earth) , Canopus were the other objects I pointed the telescope at.
M45 was almost at the zenith at that time so I could not make the telescope vertical , as it would have resulted an awkward viewing position.
By the way the above image is not of a artificial satellite , its just a terrestrial image of a nearby building top.