The 114mm Newtonian telescope with 900mm focal length is probably by far the most popular beginner's telescope worldwide. A telescope of this size offers years of fun of observing, but is still very affordable.

Despite its popularity many people do not know what they can expect of such a telescope. We will try to shed some light into this issue. (Left image: TS Optics StarScope 1149)

First, a few Basics:
Often telescopes like this are advertised with phantastically high magnifications and colour images that are rather misleading. We think that what you can see with a 114mm Newtonian is truly fascinating, there's no need to exaggerate!

Necessary basics for successful observing:
The telescope is already rather large. This means that the mounting should be sufficiently sturdy to hold the telescope without distracting vibrations. The mount should also offer the option of being upgraded with a motor in order to comfortably use higher magnifications.

The focuser must accept standard 1.25" accessories. Smaller focusers (the old 24.5mm format) will not allow you to use standard accessories like additional eyepieces, filters, ...

Maximum useful magnification:
A well collimated and sturdily mounted Newtonian telescope with 114mm aperture and 900mm focal length offers magnifications up to about 170x. Short-tube Newtonians of the same aperture with 500mm or 1000mm focal length should only be used with magnifications up to 140x.

Higher magnifications are not useful - you will not be able to see more detail. On the contrary, the image gets darker and the image sharpness deteriorates massively. This is a function of the clear aperture of the telescope and is a fact of the laws of optics. The rule applies to all Newtonians of this size - no matter which brand!

Mounting:
In order to fully utilize the telescope's potential you need a sufficiently strong mount. Otherwise vibrations will make higher magnifications impossible or at least difficult. An optional motor drive is also useful for high magnifications. GoTo instruments should have a sturdy metal mount.

114mm Newtonians offer the option of also viewing objects on the ground, although admittedly a telescope of this type is not ideal for this application.

The reason for this is that in a Newtonian telescope the image is always upside down and mirror reversed. For astronomy this is no problem with a little bit of experience. However for terrestrial viewing it is distracting.

A refractor telescope is better suited for terrestrial viewing. It either has an upright but mirror reversed image (with a star diagonal) or even a completely correct image (with an erecting prism).

Correcting lenses also exist for Newtonians. The viewing position on the side of the telescope still takes some getting used to, but at least you get a correct image.

Lunar Observing

The moon is a particularly easy object to watch. It is close to the Earth ("only" a little under 400,000km away) and rather bright. When the sun illuminates the moon from the side a huge number of craters and other details become visible, even seeming three-dimensional.

An approximate 70x magnification will render an image similar to the one on the left. A large number of craters throughout the moon's surface makes the moon a most rewarding object to see, along with mountain ranges, dark patches (the "maria", or oceans), crevices, ... This magnification is ideal for getting an overview of the moon's surface.

Then you can zoom in on particular objects, with magnifications of  90x or higher. The lower image on the left equals approximately 150x magnification. This is well within the limits of a 114mm Newtonian.

We recommend to use a Moon Filter or Grey (Neutral Density) filter in order to reduce glare. The moon is rather bright. Observing it without a filter is not dangerous (unlike solar observing without a filter), but it is not comfortable and you will see less details.

With 100x or higher magnifications we recommend to use a motor drive. This will automatically compensate the movement of the celestial objects across the sky. As a result the object will remain inside the field of view of the eyepiece and you can concentrate better on details. Without a motor the object will leave the field of view in a matter of seconds.

Our Earth's atmosphere has a big influence on the possible magnifications. If the air is calm you can use the maximum magnification that is theoretically possible with the telescope. Under worse "seeing conditions" you may not be able to use such high magnifications at all, the image will quickly become blurred.

Photographing the Moon

Both images were taken with conventional 114mm Newtonian telescopes. With a little practice, especially with digital cameras, more details can be photographed.

For imaging the motor drive is mandatory. Otherwise details will be smeared and will disappear, even with short exposure times.

For high magnifications eyepiece projection is used. For this an eyepiece is placed between the camera and the telescope in order to increase magnification. On many 114mm Newtonians eyepiece projection is always used in order to reach focus at all!

114mm Newtonians are well suited for viewing objects within our solar system.

The images to the left were taken with 114mm aperture.

For planetary imaging a motor drive is particularly important.

Astro imaging will show the planets in colour. During visual observing you will only see slight shades of colour, much less intense than in most photos. The left images try to simulate the visual impression with a 114mm Newtonian with medium and high magnifications.

Mercury
Only visible on a few evenings immediately after sunset or before sunrise as a tiny crescent.

Venus
Venus is a more rewarding object than Mercury. It is visible frequently, but still not every day. Like Mercury Venus is only visible either shortly after sunset (as Evening Star) or shortly before sunrise (as Morning Star). Venus shows similar phases like the moon. Depending on the constellation of Earth, Sun and Venus. Since Venus is rather bright you can use a moon filter to reduce glare.

Mars
Mars can be a very interesting object to observe, but often it reveals details only reluctantly. In many nights you will only see a slightly orange disc without details of any kind. Under better conditions the polar caps as well as some structures on the surface will be visible. Colour filters will help to improve contrast and visibility of details.

Jupiter
A very rewarding object to observe. You can watch the movement of the four Galilean moons in their orbit around Jupiter. Jupiter's atmosphere features cloud belts that can also be seen. With a little practice you can see the Great Red Spot, even though this object has faded over the past years. This particular object has been observed for hundreds of years on end! It is twice the size of our entire home planet! In the middle picture on the left you can see it as a little bump in the lower atmospheric belt.

Saturn
To many Saturn is the most bizarre but also the most beautiful planet in our solar system. Even in small telescopes you can see its rings. In a 114mm Newtonian the rings can be clearly seen even by an unexperienced observer. Under good seeing conditions you can see the shadow which the rings cast on Saturn's atmosphere. You might even detect a trace of the Cassini division, a large gap that runs around the Saturn's rings. You will need a high magnification, about 140x, in order to see the division.

Uranus
Uranus is visible as a very little disc. No details can be seen, but the planet is discernably larger than the surrounding stars.

Neptun, Pluto
Neptune will appear like a faint star, but it can be seen with a 114mm Newtonian. Pluto is too faint, you will only be able to catch a glimpse of it photographically.

A 114mm Newtonian gathers 2.25x more light than a 76mm Newtonian.

For deep sky observing this means the difference between seeing and not seeing. A 76mm Newtonian will only show a couple of deep sky objects. In a 114mm Newtonian there will be many more objects, and the objects will also be seen more easily.

Deep Sky Objects will only be seen as shades of grey. No colour will be seen except in a few remarkable exceptions. Only with 300mm aperture or larger telescopes a small amount of colour can be seen, but never as much as in the many photos you can see throughout the internet. Despite this Deep Sky Objects cause a unique fascination - the little "something" in your eyepiece is the real deal! In all cases what you see is huge, a lot larger than our own Earth and often hundreds or even millions of light years away!

Star Clusters
These are very rewarding objects in a 114mm Newtonian. The variety ranges from large, conspicuous objects like the double cluster h + x (x being the Greek letter "Chi") in Perseus to loose congregations of stars that will easily be missed if you don't look for them. Each cluster has its own feel, its own aesthetics. No two different clusters will look the same!

Outside our galaxy are located the globular clusters, ancient and extremely dense congregations of stars. In our northern latitudes M13 in Hercules is the most prominent example. It is not easy to dissolve these objects into single stars, but a 114mm Newtonian will do this to some extent and with a little observing practice.

Double and Multiple Stars
Not every star is an "eremite" like our own sun. Often two or more stars circle around one another. The movement is two slow to see, even after years the stars will still be the same distance from each other. But the view of two pinpoints of stars is a frequent sight in a telescope. Multiple stars become particularly interesting if their components have different colours, like Albireo in Cygnus.

Gas Nebulae
Our milky way galaxy contains thousands of gas nebulae. Many of these nebulae are areas where stars are born, such as the Great Orion Nebula. In a dark winter's night you can easily see this nebula in a 114mm Newtonian.

Other nebulae are the remnants of old stars. Due to their appearance they are called Planetary Nebulae. In former times even the best available telescopes were unable to resolve details in these objects, so they were easily confused with planets. A 114mm Newtonian of the modern age easily dissolves several of these nebulae, revealing their true shape. In Lyra you can see the ring nebula. This object will require a high magnification, but is visible even to observers with only a little experience. Another great object is the Dumbell nebula. One day in the distant future our own sun will produce a similar nebula when it sheds itself of its outer layers.

Galaxies
Our own milky way is only one of billions of galaxies, many of which are within reach of the 114mm Newtonian. In the constellation of Andromeda you will see a patch of light: The Great Andromeda Galaxy. This is the closest neighbour to our own galaxy, not counting a handful of "little" galaxies with "only" a few billion stars in them. The light travelling from the Andromeda Galaxy takes about three million years to reach us, travelling at almost 300,000 kilometres per second!

Two smaller patches of light are the companion galaxies of the Andromeda Galaxy. They too are visible under good observing conditions.

In a 114mm Newtonian galaxies are only faint patches of light, without detail. The spiral structure of many galaxies is not yet visible. Despite this these objects are extremely fascinating because of how far they are away and how incomprehensibly big they are!

BUT, this unfortunately doesn't work visually. Colours are too faint, so on typical objects the intensity of light will not be enough to trigger your colour vision. In order to really see the colour you need to collect the light for longer periods of time.

Unfortunately the human eye does not have this practical function. But a camera can do this! The exposure time can just as well be many minutes. In these many minutes the camera continues to collect light, ultimately showing one of the colourful pictures that you know from books or the internet.

The difficulty here is that the movement of the object needs to be followed with extraordinary precision that is not possible to achieve just like that.

A motor drive is mandatory:

With a typical 114mm Newtonian on a good quality equatorial mount you can easily take photos of the moon and the planets. Taking photos of deep sky objects is a lot more demanding, but to some degree it is possible even with such an inexpensive telescope.

It is much easier to use a conventional camera with a short focal length lens. The image to the left was taken with a 50mm lens with 30 minutes exposure time, but with classical film. With a digital camera the same result is possible with a shorter exposure time.

How to do it:

The first step is to set up the mount correctly. The polar alignment is very important.

The next step is to attach your camera. The camera needs to have a "B" ("Bulb") exposure time setting. The camera is attached parallel to the main telescope. Focus the lens precisely. Take your time to get it right!

Activate the motor drive and center a bright star in your eyepiece at the highest possible magnification. Ideally you should use a reticle eyepiece. Use a remote control to start the exposure.

During the exposure you need to keep the star centered permanently. It is rather likely that not all photos will immediately work, but with this technique guiding up to 135mm focal length is possible.