Expert: Paul Wagner - 11/15/2009

Question
My Son just bought a 6" Newtonian reflector from Germany via eBay. I had a refractor many years ago and can't remember having trouble simply getting an image, but although we can see a vague ghostly blur in daylight at night time there's nothing. Are we missing something simple?

Answer
Hi Charlie

My guess is that you are looking at things that are too close, during the daytime.  The focal plane of a telescope is really quite narrow, and will only work when the objects you observe are at infinity.  When you look at something only a couple of hundred yards away, it will be very hard to focus.  If you want, try looking at something farther away, or pulling the eyepiece out of the focuser and holding it farther away from the tube.

During the night, the biggest challenge is to find something in the eyepiece field.  The best object is the moon--it is bright enough that you can find it easily.  And once you get that into the field of view, you should be able to focus just fine.  Then you can play around with the rest of the sky...

That should work!

Paul Wagner