Can you see a spiral galaxy with a small Telescope?

Factual Questions
1

I have some very limited experience with a small telescope, you know the kind you buy at K-mart for $100.00. I gave it up a long time ago because I never knew where to point the thing. Small scopes today have small computers with catalogs of the celestial objects that can point the scope to them. So I just wonder what you can really see with a small scope.

I am really interested to seeing a galaxy with my own eyes, Is this possible with a basic amateur telescope? Can you see a spiral galaxy? Will it look like the pictures in the books or is that only possible with photography and long exposures?

Just the possibility of seeing the Cosmos with my own eyes is intriguing.

2

You can see Andromeda without a telescope. It is pretty dim, so you need dark skies, and you probably need to use averted vision. It is near Cassiopeia (The big W asterism generally north)

ETA: It is pretty big. Look for a big smudge in the sky. Like the milky way, only localized.

3

If you have really good eyes, you can make out the Andromeda Galaxy without a telescope. Granted it just looks like a (faint) smudge.

I don’t know if you can resolve it with a small telescope so that it actually looks like a disc.

4

You can see the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, M31, with your naked eye. It’s the closest large spiral to us, at only about 2 million LY. It’s full extent covers 7 times the apparent diameter of the full Moon, however, it’s so faint that even with a decent small scope, you can only make out the central bulge. To see the wispy spiral arms really requires a timelapse exposure.

5

Amateur astronomy is a fascinating and never-ending wonder, but you do have to have decent equipment to make it possible. The cheap “department store” telescopes have done more to turn people off to the hobby than anything. They are impossible to aim properly, don’t have decent tripods, can’t be polar aligned, and the optics are the pits.

The first thing to do is get some good books from the library on “backyard astronomy” and find out the basics. These books will tell you about the various types of amateur telescopes, how to use them, and the differences. They will also tell you how to “star hop” with star charts to find various targets. You will learn that magnification is meaningless in astronomical telescopes, and that aperture is everything. The larger the mirror, the more light-gathering ability it has, and the more you can see.

Next, you should contact a nearby astronomy club and find out when and where their next “star party” will be. At these, members set up their scopes on different objects, and more than welcome visitors to look through them, and explain what and how to do.

Next, if you don’t have one, get a decent pair of binoculars, and lay down in a lawn chair some place that has really dark skies. You may have to travel some distance to find that. Then aim at the milky way and you’ll be astonished. With these you can see craters on the moon, some of the moons of Jupiter and other wonders. Look for the Orion nebula (in winter).

Then, if still interested, start looking for good used telescopes. There are always many available, and you can, with proper directions, begin to look for deep-sky objects, nebulae, galaxies, star clusters and other wonders.

As to seeing a galaxy as depicted in the very long photographic exposures, no you won’t, but you will see enough stuff to last you all your life as a “naturalist of the night.”

6

So, just to give me some sort of very basic idea, when buying a new telescope and living in a medium sized city how much do you have to spend to get something worthwhile, and what would stuff look like through it?

7

I would second Klondike’s comment about binoculars. A few years ago, I got a pair of astronomical binoculars from BigBinoculars.com for about $100. I could see the moons of Jupiter, Globular clusters in Hercules, and Andromeda, and the occasional comet. Not in with the telescope crowd, but still amazing stuff to see.

8

If you’re in a medium size city, you may require a car to get out of it to a darker place. Just drive 15 miles out of town to a vacant lot, it’ll improve everything. Having said that, with a 4" refractor you could see nearly anything on the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and several other less striking wonders.

If you want to really see stars, a good pair of binoculars (10x50?) and the ability to get out of Dodge is pretty important.

Also, skies are generally somewhat hazy in the summer where you live ¶, and probably clear as a bell in winter (and there are awesome objects in the winter skies), so buy some warm clothes and go to a dark location and shiver, and you’ll see quite a bit.

Also, what KlondikeGeoff said: you may want to see if there’s a local astronomy club in your area. They tend to do “star parties”, and all the enthusiasts pull out the big gear and show the newbies the wonders of the universe. Some astronomy club people have serious gear, and are happy to share.

9

An example of what an experienced observer with a good amateur scope (a 4 inch refractor) and lots of patience could see of the more prominent spiral galaxies by eye are John Mallas’s drawings in The Messier Album (Sky, 1978). In some cases he could see the faint disk surrounding the brighter central bulge, either edge-on in the likes of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) or face-on in the likes of M33 and M51. In some of the face-on ones he also thought he could just see some structure within the disk that might be the spiral arms. But in no case was he entirely convinced.
Under ideal conditions he did think the spiral pattern in M51 was obvious using a 12 1/2 inch reflector, but that’s a serious bit of kit.

So, to reiterate the other responses, no you can’t expect to see a spiral as a spiral using simple equipment. But there’s plenty else to see.

10

Another question that novices often ask is whether they’ll be able to see color in things like nebulae, clusters, etc. Alas, no, at least not with a telescope that you’ll be able to afford. But that’s OK. There’s a certain mystery about black & white objects that is lost when they’re seen in color.

I want to add that the virtually the entire Messier catalog is visible through a small scope if you know where to look (and have a bit of patience). The Wiki link for the Messier Objects is actually quite good. Take a peek.

Let me ‘third’ the recommendation to start off with binoculars. “The best first telescope is a pair of binoculars”. Why?

  1. Binoculars are great for other things (sports, birdwatching), so if you give up on astronomy, you’ll still use them (unlike a telescope).

  2. Binoculars are portable and thus more likely to be used.

  3. Binoculars are easy to use and require no unusual mental maps (many telescopes flip images left/right or up/down).

  4. For any given dollar amount, binoculars will be of much higher quality than the correspondingly priced telescope.

  5. In order to use a telescope for astronomy, a person should have some familiarity with “the night sky”. Along with the good old naked-eye, binoculars are ideal for doing so.

And don’t forget that for a few hundred dollars you can get some pretty fine binoculars, whereas the same amount doesn’t buy much at all in terms of a telescope.

Here is an old thread which contains lots of good info and helpful links.

11

Is “4 inch refractor” a mis-statement in the posts above? You get much more bang for the buck with newtonian reflective telescopes. A decent 4" achromatic (noticeable color distortion) refractor is pretty expensive, and 4" apochromatics (minimal color distortion) are outragiously expensive.

12

So, what about cost? For those of use who straddle the curious line to maybe tempted, what does it mean to get a “decent” telescope?

13

Nope, it wasn’t a mis-statement. I suspect that Mallas’s refractor was at least “pretty expensive”, if not “outrageously” so at the time (over thirty years ago). He certainly wasn’t a beginner, which is why his testimony is interesting as a minimum standard in this context.

14

Great points. I’d also like to add that using two eyes is much better than one when resolving objects. Get some good binoculars with as big objective lenses as you can afford (the lenses at the ends).

15

I bought a junkscope when I was 14, put me off astronomy for years. :frowning: The light pollution here is so bad that the first time I saw the Milky Way was in the US when I was 19!

16

Also, at least in the smaller sizes and thirty years ago, a refractor is a much better light-gatherer than a reflector - that four-inch refractor would be at least the equal of a six-inch reflector.

17

How do hold them steady? I understand there is a mounting adapter to couple the bonoculars to a common camera tripod, but where to you get the adapter? Or, do the large binoculars typically have the female threaded coupling built into the unit? - Jinx

18

Yes, at least mine do and also the ones I’ve seen up close (e.g. friends’)

19

Paralellogram Mount. Commercial ones tend to be pricey, but you can build one yourself relatively inexpensively.

20

Thanks for the reply. The only thing I did see with my $100 “scope” was Jupiter, a banded disk with two pin points of lights that were it’s moons. That crummy image has haunted me for a long time. The problem with my telescope as others have mentioned was you could not adjust it very well, the only way to do that was to loosen a screw on the tripod and when you did this it was thrown off so much you never knew where you were originally pointed.

I will try some of your suggestions. I do love my star wheel, it was instrumental in learning the constellations.