Buying a telescope, dont know what

Dont know if its the wrong thread probably is;

Im gonna buy me a telescope, would be great if any expertise were available, most bang for the buck?

What do you want to explore?
What is your budget?
Do you want to make pictures through it?

a reply to: Drazzl

budget 3000-5000 dollars, if its possible to take pictures it would be great,
i want to explore.. Everything

a reply to: Hyperia
A newtonian reflector-type telescope from one of the dedicated dealers, like Celestron. This one from the SkyProdigy series seems to be a very good telescope (plus tripod and other accessories) for a first time user who just wants to explore

I'm sure you'll get a more expert advice from our resident amateur astronomers.

Also, if you don't already own it, get a decent pair of binoculars, as they help you learn your way around the sky and find targets of interest.

I'm assuming you're a beginner here, so my advice would be to consider an 8-10" dobsonian reflector as a good balance between cost, image quality, ease of use, and practicality. And speaking of cost, we're talking well under $1,000 here. Through that, you'll see most of what's truly worth seeing through an amateur telescope. The only real downside is that it is not on a tracking platform, so astrophotography is a no-go. On the other hand, its a simple setup, unlike something on a computerized equatorial mount and the mount itself won't be a source of confusion and frustration, again, assuming that you're a beginner.

At some point, if you decide to try astrophotography, you can always mount that telescope on a computerized equatorial mount in the future, keeping in mind that the bigger the telescope, the bigger, heavier and much more expensive the potential EQ mount and tracking system are going to need to be.

a reply to: Hyperia

It all depends on what you want to get out of the hobby. Many of us are just happy seeing points of light or faint cloudy patches that vaguely resemble nebulae. Aperture is (in my experience) the most important aspect next to quality of optics. Higher aperture = more light taken in, which obviously leads to more being visible. Also depends on your area, if you live in a city you'll want filter that cuts street and headlight frequency.

a reply to: Hyperia

I seccond Celestron, but not a refactor. I'd go for a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope

I'd get one of these 11" guys:



Celestron 11"

Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes use a combination of lenses and mirrors to fold a long focal length into a short and light optical tube. Some say Schmidt-Cassegrains are the best all-around telescope for amateur astronomers.

Link

My old man has an 8" old orange tube, and we were able to see the spot on Jupiter, Saturn's rings...great all-around scope. Refactors are light buckets IMO, and do have their uses. Personally, I've always been fond of the Schmidt. You can do a little bit of everything with them.

Oh, reading reviews of the telescope I mentioned above, I found some sample images someone took with that telescope:

Once you know what you want, check out shopgoodwill.com in the miscellaneous category. Wonder prices, huge variety.

I've looked at telescopes a few times myself but was never sure how much you need to spend to make it worth it.

I have only used one once and that was out in the desert in Egypt and it was about a £5000 one from memory so about $7500 and I remember both myself and partner were VERY disappointed with what we could actually see.

Probably the main reason I have never got one as i figured you must need something much bigger - 1m+ to actually see much but from the comments above it appears i was wrong and may need to investigate more thoroughly

a reply to: Hyperia

Meade the automatic is a good one

I got it for my kids and it was good enough for me to use

Point and shoot, fully automated and cancels vibrations

A bit pricy

a reply to: MystikMushroom

seems like a good buy

If you are in/near a city, nothing you can get will be good for anything except the moon sadly.

originally posted by: Hyperia
a reply to: MystikMushroom

seems like a good buy

That is a sweet scope. The only hard things to learn is how to do polar alignment and operate the key pad.

a reply to: XL5

how close is near?

I was looking into buying a telescope several years ago and ran across many websites dedicated to building your own at home.

I ended up buying a Konusmotor 500 Newtonian Reflector, which is actually a really cheap one, but it works well enough for my purposes.

The lenses and mountings at the eyepiece end are where the big money comes in because that is where camera mountings and different magnifications and qualities of eyepieces come into play.

There is a lot of information out there, but through my research I found that Newtonian reflectors equalize temperature to reduce fogging from temperature differentials more quickly.

Sealed units fog up and stay fogged for a long time. I also messed around with dealing with telescopes that were at goodwill and such that were all fogged up and found that they can be cleaned fairly easily if you can keep track of where everything goes back to on re-assembly.

If I were to do it again, I would do a home-built Newtonian. The most expensive part of that is the mirror which you can buy, or actually make yourself if you want to take the time to learn how to do it.

My experience with the celestron things is that they cannot be cleaned very easily at all when they become hazed up as they are pretty much sealed and not user friendly at all.

0.02

a reply to: MyHappyDogShiner

so u can DYI a telescope? would actually be more fun...

Near is where you can not see a sky full of stars and the milky way. If you can faintly detect the milky way where you are, then its worth it in my opinion. Maybe you could find someone local and take a peek through their scope so you know what you will be able to see.

a reply to: XL5

I live in Sweden, if you do a 10 minute ride out from the city everything is black.. Will the city lights still be a problem?

If you can almost count the number of stars you can see (under 50 stars), you are still too close to the city.