Astronomy questions

snooklepie

For *planet* observing, you will see by far the most detail during hazy summer nights when the air is still and damp. Yes–HAZY. You mentioned that you were freezing during your planet observing. Not good for the following reasons…

Nebulae have very faint surface brightness and so they require crystal clear skies like during those breezy winter nights after a cold front and the stars twinkle madly like strobe lights. These objects do not have the fine detail of planets and their visual images are not harmed by turbulent atmosphere. Basically, Nebula are smeary haze to begin with and are easily washed out by atmospheric haze. Not so planets…

The planets and moon have high surface brightness and do contain alot of tiny, compact detail. Their details are strong enough to shine through calm summer hazy air but any winter like turbulence will smear the fine detail. This may be what happened during your freezing.

Basically, against the sky, nebula *appear* to be much larger objects than planets yet you can’t see them without optical aid–its the surface brightness thing. The exception is, of course, “planetary nebulae” which *appear* very small–like planets–yet also have typically the low surface brightness common to all nebulae. They are the most challenging object to see in any telescope.

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PS:: Is your Celestron a *refractor* or a lens corrected reflector (containing both clear front glass plate and mirror)???

A six inch *refractor* is MAJOR money. Far more money than 6 inch “cassegrains” I think the Celestrons are called. If you indeed got a true *refractor* these are by far the best for planetary viewing.

PS2:: The best fun is with…binoculars!! Also, get a monthly subscription to Sky~&~Telescope magazine or Astronomy magazine. Both are for working class observers. I prefer S&T. Extremely well done.

Also, *someday* maybe look into variable star observing. Trying to catch stars as they change brightness makes you keep an eye on the sky for holes in the clouds. That is a challenge in itself. A hole in the clouds appears, you drop everything to get one brightness observation and when you plot alot of points over time, you get a nice magnitude curve.

Some stars change so much, over a month they go from binocular level to 12 inch reflector level to make visual estimates of their brightness (they make star charts with “comparison stars” to compare brightnesses)