Greetings!

[Agelesslink]

Hello everyone. I'm absolutely new to the astronomy circle. I'm the guy with a million hobbies. Sometimes I think getting a new hobby is my hobby! lol Anyway, I've always been interested in space and about two weeks ago i was reading in the news the Jupiter was going to be its closest to the Earth in 22 years. It fascinated me when I was told that you could see planets with the naked eye. For about a week now I've been going outside at night just gazing aimlessly to get a layout on the sky. The first thing I was able to see was Cygnus and Vega without knowing what they were. On the skymap I saw that Vega was the brighted star right now, but two nights later I saw a very bright "star". I scanned the skymap for it and saw no such star. Looking on another skymap I noticed the equatorial route. I did'nt know what this was and researched it on wiki. I then realized that i had been looking at Jupiter for a while.lol This was a great realization for me. I just had to show my wife. She's noticed my attention toward astronomy and bought some binoculars for me. Theyre only 10x25 Tasco's, but I figures its better than nothing. well, basically wanted to introduce myself to the community!

 

[adrenalynn]

Welcome aboard!

A good friend of mine was over last night, and I was playing with my big binoculars looking for a comet (103p/Hartley 2). He was outside with me, so I swung the mount over to Jupiter. Turned out that it was the first time he'd ever seen Jupiter's four big moons - he was stunned, but I was probably more stunned that he'd never seen them...

25mm is pretty small, but if you're in a reasonably dark sky, you should also be able to make out Jupiter's moons without too much trouble.

 

[Agelesslink]

yeah my wife meant well, but she doesnt know what to buy.lol didnt want to tell her that it was too small. i told her at a later date that if she wanted to buy me a telescope, to consult me first

 

[adrenalynn]

A sweet, thoughtful, gift. Any pair of binoculars is better than your naked eye. And for someone learning the sky, I can make a strong case for skipping the telescope and leaning heavily on the binoculars. I use binoculars almost exclusively for visual observation, saving the telescopes for astrophotography. And I carry both a small set (7x45) and a large set (20x100). The little 7x45's are great for scanning for an object that is too dim to see without binoculars. Practically you want that first number (magnification) to be very low, and the second (aperture, the size of the objective lenses) to be as large as practical. The 20x100's are too heavy and have too much magnification to hand-hold steady. I'd rather have something like 4x50's for scanning the sky.

 

[Agelesslink]

hmm. makes sense especially since i have to travel a bit to get to dark skies. thanks for the tip