| You have just
bought a new telescope. After several days of studying books, you
decided it's time to try out your new toy. With great excitement,
you set up the telescope as detailed in the instructions.
Referencing one of the star charts you brought along, you swing the
telescope to the location known to contains M57: The Ring Nebula.
All the books and magazines you read shows the Ring Nebula as
a colorful ringed object with a small dead star at its center. With
great excitement, you put your eye to the eyepiece. Looking for that
beautiful ring you see...a little fuzzy gray disk! Where is the
color? What happened to the star in the center? WHAT THE #&%#$@
IS WRONG HERE!?!?
Unfortunately, the above scenario happens all too often. "I
never see any color...is my scope broken?" "Am I not doing
something?" "Did I buy the wrong telescope?" "
What am I doing wrong?"
The facts are you are probably NOT doing anything wrong with your
telescope. It is your expectations of what you are going to see that
need adjusting. To
help you understand, let's take a look at the following three
pictures of M57- The Ring Nebula.
 The
first picture simulates a typical view of M57 using a popular model
of an amateur astronomer's 8 inch telescope. The image has
no color, is very small and very dim. Increasing the power of the
telescope would make the image larger, but the image would also
become dimmer. In the next picture, again we see an image taken by
an amateur astronomer. The telescope used here was larger. In
addition, a long time exposure camera was used. The over all cost of the equipment used to
get this image was four times higher than the cost for the telescope
used in the first picture.
The final picture was taken by professional astronomers using the
200 inch Hale telescope. The final image was computer enhanced to
help bring out the image and colors. This is the image most likely
to be seen in books or magazines.
Clearly the three images are not at all the same. More
importantly, the first image is more representative of what anyone
looking through an amateur's telescope would really see! Other
factors also affect how clearly any astronomical object will be seen. Weather, light pollution, air pollution and the
atmosphere all affect how clearly any object will be seen.
Aperture Size
The telescope's aperture size is directly proportional to how
much light from any space object is need for you to see that object.
In general, the larger the telescope's aperture, the dimmer the
object that can be viewed. There is a condition among astronomers
known as aperture fever. Aperture fever is the condition
an astronomer gets when he or she wishes they had an even larger
telescope aperture. This is an incurable disease! The plain truth
is, the larger the telescope's aperture, the further into space you
will see. It is also true that the larger one's aperture, the more
money one has to give up. It is NOT true that a telescope with a lot
of magnification power is better then one without. Aperture is much
more important than magnification power.
Some thoughts
here are several factors that will effect how clearly you will
see anything through any telescope. But you will never see those
beautiful color images found in many books or magazines through an
amateur telescope. Most all the images used by the media are taken
using very large professional telescope using state of the art
photographic
systems. The final image is then run through computer imaging
software to enhance the final colors and image quality.
This does not mean that you still can not experience the thrill
of seeing, no matter how dim, an astronomical object using your own
eyes. The light that finally ends up entering your eye, in many
cases, has been traveling for over 2 million years. So what if the
Ring Nebula might turn out to be a small, dim spot in the eyepiece.
Not many people can say, "The Ring Nebula, oh I've seen that
with my own eyes!" You might even consider taking your own
impressive color images using a CCD or film camera mounted on your
telescope. |
