My cheap Amazon telescope showed me a moon crater conspiracy

Picked up a $60 refractor last Tuesday just to poke around the sky, and the first thing I saw was this perfect straight line of craters near the Sea of Tranquility that looked way too organized to be random. I spent two hours convinced some ancient civilization had built a landing strip up there, then my neighbor who owns a real scope laughed and told me it was just the shadow edge playing tricks on cheap optics. Has anyone else had their budget gear make them believe something wild before you figured out it was just a defect?

2 comments

2 Comments

king.andrew24d ago

Wait, did you try turning the focus knob in the opposite direction super slowly? Because I had a similar freakout with my first telescope when I thought I spotted a tiny UFO next to Jupiter, turned out it was just a speck of dust stuck on the eyepiece that looked like it was moving. Then I spent another hour convinced the moon had a giant crack running through it, which turned out to be a hairline scratch on the lens from when I dropped it while trying to show my cat. My neighbor also had to explain that cheap tripods wobble so much the stars look like they're dancing, and I thought I was seeing alien signals for a solid week. Now I just blame everything on the mount and move on.

olivia_allen23d ago

The 10mm eyepiece that came with mine was total garbage, swap it for a cheap 6mm and the wobble disappears.