Frustration

Many articles and forum posts come with disclaimers - "This was beautiful in my Teleview using a 31mm Nagler " or "I live in New Mexico, where good seeing is common", or "You can only see this object in scopes larger than a 12"."

All the astrophotos we see are long-exposure, beautiful images, about which everyone admits "you won't see this with the naked eye through the eyepiece?" (This, incidentally, was recently the subject of legal procedure against a large telescope maker.) Will anyone make astro-photos that look just like we see it?

There's a sense of frustration, here.

I want to read reports of the beautiful objects I can see through light pollution with my cheap 3-1/2" achromat refractor. In reading the forums, I sense there are a lot of people out there in the same boat.

Kudos to the Astromart editor for recognizing this and making the recent change to add the forum sections "After Dark" and "Beginners". So all you "poor boys" and "newbies", living in the 'burbs - post on these forums! And be sure to be descriptive!

Hi Rick,

Yours was a very thoughtful post. I hadn't heard about it, but I'm glad that telescope makers are being held accountable for the outrageous pictures some show along side their scopes.

Since you already have been observing, you now have an idea of what we all see through the eyepiece. But there are different kinds of challenges in astronomy, and seeing visual detail is only one. Sometimes just finding an object gives immense gratification even though it may only be an averted vision smear in the eyepiece. Those with larger scopes simply take this challenge to fainter magnitudes. I get a big kick out of finding objects in my small scope or binoculars that would be easy in a large scope.

In general, the purpose of astrophotos is not to show us what we can already see visually, but what we can't. I happen to be one of those who would rather look at the faint smear in the eyepiece than the detailed color astrophoto, but everyone is different.

Regarding objects for you to try for in an urban setting, I believe the Astro League maintains a list of such objects at http://www.astroleague.org/index.html but I was unable to access their website just now. Also, please consider taking your refractor out to a dark site once in awhile - not only will you be able to see fainter objects, they will be easier to find because of the increased number of naked-eye field stars.

Clear skies,
Milt

>Will anyone make astro-photos that look just like we see it?<

No. Partly because it's not as spectacular. Partly because everyone sees it differently. A newbie and an experienced observer looking through the same scope at the same object will see two very different things.

>I want to read reports of the beautiful objects I can see through light pollution with my cheap 3-1/2" achromat refractor. In reading the forums, I sense there are a lot of people out there in the same boat.<

Deep-sky objects like nebulae and galaxies will never be great under these circumstances, but there's enough change and detail in Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon to keep city-bound 90mm refractor owner busy and sleep-deprived for years. Even in my midwestern city of St. Paul where the seeing usually stinks. With time, experience and adaptation, you will begin to 'see' detail in these that previously you thought was only showing in the photos.