Can anyone recommend some heavy duty high use telescope?

We plan on buying some for our local community center and could.use some recommendations.

How dark is your sky and what do you want to see?

Also heavy duty doesn't usually go with astronomical telescopes.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

We have almost no lights we are far away from any city so on a clear night we can see the stars very clearly. It will be used as a group activity so I would have to say basic stars and maybe the moon.

a reply to: Prisoner60863

I would suggest smallish refractor telescope.
Keep it simple.

www.celestron.com...

www.meade.com...

Something like those..
Solid
Rugged
Simple

You won’t be counting Saturns rings with these but they are great for beginners and you can use them in daylight to become familiar with their operation.

I might also suggest a nice set of binoculars as well.
They are a great way to stargaze and you can use them for moving targets like satellites.

Something else you can do is contact a local astronomy club. They love showing off their much more expensive equipment and will probably come to your community center to share their hobby.

a reply to: Bluntone22
Thank you so much I will look into these

a reply to: Prisoner60863

Sounds like a good area. You also seem not to have anyone in the group that has experience.

First I would recommend downloading Constalation Map app. That will let any smartphone show you what the things are in the sky and where they are.

As far as telescopes go, I would start with a few inexpensive rafracters. There are many around $100 to 200 on eBay. I would look for something with a smartphone bracket. This uses a phone camera on the telescope eyepiece to look through the telescope. This allows several to view at the same time and they can take pictures. Be sure they have Bluetooth selfie buttons to take pictures without disturbing the telescope. A lot of people already have those and they can use their own phone to keep the pictures that way.

You will not see the galaxies and nebula like in photos but you can't see them like that in the 10 inch Schmidt Cassegrain I have. Those are time lapse photos with much bigger telescopes.

You will be able to see the rings of Saturn, the larger moons of Jupiter along with it's banding and dark spot, the craters of the Moon, stars, etc.

I would not go with anything tracking at first until some of the users get the hang of it.

You will have to remember it only takes someone dropping one once to break it.

The larger the diameter the better for seeing dimmer objects. Don't go by high magnification. Anything over 200 is pretty much useless because of air current interference and anything over 100 is usually only for observing planets. The field of view gets smaller the higher the power.

I think that covers most of it. I will see if I can find you some helpful links.

Now for some spicifics. How many do you think will be in the groups and what is your budget?

a reply to: Prisoner60863

Honestly I wouldn’t recommend these scopes for an adult getting into the hobby but for kids and the general public you will want simple and rugged…lol

a reply to: Bluntone22

Anything with an alt azimuth mount is for beginners. But that is what we have here. They will learn a step at a time.

Then go to the equatorial mounts.

This is an article for beginning astronomy.
skyandtelescope.org...

And here is a pretty good if dated video. This was before smartphone apps and attachments.



I forgot to mention, you will need red flashlights. White flashlights will mess up everyone's night vision.