WTB Telescope!

Ive been thinking about buying a telescope for past few months.

I was curious if anyone had any suggestions on a decent consumer grade telescope that is good enough for some family viewing, while not busting my wallet.

Thanks

My mom still demands a xmas list from me and this year I asked her to get me a telescope . Almost like being a little kid again, I found some stuff online.

First you need to figure out if you want to look at the sky or stars or both. I found 1 that looks decent at telescopes.com

www.telescopes.com...

Now I know nothing really yet but that seems a decent way to start

[edit on 23-11-2008 by whoshotJR]

It was this movie that got me interested.


Here

Thanks!

[edit on 23-11-2008 by Cio88]

For a good non budget killing scope I would recomend a newtonian reflector on a dobsonian mount. An 8" from Orion telescopes will run you about 250 to 300USD.

A few caveats before you buy. What you see through they eye piece is not going to look like the pictures you see on the internet. What you see on the net are mutiple stacked exposures and so on. Secondly there is no such thing as a good scope that is ready to go out of the box. If you are going to invest the money, be willing to invest the time. You will have to assemble the optical tube and collimate the optics. This can take some effort.

While the fancy computerized telescopes sound great in the advertisements, what they don't tell you is that they can be a pain. If you are new to astronomy, aligning your scope so that it tracks properly can be very discouraging. Learn to navigate in the night sky, then go for the fancy bits.

Before you buy I would highly recommend checking to see if you have an astronomy club in your area. Go to one of their observing sessions. They will most likely welcome you with open arms. They can also be a great storehouse of knowledge. You might even find some help in getting a scope, or alot of clubs have loaner equipment.

Originally posted by Cio88
Ive been thinking about buying a telescope for past few months.

I was curious if anyone had any suggestions on a decent consumer grade telescope that is good enough for some family viewing, while not busting my wallet.

Thanks

There are some very decent telescopes about that are reasonably priced. It's not clear from your message how much you intend to pay, but if the telescope is just for family viewing (i.e. you don't intend to undertake an observing programme like measuring the brightness of variable stars, or surface intensities of planets etc) then a 4.5 in ch reflector or 3 inch refractor would be ideal for you.

A refractor telescope uses collects light via an objective glass while another lense further up the tube (the eyepiece) magnifies the light and gives us an image. Refractors are ideally suited for lunar and planetary astronomy but they are much more expansive than reflectors. Also, while a 4 inch reflector is portable, an equivalent refractor is not and anything larger than 5 inches is bound to need a permanat mount.

Reflecting telescopes are much more common since they offor bigure sizes for less money. I have an 8 inch reflector permenantly set up in my observatory here in the UK (I think a 6 inch reflector is about the limit of portability for a reflector!) A reflector works by using a concave mirror to collect the light, this magnifies the light and sends it up to the secondar mirror which in turn passes it on to the eyepiece.

Finally we have the SCT type telescopes which are a mixture of the above- these telescopes are very expensive however!

One final thing you need to consider is a stand for the telescope. A telescope may be optically good, but if it's stand is wobbly or quivers in the slightest breeze, it will render the telescope useless. There are two types of stand for a telescope- a azimth (tripod) mount or an equatorial.

I must say, although the equatorial mount is more expensive it is certainly worth it- the is is turning on it's axis and so stars move across the sky and so the observer must move the telescope to track objects over time.
With an equatorial mount, the telescope is alighned with the pole star, and so there is only one direction of motion to consider. For a small amount of money a drive can be fitted and this will allow the telescope to track the objects ion the sky with no adjustment needed at all.

My telescope is a Skywatcher and they are very good and reasonably priced. I know they maje a 130mm sized reflector on an equatorial mount at a reasonable price. Before you buy a telescope, it will be woth investing in a pair of binoculars and learning your way around the sky. Binoculars will show you the craters of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus. They will also show you many coloured stars, cluster and nebulae.

One further warning- Never by a telescope which is sold on magnification alone. I have seena dverts for a 50mm refractors offering a power of 400x magnification. while this is true, the reuslting image will be so faint and blurred, it will be imposible to see anything at all. A good rule of thumb for max. magnification of a telescope is 2xaperture (mm) i.e. a 100mm scope will ahve a max mag of 200x, a 200mm, 400x and so on.
Good luck! You will find astronomy a very rewarding hobby.

Let me know how you get on.

[edit on 27-11-2008 by timelike]

read this, it's clear and useful... it helped me a lot...

www.deepastronomy.com...