Can you see the surface of a star from using the telescope u buy from the shop?


telescope
Phantom asked:


Can you see the surface of a star from using the telescope u buy from the shop?
Just the ordinary one, because I want to buy one.
Like how detailed and how far can you see from using the telescope?
Thank you very much.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Astronomy & Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Can you see the surface of a star from using the telescope u buy from the shop?”

  1. beyondwords20 Says:

    Off topic but anyway, a star doesn’t have a surface really, it’s just made up of gas/plasma or whatever and held together by gravity =] beyondwords20

  2. B. Says:

    No, that would blind you almost instantly and permanently for the rest of your life.

    The only way to safely view the surface of a star is by looking at the sun with a SOLAR FILTER especially designed to view the sun safely. There are may types of solar filters ranging from Baader film, to glass white-light filters, to specially designed hydrogen-alpha telescopes by Coronado called Personal Solar Telescopes (PST) B.

  3. victor Says:

    As mentioned….Stars have no real surface and you would be blind for looking at a star. Trying looking at the sun and you wll see what happens. Plus you are giving us limited information. Which telescope is it?? What kind? If you are talking about a regular telescope that you gonna spend $50 on it, its a waste of money, you are paying more for the materials than the quality of the telescope. victor

  4. blakutps.blogspot.com Says:

    If by surface you mean disk, then no, you can’t.

    Stars (except for the sun of course) are so far away, that no matter how much magnification you have, all you’ll see for the stars will be points of light. But the thing is you’ll be able to see fainter stars, so even if you’ll see them as dots, there’s gonna be more of them!

    The detail you get from a telescope comes from its aperture (how wide it is, its mirror or its lenses). Don’t buy telescopes that advertise 600x magification or the like, that is not possible with supermarket scopes.

    Through a good commercial telescope you’ll be able to see details on the planets of our solar system (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), nebulae (like the Orion Nebula), craters on the Moon, Sunspots on the sun and more. You notice that the telescope will help you see FAINTER objects better, it doesn’t mean anything to ask HOW FAR.

    Try to buy a telescope from a specialized store, like Celestron, Meade etc. Stuff you can buy from the supermarket is usually substandard cheap crap.

    Oh yeah: NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN WITHOUT PROPER FILTERS. YOU’LL GO INSTANTLY BLIND! blakutps.blogspot.com

  5. harmonograph Says:

    Only one, the Sun. All the other stars are so distant that they will only be points of light.

    I have a nice 8″ reflector and I can make out the discs of the Galilean moons, but the stars are just points of light…

    The bigger the telescope, the more light it can gather, which means finer detail can be observed… harmonograph

  6. Geoff G Says:

    The only star that is close enough is the Sun…you can look at the surface of the Sun with a special filter on the front of your telescope, needed to cut the brightness down to a tolerable level. All the other stars are so far away that they only appear as points of light. What we actually look at with telescopes are the Moon, the planets, clusters of stars, nebulae, and galaxies. Geoff G

  7. Viola At Neon Says:

    The Sun, yes, with proper filtering. The Sun is a fascinating object to observe, but you have to do it properly.

    Any other star, no. Viola At Neon

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