How to use Vivitar 50x/100x Refractor Telescope with Tripod ?

[katrina]

I just bought this Vivitar 50x/100x Refractor Telescope with Tripod a few days ago, put together everything right. But I cant really see anything, it comes out so blurry and so hard to see. Can someone help?
I just bought this Vivitar 50x/100x Refractor Telescope with Tripod a few days ago, put together everything right. But I cant really see anything, it comes out so blurry and so hard to see. Can someone help?

and uh yeah I know I bought a crappy piece of **** but I'm new to this thing, I'll buy a better one later on ^ - ^.

[jondalar469]

Is the focal length of the objective anywhere close to the length of the telescope tube? If it is, try turning the focus knob. If it isn't, learn not to expect quality optics from cheap suppliers. You might "luck up" once in a while, but it's usually a poor gamble.

[speedwerksrc]

Originally Posted by katrina

I just bought this Vivitar 50x/100x Refractor Telescope with Tripod a few days ago, put together everything right. But I cant really see anything, it comes out so blurry and so hard to see. Can someone help?
I just bought this Vivitar 50x/100x Refractor Telescope with Tripod a few days ago, put together everything right. But I cant really see anything, it comes out so blurry and so hard to see. Can someone help?

and uh yeah I know I bought a crappy piece of **** but I'm new to this thing, I'll buy a better one later on ^ - ^.

hi katrina,
you say cant really see anything. this makes me wonder. can you tell us what in particular it is you were trying to view that was blurry? there are lots of things that do in fact appear as a blur in even the best of telescopes. Lots of deepspace objects like some of the the M's and nebulas appear as a blur. It may just be an object your scope is not capable of viewing. I have found, and I know im going to catch crap for saying this sometime in my life, that even the worst telescope will sometimes surprise even the most seasoned viewer. Anything is possible. Try and let us know the objects that were blurry, what eyepiece you were using, and some other info, and we may just be able to dissect your problem. Its worth a shot.

I looked into this scope a bit. It seems to have a 60mm aperture diameter, so the 12mm eyepiece gives 50x magnification and the 6mm eyepiece gives 100x magnification...apparently, a rule of thumb is that you can get 2x or 3x per mm of aperture diameter before the image looks too distorted...so a 4mm eyepiece would give 150x magnification and that would make all the difference...I think. This should be enough to give you at least a pretty darn good look at the moon and some of our closer planets. It may just be your using the wrong mm eyepiece and not focusing it perfectly. Alot of this hobby is experimenting.