Hello! I was out tonight trying to use my neighbor's telescope to observe Mars, but couldn't see anything whatsoever! I've never used a telescope so I know absolutely nothing and the manual was no help. There's absolutely no light coming through the telescope, is the aperture closed? This model is a Bausch and Lomb 4000, a Schmidt-Cassegrain; does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? If you have an idea, please e-mail or instant message me. Thank you very much!

Heather, has anyone contacted you for help yet? I have never
used a B&L SCT before, but I owned a Celestron SCT a few years
ago and they are simular. Let me know if I can help. I tried to
use the email feature, but got the message that "this user does
not accept emails"

Originally posted by Heather
Hello! I was out tonight trying to use my neighbor's telescope to observe Mars, but couldn't see anything whatsoever! I've never used a telescope so I know absolutely nothing and the manual was no help. There's absolutely no light coming through the telescope, is the aperture closed? This model is a Bausch and Lomb 4000, a Schmidt-Cassegrain; does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? If you have an idea, please e-mail or instant message me. Thank you very much!

Ok this might sound stupid but did you take of the dust cap? (friend of mine had that with my scope :D ) It's a black plastic thing at the front of the scope.

lol, yes the dustcap was off! I think maybe the prism inside is missing, but I'm not sure. I haven't been able to check out the scope since last night, so maybe I'll have an answer tonight.

Originally posted by 2inquisitive
Heather, has anyone contacted you for help yet? I have never
used a B&L SCT before, but I owned a Celestron SCT a few years
ago and they are simular. Let me know if I can help. I tried to
use the email feature, but got the message that "this user does
not accept emails"

That's very strange, how do I fix it? I looked at my options and it doesn't look like I've made my e-mail unavailable. No, I haven't really gotten any help yet. My e-mail address is Silverblade42@aol.com

Well... we figured out what was wrong... :o lol. Well, my dad came out to take a look at the telescope and I noticed that the thing screwed on to the end of the scope wasn't screwed in straight. So dad looked and he was like "Yeah, this is probably the problem. Wait a second, this is mirror!" lol! Last night in the dark my neighbor and I couldn't see that it was a reflective surface... And to make matters worse, it was screwed in there tight and since it was all tilted, we couldn't get it off. But my neighbor's son came over this evening and pried it off. And he told us that was the sun filter, which would explain why we couldn't see anything :rolleyes: lol, well at least it's fixed!! We'll never be able to use the sun filter again (the threads were stripped) but the scope is undamaged and I'll get to check out Mars! yay! :p

Lol I still don't understand what the problem was.

The sun filter was screwed on over the lense! Since it's for looking at the sun it blocks out a huge amount of light (so you don't blind yourself, obviously) so even the beam from the flashlight couldn't be seen through it.

Ah ok, so now you can see the stars through it?

Yeah I looked at Mars a couple nights ago, but all I saw was an extremely fuzzy, very small red ball. I think maybe something else is wrong with the scope after all :(

A couple of things you might try. You may already know this, but
you said you were new to telescopes, so I thought I might point
them out. All telescopes, and SCT's in particular, take a while to
adjust to the difference in temperatures when you take them outside.
SCT's probably need at least 1/2 to 1 hour to stabilize. You will get
a poor image if they are not. Next, if you have more than one eyepiece, start with the lowest power (highest number, like 25mm)
until you get Mars in the field of view. If the scope has power to its
tracking motor, turn it on, if not Mars will slowly drift out of view
due to the earth's rotation. I am not sure where the focus adjustment
is on the B&L, but it should be a knob sticking straight out the back
of the scope. Turn this knob SLOWLY back and forth until the image
is clearest to your eyes. If you have another higher power eyepiece,
such as 9mm, now is the time to put it in. There is a little set screw
that holds the eyepieces in, it does not need to be tight. You will
probably need more focus adjustments after changing eyepieces,
but not much. Hope this may help.

Yeah I did all that stuff :) I'm not sure how to turn the motor on and stuff, but that sure would be nice, lol. Some one else on another board suggested that the scope needs to be collimated which I had already thought of. My neighbor's son is supposed to be taking the scope to the beach, but if he hasn't already maybe I can fiddle with that :p It would be pretty unfortunate if he lugged that scope all the way down to NC just to get fuzzy images.

Well, I never got a chance to try to collimate the scope, my neighbor gave the scope to her son before I could do anything about it! But the night before yesterday I got to go to the Naval Observatory and see Mars through their 26 inch refractor! Unfortunately they moved their 40 inch out to Arizona back in the fifties :( Can't say that I blame them, how much are you going to see in DC?? I got to see the polar cap and a bit of surface definition. It was still kind of wavery (DC is pretty moist) so all I could see was a slightly darker blob on the disk. So I finally got to see Mars and not through a measly 4 inch!! It was really cool, they had a moving floor (is that usual for big telescopes? They said they needed it because the range of motion on the scope) and they kept adjusting it to fit the heights of the people trying to see through the eyepiece :D We also got to see through a 6 inch and an 8 inch, both refractors, but not as historically significant. The said the lense on the 26 inch one was the same one that discovered the moons of mars! (they made a new body and a new mount later) It helps when your dad works at the Navy Yard and the Naval observatory is in part of his jurisdiction, heh heh. He drove up and one of the security guys was like Hey, Mister Duke! We got to park on the compound and everybody else had to park outside of it :p lol. (not trying to brag, I didn't realize we were the only one parked there until the guy leading the tour had to knock on our car to ask for the numbers on our cards. They were collecting everyone elses after they walked past the security drive through thingy... it was kinda funny) And Vice-president Cheney landed in his helicopter while we were there, although we couldn't see it. Could certainly hear it though

Originally posted by Heather
about it! But the night before yesterday I got to go to the Naval Observatory and see Mars through their 26 inch refractor!

Bleh and i'm stuck with a 70mm refractor, you lucky one

lol, well I only got to look through it once. It's not like it's always at my disposal :p Hopefully I'll get to go back in december to look at Saturn though

Well we have a 25cm newton scope here at the observatory, it's just it's always clouded here so it's pretty useless (since the scope is only open on fridays).

yeah, well observing from the middle of DC seems kind of useless too, lol But I guess Mars is close enough that it's not such a big deal