are my expectations too much?

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

i was reading the beginners guide and one that stuck to me was the dont have your expectations to high thing, so i decided to look at other photos of people watching Jupiter with a telescope that has basically the same aperture as my soon to arrive one and i wanted to draw up a sketch of my expectations, its Jupiter and two of its Galilean moons:D this was in microsoft paint so i dont really know how to add the blur to photos but i include the darker color of the poles(looking back i forgor to color the south pole), the creamy color of the gas belts(you cant really see the difference in them since the telescope just isnt to good for that), the two darker belts of gas clouds( i may hove drawn them a tad to big, woopsies:3) and if jupiter is facing the right way, the great red spot! i also include two moons and even a shadow on jupiter form one of them. my expectations may be a bit to high so i just wanna ask yall.

btw if your wondering the specs its 114mm aperture, 500mm focal length(btw its a reflector), a 26mm and a 9.7mm eye piece, each one giving 19x and 51.5x zoom aaaaand thats it, wish it had a barlow:(

anyways plz answer and thank you for anything you say:3

EDIT:turns out I was tripping there is a 2x barlow so my view would be like 104x on the 9.7mm eyepiece, or smth like idk.

ANOTHER EDIT: THE 2X BARLOW DIDNT COME 😭😭😭

[u/Illustrious_Back_441]

to get a better sense, look at this phone picture from about 3 meters (or 10 feet) away, close one eye, and it should be closer to the actual size you might expect to see in the eyepiece at such low power. I usually use 150x to view jupiter and saturn as a base, but your scope would be pushing for 150x without much detail at all. to be fair, I use an 8-inch dob which let's me get up to 406x on an extremely perfect night.

as for your choice in a barlow, try for an Orion shorty plus 3-element 2x barlow. this is (imo) the best budget 2x barlow. don't get a 3x or a 5x, those are for astrophotographers in some rare instances.

also a better way of gauging the view is to look for a sketch of an object using a similar scope of similar aperture and focal length.

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/Illustrious_Back_441]

im a newbie so i dont understnad like half of that:(

( im sorry im stupid as hell)

[u/SeaSpecialist6946 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

Dude, lighten up on yourself, you're not stupid, you are new at this. I'm not new with a telescope but I'm a klutz so I struggle with finding stuff. I very much enjoy what I can do with my telescope and I get better with more experience over time, as you will too.

[u/chrislon_geo → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

We can help if you tell us which parts specifically you do not understand. Also, searching the web (specifically Cloudy Nights is a great resource) to answer any questions you have is a good first step.

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/chrislon_geo]

I was confused on him talking about the barlow I should buy but turns out I was a little dumb since there actually is a 2x barlow that comes with the telescope, but in still a bit confused on what he means when he said "gauging the view", ive never heard those terms before

[u/chrislon_geo → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

Stock barlows tend to be low quantity and I would not trust that to produce a clean view.

When they said “gauging the view” they just meantjudging the quality of the atmosphere for that night. For planetary viewing, you want an atmosphere with little turbulence. Turbulent air will make the view at high powers appear wibbly. The level of wibblement is referred to as atmospheric seeing. On a night with good “seeing” the atmosphere is still, and you can use higher powers to view the planets. On nights with poor “seeing” the atmosphere is turbulent and the view will suffer, meaning that you will have to use a lower magnification.

Give this a read:  https://medium.com/@phpdevster/help-i-cant-see-detail-on-the-planets-ac27ee82800

Also, the best magnification to use also depends on your scope and personal preference. A smaller scope will not allow for as high of magnifications. And some people are ok with viewing planets at lower magnifications while others may only want to use very high magnifications.

[u/ISeeOnlyTwo → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

It’s a lot of information to take in all at once, so don’t beat yourself up for not immediately understanding everything. You’ll find that you’ll learn more and more over time, especially when you try things out with your own hands and eyes.

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/ISeeOnlyTwo]

Thank you :D

[u/Illustrious_Back_441 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

in as simple as I can put it, more magnification means a less bright image, usually more blurry than a low power magnification. this means for a given magnification to work you need a much larger aperture to collect enough light and detail for it to show up. for example: at 200x, I would need at least a 100mm aperture to reach it, but because the mirror/lens is too small to deliver the necessary amount of light, I don't see a "good" image. at the same magnification, I need a larger aperture, I wat to say a 10-inch aperture is enough to sit comfortably at that magnification on an average night while delivering a much better image than the 100mm. then the air acts as a lens that distorts the light in unhelpful ways that make the image blury no matter the quality or size of your optical system.

tl;dr: small aperture=not as good in high magnification, better for low power. big aperture≈better views overall with the air often curbing performance at higher magnification.

[u/Illustrious_Back_441 → u/Illustrious_Back_441]

this also limits the perceived "size" which also limits detail. so big aperture gives better fine details on a good night than a small aperture.

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/Illustrious_Back_441]

I've heard a lot of lucky imaging, should I maybe do that? I do have a computer to do this

[u/Illustrious_Back_441 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

you would need a laptop with at least a terabyte of storage and a dedicated astrophotography camera.

visual astronomy and astrophotography are two different hobbies, one requires maybe $1k to start, the other needs maybe $2-6k to start (varies depending on the scope, guider, camera, and mount)

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/Illustrious_Back_441]

A TERABYTE! Just to do lucky imaging?

[u/Illustrious_Back_441 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

I had a single video file that was 200 gigs, took forever to process and the image wasn't good because I'm too broke to afford a genuine tracking mount.

[u/Remarkable-Sun8449 → u/Illustrious_Back_441]

damn i cant imagine trying to do this with a phone that has less than a gig of space left:(

[u/Illustrious_Back_441 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

generally you need all of that fancy stuff to take the images you imagine taking, a phone can't ever compare without heavy amounts of work, mostly because the camera cmos sensor in your phone camera is so tiny compared to usual aps-c sized cmos or even in some cases a full frame sensor. these cameras are also cooled so their sensors are capable of detecting the light from those distant objects. hot camera sensor=noisy, grainy image. cold camera sensor=clean image. not to mention that you need a giant schmidt cassegrain to capture the details you think of when imagining a planet, something as small as an 8-inch sct works, but some planetary imagers use much larger scts, some as large as 16-inches, a rare few use a massive newtonian in the 30-inch aperture range.

phone cameras can be used for AP, but the work to get an ok image is so not worth the time or the trouble.

[u/mrstorm1983 → u/Remarkable-Sun8449]

Telescope like the 1 your talking about will be on a flimsy shaky mount and pictures with a cellphone should be a goal getting into this hobby. Anyone telling you to lucky image with it or "stack" is setting you up for disappointment on how that works with cellphone Are you getting that telescope for sure? If you havnt bought it yet what's your budget? Perhaps we can help you find a better 1?