Seeing celestial objects in white

Hi all, thanks for the recent warm welcome!

this thing on colours that i touched up on in my other thread, ie, using a small scope and seeing things in white. So far ive seen Venus, Mars and Saturn and all appeared white in colour. Mars and Venus were small white disks, pretty much what i expected but Saturn was great - im surprised i seen the rings at all.

Im using a Bresser Skylux (Lidl special).

Question is, i expected to see some colour in Mars and Saturn - is it only the local atmosphere that does this? what if i waited until they were much higher in the sky?

Can i do anything as regards upgrading my lenses, would that help?

If you have a large scope, and i see any do, can you identify colours?? Or is it just part and parcel of viewing from Earth?

Hi Paul,
Venus should look white so that is ok, Saturn to me is very pale yellow hue almost like a light brown colour in places, the inner rings are definitely darker, maybe a hint bluer then the rest of the system.
To me Mars is a very definite yellow/orange colour, try taking it way out of focus and see what colour the big disk becomes.
I don't notice any difference between the 12 and 20" scopes in terms of colour, its been so long that I looked at then planets through a small refractor I cant remember if they would show colour although I'm surprised that Mars wouldn't.

Dave

with Mars, which was actually the first object i went after, i did my best to keep it in focus. would i see a touch of colour if i put it intentionally out-of-focus? why is that?

Must be great with a 20 inch scope - so you really see colour on Saturn? sounds amazing. would better lenses help me, if i wasnt updating the scope yet? i mean in general - ive read a lot about these "barlowe" lenses. do they really make a difference?

Hi Jovian. Here's just one article about Barlows.

www.adorama.com/CNBLU.html

thanks Paul - ive had a read through, i didnt know that barlow lenses essentially fit onto the lens i already have - does it just magnify what you already can see? does that have a detrimental effect if you have a small scope? i mean, if what you can see is already zoomed in a lot (the 4mm lens i use to view Saturn), can it make a difference at that scale, or would it just blow up what i see? do you use those lenses yourself? and if so, have you found a difference?

why are they such a name in the telescope world?, as ive come to read more about them they seem to be very respected.

Dave

with Mars, which was actually the first object i went after, i did my best to keep it in focus. would i see a touch of colour if i put it intentionally out-of-focus? why is that?

Hi Paul,
Once common trick for seeing a stars colour is to take it intentionally out of focus.
Say you point the scope at Betelgeuse, get it focused, its colour might be orange ? red? yellow? , now take it out of focus so that it fills say 1/4 the field of view, now its colour will be very apparent as you will see a big coloured disk.
This disk is actually all the light from that star entering through the lens of the telescope, a circular lens so a circular disk of light,.
To prove it, get someone to place their finger across the lens (about 4 inches away and don't touch the lens) and look at Betelgeuse as described above and you'll see the shadow of their finger and the warm air plume rising from it, very cool, when you see it for the first time.
The method for colour identification will work on many stars but harder with fainter ones, it'll work on planets like Mars but maybe not so well on Saturn.

Must be great with a 20 inch scope - so you really see colour on Saturn? sounds amazing. would better lenses help me

Yea, its pale but its there. You;d see colour in a scope alot smaller then a 20".
Better eyepieces probabily would not help, you'd need more aperture more then anything else. I wonder is it a case of expecting too much, have you gone observing with anyone else?

ive read a lot about these "barlowe" lenses. do they really make a difference?

a barlow lens is a multiplier lens, so if you use a 4mm eyepiece with a 2x barlow, it makes that eyepiece work as a 2mm eyepiece so it double the magnification, you effective double your eyepiece set by having one.
Doing this could infact make colour harder to see as you risk washing out the image as you're probabily going beyond what the scope can do magnification wise. of course if you use a barlow with a medium or low power eyepiece then there is no harm.