telescopes

I hate to waste a thread with a simple question as this, but as fellow sky enthusiasts I thought you would be perfect people to ask. I am wanting to get a telescope and I know not the specifications for a telescope which is good for looking into deep nebulae and such.

I DO NOT know a lot about telescopes either. I do know that there are two major differences in them. Either mechanical or electronic. I have a MEADE digital computerized telescope, it is programmable. You can program it for your location and pick plotted locations, it will move to the spot in the sky. IT IS COOL.

I have had some difficulty with the acuracy of the location of preprogrammed sky items, i.e. Milky Way, etc.

Check out Meade website and do a random search for info on telescope specifications, that should be helpful.

Absolute best bang for the buck is the Orion Intelliscope XT10i & XT12i. ( www.telescope.com... ) The XT12i is about 90 pounds and the XT10i is about 70 pounds. So it depends on your physical strength. The larger the aperture the more light you can gather. (The more you can see...)

Some galaxies are visable in a 10" scope but they start to stand out to where you can see dust lanes in a 12" and 14" scope.

I own a XT10i with the computer. For under $1200 Canadian, it rocks. Very comparable to 2 and 3 thousand dollar scopes.

With my XT10i & my 12mm wide angle lens the view of the Hercules Cluster is absolutely awesome, especially on a REALLY dark night.

I would have bought the XT12i but it was released 2 months after I got the XT10i

Meade also makes some good dobsonian scopes. A dobsonian scope (ie xt10) is one of the best starter telecopes around.