TheTelescope

One of the most common questions an amateur astronomer asks is “what can you expect to see with my telescope?”. This is usually a difficult question to answer because there are a lot of variables to take into consideration, starting with the kind of telescope you have, your surroundings, as well as your skill in using the telescope.

The first variable is your skill in using the telescope, since you can’t do much about the surrounding conditions and the quality of your scope. However, checking one’s skills in using a telescope can hardly be realized nowadays, since most stargazers are looking for immediate results, thus they consider getting higher quality scopes without honing their skills first.

See astronomical objects under a telescope is not just a skill, but an art. Mastering it requires you to spend a lot of time learning how to use our telescope. Experienced observers would find more detailed images using an 80mm refractor, as compared with a beginner who is still working his way to find the Orion Nebula.

In general, you will be able to see all planets except Pluto as disks. You will be able to see the bands and Red Spot on Jupiter and the rings around Saturn. You may be able to see the ice caps on Mars when in it’s orbit it’s closer to Earth. Venus and Mercury will show phases but not much else.

You’ll be able to see four of Jupiter’s moons as points. Ditto Saturn’s moon Titan. You’ll also be able to see comets.

Do not expect your images to be anywhere as nice as the ones you see from the Hubble Space Telescope. If a $2000 telescope could get these, nobody would have spent billions of dollars to put the HST in orbit.
 
As far as ‘deep sky’ objects, you will be able to see all the Messier objects in most any modern telescope. Galaxies will tend to look like bright blobs. Look a while longer and you may find some spiral arms or dust lanes (assuming it has them). Galaxies look nothing like their pictures - you will not see the arms anywhere near as clearly. Remember, many of them are millions of light years away.

You will also find that the colours you see are considerably more muted than the pictures you see. This is because our retinas work by having two different types of light sensitive organs, rods and cones. Rods are very sensitive to dim light, but relatively useless for colour vision. Cones are the opposite. Thus when looking through a telescope you are using your rods, and you aren’t seeing a lot of colour.