Eyepiece views from a 10" scope

Ignore the telescope packaging illustrations! Forget those great images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope and even the earthbound CCD images. No matter what else you may have read or heard, with less than 14 inches of aperture you'll detect very little color in DSOs, particularly from suburban locations.

Even the larger telescopes in dark sky locations will show only traces of pale color in some of the brightest nebulae, such as M42, or planetary nebulae like M27. You will never see the vivid colors so commonly recorded on film or CCD chips these days.

But if you've never owned a telescope, don't be so quick to consider that a deal breaker. There is plently of eye candy to be seen, and it's not all necessarily subtle. There are a few carbon stars so red they seem like backlit rubies. At any rate, here are some examples of what you can expect to see at the eyepiece of scopes in the 8 to 10 inch range on nights of good seeing.

Jupiter and its four Jovian moons at approx. 175x in

a 10 inch mirror on a night of average to good seeing.

Saturn at roughly 275x on a night of good seeing

with a telescope in the 10 to 12 inch range.

Remember that the detail you will see in planets depends largely upon "seeing" conditions. It is true that larger mirrors and lenses will more easily resolve detail ar higher levels of magnification, but the biggest scopes are still limited to what the atmosphere will allow on any given night. If your first looks at a planet are disappointing, don't give up. It takes patience, but the views will get better. Sometimes conditions can change dramatically even within the space of five minutes, and that blurry image will suddenly become crystal clear. Just keep watching.