Hello and merry christmas everyone. This Christmas, I was gifted my fathers old Celestron Star Hopper 8", for the most part it looks to be in good condition, it has a 25" and 6" eyepiece, looking into it, I see cobwebs and dust, how should I go about cleaning it up. I am new to astronomy so please forgive my ignorence
Compressed air is your best bet for cleaning it.
Yes.
DO NOT TAKE IT APART!
Better to have it dusty than mis-aligned. Once you learn about it, taking the main mirror out and cleaning it is possible, but then requires a lot of careful re-alignment.
This assumes it’s properly aligned to begin with. Given the age of the instrument, and length of disuse, that might be a poor assumption.
Concur with the use of compressed air only. Be especially carefully with the mirror as telescope mirrors are front surface coated and will scratch with even the slightest abrasion.
BTW, your eyepieces are not 25" and 6", they are 25mm and 6mm. I believe the 8" Celestron Dob has a focal length of about 1220mm, so your 25mm eyepiece will give you a wide field of view with around 50x magnification, and the 6mm gives you about 200x magnification.
Congratulations … that’s a fine telescope you have there … as Chronos suggests just carefully blow the detritus out with compressed air … then go out and use it … even a little dirty this piece should give you a wonderful start to telescoping pleasures … I’ve many many fond memories of standing at the eyepiece in the middle of bitterly cold nights …
If you find that you enjoy the hobby … and wish to pursue it … then try to find someone with experience cleaning telescopes and have them do a thorough cleaning … then have them re-align it for you … they may be far and few between but the local university or local astronomy club would be the place to ask …
Start with Venus in the evening sky … you’ll get a taste of what Galileo felt the first time he saw it … Saturn is currently to close to the sun to see … but in a few months you’ll be able to catch it …
ETA: When you outgrow your papa’s old telescope, here’s a 48" Newtonian for sale … no price … gotta be less than 8 digits though
NEVER look at the sun through it without a solar filter.
Also … at night … if you take a break turn the tube to the horizontal … this keeps dew from condensing on the correction plate and/or mirror … NEVER NEVER try to wipe the mirror for any reason … that’s really really bad
If, after you’ve cleaned it and used it for a while, you may think it’s not giving the best performance. It may be in need of collimation. Here’s a good place to start: A Beginner’s Guide to Collimation