Bought a Bluesky BT600 for about 50 bucks. This is how it looks like: http://www.mercadolivre.com.br/org-img/original/MLB/092004/21201258_499.jpg Anyway, this is what it says on it: 56x525x /60mm As well, it came with a number of parts, I'm gonna list them here: * an eyepiece that doesn't say much and which fits: - a H20mm thingie - an SR4mm thingie - an H12.5mm thingie * 1 . 5x erecting eyepiece * barlow lens x3 Now what do I do with them, how do I use them, etc? Any sort of help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Drac

i think you look thro it and stuff looks bigger....

joking aside; . http://www.space.com/spacewatch/telescope_tips_021227.html . . http://www.starizona.com/basics/basics.html . . http://www.willbell.com/tm/tm2.htm .

I thought it all came with a manual???

Can't see the image, but it sounds like you have the classic 60mmm beginners refractor. Before too long, if you take it out regularly, you will be hankering for a Newtonian reflector. With scopes it is the light gathering power, and not the magnification which allows you to see the deep space stuff. The light gathering power is a product of the size of the objective lens, which in your case is 60 mm (pretty small). I think that is about 4 inches. If you upgrade to an 8 inch reflector you will get a helluva lot more light gathering(and magnification as well). I do not mean to knock your scope. I would like to have a refractor myself. It is fun to buy a sun filter and watch the sunspots dance across the face of the sun and your first view of the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn will be remembered for the rest of your life.(PS do not expect much from the barlow. It is like a teleconverter on 35mm cameras. Yes it increases magnification, but at the expense of image sharpness and brightness.)

the barlowe is an adapter, it increases magnification several times, but at a cost of decreased light, the others sound like eyepieces to me. Haven't been to the website, but usually, you stick the barlowe in first, then the eyepieces afterward (there's tons of different ones, sounds like you got a few..;)
good luck..

Yes, sorry Drac but you've purchased a classic beginner's route into astronomy that has disappointed so many people. There ought to be a law against selling these things (figuratively speaking). Whenever you read stuff like 525x power on small telescopes, they are best avoided. That is a theoretical maximum, and will be useless when looking at the night sky. Your new scope has an objective lens (front end ;-)) of 60mm diameter, which is about two and a half inches. This is little more than the lens size on a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars, and you've only got one of them. So we're not talking about a lot of light gathering ability. With a lot of these cheap scopes, the lens quality is so poor that the outer areas are worse than useless. The manufacturers, in order to avoid allowing this to ruin the image, will place a physical 'stop down' ring inside the tube. This barrier will reduce the effective objective diameter to something like 40mm. You should check to see if there is one (look down the tube). If there's not one there, it's a good sign. The magnification power of a scope depends on its focal length and that of the eyepiece you use. This scope has a focal length of 700mm. You divide that number by the focal length of the eyepiece. So the 12.5mm eyepiece is what gives you the 56x magnification. The 20mm gives you 35x (probably the most useful magnification on this scope). To get the 525x, you have to combine the 4mm (which gives 175x by itself) with the 3x Barlow lens. That's a lot of likely low quality glass between you and the object. If you're lucky, your scope won't be too bad and you'll be able to use the 35x and 56x eyepieces for low power views of the moon and planets. It might be enough to raise a few hairs on the back of your neck, depending on your expectations. Your views of star clusters and galaxies will be disappointing, though. Forget 175x, even high quality scopes are lucky to use that power for anything beneficial, due to the usual unsteadiness of the atmosphere. Anyway, you (probably) have: An optical tube assembly (long bit ;-)) with an objective lens of 60mm diameter and 700mm focal length. This has a 'rack and pinion' focuser (in and out bit). There is probably a 'star diagonal' that should slot into the focuser, which turns the light path 90 degrees to aid viewing comfort (probably uses a cheap prism). You put your eyepieces in that, or straight into the focuser. At least three eyepieces, of 4mm, 12.5mm and 20mm focal length. Either one of those, or another eyepiece in the pack, is an 'erecting' eyepiece - this provides a 'right way up' view for looking at terrestrial objects (there is no up or down in space). A 3x Barlow lens (focal length extender). This goes into your star diagonal or focuser, and your eyepieces slot into it. Used with the 4mm eyepiece you get 525x mag; with the 12.5mm - 168x; with the 20mm - 105x. A tripod with an 'alt-azimuth' mount. This provides simple up and down movement, but won't compensate for the spin of the Earth. The higher magnification you use on astronomical objects, the quicker they will move out the field of view. Hope you get some decent views with it. BTW, you can make working telescopes in Bryce by combining lenses made of flattened spheres. Did somebody mention Bryce?

PJF I was just wondering the other day about whether I could build a working optical device inside of Bryce.

many thanks to all. over the past weeks i've looked into telescopes. i haven't really fallen for anything because i knew that the whole 525x is bunk. however for a beginner's telescope this is more than adequate at 45 bucks. in the meantime i've educated myself to the stuff i have and i've just trained it at the moon and i wish i had a camera that could take the pictures. i just used the star diagonal and the 20mm and 12.5 (the 4mm is needs a lot of fine tinkering and the whole setup is just too rickety for that sort of thing). All the same, it IS AMAZING! the moon fills the whole viewfinder and it's just beautiful in terms of the craters, the shadows on them, the very detail that you can pick up. QUITE AWESOME! Many thanks again, and I'll keep you guys posted on what I see next. This was out of my balcony on the 13th floor. Tomorrow night I'm taking it on the hill next to my house and I'll be trying to look at some stars :) Drac

Yes, you have yourself a refracting telescope with a 60mm (2.4 inch) main lens diameter offering anywhere from 56x power of magnification to 525x depending on your combination of eyepiece mm (the smaller the eyepiece lens diameter the higher the magnification). You have a 1.5x power erecting eyepiece which will invert the image so it can be viewed normally, where up is up, down is down as when viewing terrestrial objects as apposed to space objects where there is no up or down.(a matter of relational reference). The Barlow lens allows you to attach an eyepiece of a particular power and will increase the focal length of the lens up to 3x (3x in your case, Barlow comes in different powers). Sometimes the Barlow lens allows you to slide the inner lens along its holding tube to any power in between the maximum power giving you 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x and 3x the magnification of the eyepiece. The Barlow adds another element (optical lens) between the main lens and the eyepiece thereby decreasing the amount of light to the eyepiece so things would look a lot darker than when viewing through no barlows. The larger the main light gathering capacity element (main lens in a refractor, main mirror in a reflector) the more powerful the instrument. As a rule, reflectors are less expensive because the mirror is easier to make then perfecting a lens giving the consumer more bang for their money. I own a Meade 8 inch Newtonian reflector on a motorized equatorial mount, which with a camera adaptor allows me to attach my old SR101 Minolta camera effectively making the telescope a huge telephoto lens. Its what got me started in photography forcing me to set a room aside as a darkroom for instant gratification since I didnt have to wait for the B&W pictures from the drug store to develop them. Living in New York City, with tons of light pollution, made my telescoping adventure short, and I no longer use the scope and have it all discombobulated in what was once my darkroom. Cleaning the main mirror one day, I lost my grip and the mirror slid down the main tube cracking it on the adjusting knobs at the bottom end of the scope. You can still view through it but now the gathered light is scattered haphazardly along the scope. (sigh) Heres a company pic of my scope, mind you, it measures 5 feet in length, is 8 inches in diameter and weighs about 100 lbs. with the counter weights. Scope

Just for a laugh, here's my 5" Maksutov that I purchased specifically for the Venus transit of the Sun this year. Note the harsh observing conditions I had to endure. I mean, it got so hot that I had to drink beer. I got to see the whole event. Imagine that, buying a telescope for the astronomical event of a lifetime - and the skies stay clear! Not only that, I was treated to weeks of superb views of the moon, Saturn and Jupiter; with several amazing moon and shadow transits of the latter. This was totally unlike my earlier life in astonomy, when apochromatic refractor and light bucket reflector were persistently rendered useless by bad weather. I think the key may be in not being serious about it. If you care, the gods laugh.

Crickey!, I must mention that that people should NEVER look at the Sun through any type of optical instrument unless they know what special precautions to take!! Instant, permanent blindness will result!!! Do not ever do this without learning about it properly first. Learn from astronomers. I know this will be obvious to most people here, but it's not something to be undertaken lightly. Despite my frivoloty above, I was very cautious, especially as I was sharing the experience with novices. Phew.

oh you poor thing ;) drac

Oops! Just reread the thread and I just realized I posted well after PJF and practically gave the same song and dance, sorry about that. I was in a hurry to make a medical appointment when I wrote the post and simply hit the post button and walked away not realizing that PJF had already made all the points plus more. In any case, good luck with your scope Drac and enjoy.

@ pjf "I think the key may be in not being serious about it. If you care, the gods laugh." thats an obsevation i also did and learning to live with it at 41 lol nice scope by the way.

Here's an excellent site for Astronomy and telescope related stuff: http://www.cloudynights.com/new.htm The forums are great too. A beginner can learn alot there. And get a bad case of "Scope Envy" to boot! ~;-) LB

The up side of this is that Drac could probably model one in Wings3d!!!!!

Cloudynights is great. They have an Astro-Art forum...