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Old 10-21-21, 10:26 PM   #3616
Sean C
Grey Wolf
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 900
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I bought a telescope a while back. Not a big expensive one, but it does magnify up to 120x. Unfortunately, it had a defect. If I tried to look at a planet, it looked like a comet - with a large, hazy tail about six times the diameter of the body, extending to the lower left. This made it completely useless for looking at anything other than the Moon or terrestrial objects.

Well, tonight I decided to try and fix it - even though I know very little about how telescopes are assembled. I took off the piece on the front which I can only describe as a sort of shade for the objective lens. That revealed a threaded ring which held the objective lens in place. After a brief inspection, I noticed that it was cross-threaded.

I carefully unscrewed it and re-seated it correctly. I thought to myself "If this was the only thing wrong, I'll be happy ... but mad at the same time." You see, I've gone months without using it because of this defect, and if that's all I had to do to fix it, then I've missed a lot of good observing for no good reason.

Anyway, it turns out that the cross-threaded ring was the only problem. I aligned the telescope with Jupiter, adjusted the focus and was thrilled to see Io, Ganymede and Callisto and I could even just barely make out one of the bands of gasses which make up old Jove's atmosphere! I turned the scope to Saturn and I could clearly see the rings! And the Moon looked absolutely amazing! I was elated!

I have an adapter which allows me to clamp my phone to the eyepiece so that I can take pictures and record video. However, my new phone doesn't quite fit. I'll have to find a way to make it work or use my old phone to take pics/video. Either way, if I get some good images or video I will post them here if anyone is interested. Attached below is an image of the Moon I shot before I fixed the defect. Hopefully future images will be even better.







Side note:
While I was outside, my neighbor's wife came over and asked if she could look through my telescope. I said "Sure." After looking at Jupiter and Saturn, she hesitantly asked me if I thought the Earth could be flat. I laughed and said "No, of course not."

She did not laugh. Hilarity ensued.




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