What celestial bodies can be seen through a telescope? What do they look like?

Once upon a time, looking up at the stars was one of the main forms of entertainment for people at night. Under good conditions, we can see about 6,000 stars with our naked eyes.

Most of them are stars that can shine. These stars are very far away from us. The closest ones are calculated in light years. In addition to distant stars, there are also a small number of planets in the solar system that can be observed by us by reflecting the light of the sun. If you want to see more stars, it is not enough to rely on your naked eyes. You need to use an astronomical telescope, so that the number of stars you can see will increase to 50 million. So what celestial bodies can be seen with the help of an astronomical telescope? What will they look like? The scene that can be seen through an astronomical telescope is closely related to the quality of the astronomical telescope itself.

For general astronomy enthusiasts, a refracting telescope with an aperture of less than 150mm is sufficient. If you just want to take a casual look, an 80mm aperture is sufficient. After all, refracting telescopes are not widely used and can only be used to observe the sky.

Why can a refracting telescope only be used to observe the sky? Because the image seen through a refracting telescope is upside down. It doesn't matter whether it is upside down or not when used to observe stars, but if you want to use it to watch other people's TV, it will be too uncomfortable. From a visual perspective, the largest celestial body in the sky is the sun, and the sun cannot be looked at directly, let alone through a telescope. Therefore, if you want to use a telescope to observe the sun, you must first install a solar film on the telescope.

If you look at the sun with sunglasses, all you can see is a ball of light, but through a telescope, you can see the details of the sun, such as sunspots on its surface.

When a strong magnetic field emerges on the surface of the sun, the temperature of these areas will drop from 6000 degrees Celsius to about 4000 degrees Celsius, thus forming a darker area, which is a sunspot. If your telescope is of high quality, you can even see the details of these sunspots. After watching the sun, you can wait until night to watch the moon. The moon is undoubtedly the most stunning celestial body under the astronomical telescope, because it is close enough to the earth, so under the telescope, the details of the moon's surface are clearly visible, and you can see a large number of lunar craters of various shapes. Of course, no matter how high the magnification of your telescope is, you can't see the small flags on it.

There are 8 planets in the solar system, and 7 of them except the Earth can be seen under the Uranus telescope. However, since the planets themselves do not emit light and only reflect the light of the sun, most of the planets are just small bright balls even when viewed through an astronomical telescope. Only 3 of them can be seen in detail: Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Mars is the neighbor of the Earth, but it is small, the second smallest planet in the solar system, and its volume is only about 15% of the Earth, so even through an astronomical telescope, it is difficult to see too many details, but there is one exception, that is, Mars opposition. If the Sun, Mars and the Earth happen to be on the same straight line, this situation is called "Mars opposition", and if Mars happens to be at perihelion at this time, it is called "Mars opposition".

During Mars' greatest opposition, we can see more details on the surface of Mars through an astronomical telescope.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, with a mass more than twice the total mass of the other seven planets. Such a huge gas planet is naturally very beautiful under an astronomical telescope, such as the beautiful cloud belts on the surface of Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot. Saturn is undoubtedly the most beautiful planet in the solar system, because it has a very distinctive planetary ring. Many people who buy astronomical telescopes on impulse are probably buying them to see Saturn. Fortunately, Saturn will not disappoint you, because even an entry-level astronomical telescope can clearly see the beautiful Saturn ring.

Outside the solar system, a large number of stars, nebulae and galaxy clusters can be seen through astronomical telescopes. However, because they are too far away, no details can be seen. All we can see are bright spots or halos. How much we can see and how clearly we can see it depends on objective conditions.

The so-called objective conditions mainly refer to the atmospheric environment and light pollution. If you are in the city, the deep sky objects you can see are very limited and the effect is poor. If you come to the suburbs, the situation will be much better. If you want to pursue the ultimate observation effect, you must find a "black area" with no light pollution at all. In such an environment, you can even see the Milky Way with your naked eyes. At this time, take out the astronomical telescope, and the scene you see will be very shocking.

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