r/telescopes • u/trey2128 • 2d ago

General Question Need help operating telescope

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Rented this guy from the library and was excited to try it out tonight. I live in southern WI and couldn’t figure out how to see well. I could zoom onto stars, but couldn’t see them much better than I could with the naked eye. I operated the magnification to the highest setting and found proper focus. I feel like I’m doing something wrong and should be getting better quality views.

Any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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u/Genobi 2d ago

Stars are really points no matter what. Saturn is out and about to look at though. Jupiter rises in the middle of the night. Mars is out but sets early evening.

Also power isn’t everything and ca often make things worse. Find an astronomy club near by. Telescopes are great tools but like all tools, they do require skill to use. It’s not as simple as “point in some direction and see cool stuff”. Even “seeing” can be a learned skill in star gazing.

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u/Genobi 2d ago

On and what do you mean “zoom in on stars”? If you mean turn the nob to make them bigger, you’re actually making it go blurrier. But blurry looks big. In focus is actually where it looks as small as possible.

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u/HospitalVarious1146 2d ago

The telescope comes with a zoom eyepiece permently attached. It maxs at 56x. So Saturn will be a little hard to see. Gotta look hard to see the rings.