If you keep the caps on, dust and dirt accumulation should be minor. A little dust on the mirrors or on the front lens has very little impact. But if you do a poor job of cleaning them you can drag dirt and grit across the surface causing damage to the coatings, and that can have a significant impact.
Avoid nights of bad seeing when our atmosphere is turbulent, and Jupiter appears like a shimmering blob on your laptop screen or in a telescope eyepiece. Start with low magnification and work your way up if the views remain steady. During Discover the best telescope for beginners right here! of good seeing, details on Jupiter will “pop” into view, and the Great Red Spot will be bright and noticeable. To catch a glimpse of Neptune, you’ll need a telescope of at least eight inches of aperture at about 100x to 150x magnification. With equipment like this, you’ll still need steady skies to observe this tiny bluish disc. As with Uranus, do not expect to see any surface features or its faint rings.
Shopping around the December holidays or before a major eclipse/astronomical event can also cause stock issues. Following covid and the resulting shipping/global economic pressure, many model lines have been discontinued or tweaked to simplify a company’s catalog. A new model sold today might not exist in precisely the same offering a year from now. They are small scopes meant to be set on top of a table and used.
It takes a “star-hopping approach” where you start with the Big Dipper, and then go from one constellation to another. It even has glow-in-the-dark maps that you can refer to during stargazing. I like how each object has a dedicated spread, which includes a short introduction, a drawing of the constellation, a “telescope view” or how it will appear in the eye piece. It even has a “difficulty level” or how hard it will be to spot the object in different conditions.
In fact, most spotting scopes are nothing more than refractor telescopes that have been optimized for daytime use. There are no hard and fast rules as to what magnification you should use for any given object. However, planets, double stars, and globular clusters are typically higher power targets.
Occasional bright patches look best through a #58 (green) filter. Highlight the rings using a #56 (light green) or #82A (light blue) filter. DSLR cameras are another popular tool you can use to capture Jupiter. You will need a T-Adapter (different models are available for your telescope) and a camera-specific T-Ring (i.e., Canon, Nikon, etc.).
Also, try looking at the moon, which remains visible regardless of ambient light pollution. The perfection of the natural night sky stood over me, and I froze there, not from the cold, but from awe. Countless stars scattered about, sparkling and dancing above me. None of these things should stop you from enjoying our stars and learning about the universe around us.