Telescopes - advice please

Bunks

Hi all

I am keen to buy a telescope but have no idea where to start. I don't want to spend more than about $300 - $400.

Any advice on what I should look for welcome!

Tosh

My advice is not to buy the biggest one you can afford. We did that and it was just too big 'n' heavy to be bothered to lug outside and set up.

When we did we saw fantastic views of the moon; wow; I swear I could see Neil Armstrong's foot prints (not really).

This was before smart phones and I could never find a planet because I never put the effort into learning how to read planetary maps. But these days you can get all kinds of computer type devices to help with this, if you're lazy like me.

DairyLama

Bunks said:

Hi all
I am keen to buy a telescope but have no idea where to start. I don't want to spend more than about $300 - $400.
Any advice on what I should look for welcome!

Advice: Don't spend any money until you've had some conversations with people who know about this kind of thing. Ask to try out other peoples scopes. It much depends on what you are going to use it for.
I joined my local astronomy club last year and that's what everyone there says. Also there is the question of accessories, eg upgrading eyepieces, using filters, etc.

Zero

Some useful pointers:

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/yourfirstscope

http://www.space.com/15693-telescopes-beginners-telescope-reviews-buying-guide.html

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/stargazinglive/sgl_guide_to_telescopes.pdf

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/telescopeawardsarticle.cfm

http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html

According to Ed Ting as of August 2013:

"If I were pressed to recommend one telescope for a beginner, it would be a 6" or 8" Dobsonsian reflector ($300-$400.)"

DairyLama

Zero said:

"If I were pressed to recommend one telescope for a beginner, it would be a 6" or 8" Dobsonsian reflector ($300-$400.)"

Sounds good to me. We had a talk recently at the astronomy club called "Does size matter" (!), and the guy had a 4" refractor, and 8" and 12" Dobs. Basically he said the 8" was the most useful for deep space objects, though the 4" was quicker to set up and fine for general observation. He knew somebody who had a 20" but thought this was unneccessarily large.;)

karasti

We have a Celestron Nexstar 114, and it's great. However, it does take some practice in using before you are really ready to attempt to use it to view any sort of event. We actually got it from my dad, who bought a new one. I believe it was $600 when it was new but more like $400 now. It's computerized, so it will find constellations, planets, stars and so on for you. You just set it to aim at the north star and it'll figure out all the rest. We also got a dock for our camera so that we can take pictures, but that's recent and it's been too cold to operate either the camera or the telescope for most of our winter My oldest is big into astronomy and is looking into going into astrophysics in college, so this has been a huge help to him. The books and set up guides are pretty easy to follow, very user friendly. I actually borrowed the scope to a friend last summer and they had no problems figuring it out. Once you are used to setting it up and it's gauged for your location it's pretty easy. When it's chilly out it's best to let it sit out for like 20 mins to adjust to the temp (we actually use our down to about -20F, but I doubt you get that cold, lol). Also, make sure you let your eyes adjust to the darkness, which takes a good 10 minutes or so and make sure you shut off all indoors and outdoor house lights, it improves the experience quite a lot.

anataman

I think it depends on what you want to use it for, my son and I like to do a bit of stargazing and we bought him a first lab stargazer, which was relatively cheap compared to many on the market. It is not the easiest thing to use, and as the whole of England has pretty much been enveloped in cloud for the last 3 months, it has been just been pointed at the streaks of bird poop on the church roof near us. Great view of a red admiral butterfly on a vine leaf at the bottom of the garden last summer - it just happened to be focussed perfectly on that spot when I looked through it.

Enjoy, they are great fun! The neighbours once thought we were spying on them, but they couldn't be sure as they were a few doors down and across the road from us, but we could tell by the way they were staring grimly up at us they were disapproving of such things. Made my son laugh. I told him this was not the right thing to do and then we lol'd together!

Bunks

Thanks everyone. Some great pointers (pardon the pun)! I'll start doing my research....

Bunks

karasti said:

We have a Celestron Nexstar 114, and it's great. However, it does take some practice in using before you are really ready to attempt to use it to view any sort of event. We actually got it from my dad, who bought a new one. I believe it was $600 when it was new but more like $400 now. It's computerized, so it will find constellations, planets, stars and so on for you. You just set it to aim at the north star and it'll figure out all the rest. We also got a dock for our camera so that we can take pictures, but that's recent and it's been too cold to operate either the camera or the telescope for most of our winter My oldest is big into astronomy and is looking into going into astrophysics in college, so this has been a huge help to him. The books and set up guides are pretty easy to follow, very user friendly. I actually borrowed the scope to a friend last summer and they had no problems figuring it out. Once you are used to setting it up and it's gauged for your location it's pretty easy. When it's chilly out it's best to let it sit out for like 20 mins to adjust to the temp (we actually use our down to about -20F, but I doubt you get that cold, lol). Also, make sure you let your eyes adjust to the darkness, which takes a good 10 minutes or so and make sure you shut off all indoors and outdoor house lights, it improves the experience quite a lot.

We certainly don't get anywhere near that cold @karasti! About 40F is as low as it gets here overnight in winter. I live in the country too so light pollution isn't an issue. Ta for the tips. Stay warm

DairyLama

karasti said:

It's computerized, so it will find constellations, planets, stars and so on for you. You just set it to aim at the north star and it'll figure out all the rest.

That sounds like a really useful feature to have.