Zookland Home Zookland Astro Section  My Light Bucket      Pic Gallery          Equipment Recommendations Software Recommendations When All You Have Is Up (Video 3.8MB) Astronomy Resources Details About the Links Below Telescope Magnafication and Field of View Calculator Water Vapor Maps Nice Moon Phase Calendar! Fort Wayne Astronomical Society (Indiana) weather.com for your zip code All the Astrophotography on this site was taken with a Canon SD1100IS! (EOS Section coming soon!)		Here I am with my big 10 inch. This is my Zhumell 10" Reflector on a Dobsonian mount.  It was delivered Friday, when the sky was just clear enough to be really frustrating.  Still, I was able to see Jupiter and four of its moons.  At 187 magnafication (I don't have my higher magnification eyepiece yet) I could clearly see two dark stripes across the face of the planet and a tiny star masquerading as a fifth moon (you can only see four with this size telescope), and the whole thing would sail across my entire field of view in a couple of minutes.  The planet appears in black and white at that magnification as the eye can't discern the subtle colors.  Moisture in the atmosphere would blur the picture off and on, but it was still quite a sight. I also saw Saturn and Mars, but they were closer to the horizon and in a much hazier area of the sky.  I was able to clearly see that I was looking at Saturn's rings, but the haze blurred the picture quite often.  Eight of Saturn's moons would have been visible if the sky had been more clear, but I couldn't see any of them.  Mars was obviously red, but tiny and without detail.  Not only was there the haze problem, but right now Mars is more than twice as far away from us as the Sun.  In a clear sky, Mars and Saturn are clearly visible to the naked eye, but there was nothing visible to the naked eye below 30 degrees above the horizon.  Mars and Saturn were down around 10 degrees when I found them, and I did so by sweeping back and forth through the general area where I knew they would be. Specs on the telescope : Objective : 254 mm (appx. 10") Focal Length : 1250 Highest Useful Magnification : 600x Limiting Magnatude : 14.52 (Higher magnatude is a dimmer object.  Pluto is magnatude 13.9.)		^That's not a button, because I don't want my listing to be so easy for the spambots to find. You'll have to DIY. Our Parent Company Hat Boss Dot Com, LLC Free Wallpaper Tiles at PictureSeeds.com. Free Wallpaper Tiles at MartianWallpaper.com Free Fullscreen Windows .bmp wallpapers at FreePaperSite.com