Telescope Help.

[Extemma]

Hey guys,

I'm planning on buying a Telescope, and I'm kind of new to the telescope world. I was wondering if I could get some advice on the kind of telescope I should get. What I do know is that:

1. I need the telescope to be able to track different celestial bodies (needed for the photography)

2. Can adapt an SLR camera to the eye-piece (I believe it's called a T-Adapter)

3. On board computer or the ability to connect to an external computer (PC)

4. These features come with or can be added to the telescope.

Really what I want is something relatively inexpensive and easily upgradeable.

Also if someone could explain T-adapters and T-rings, that would be great!

Thank you for your help

Edited June 16, 2013 by Extemma

[K^2]

For this sort of thing, definitely look for a reflector (Newtonian). Beyond that, I'm afraid I can't help much.

[Thaniel]

Yeah, like K^2 said, newtonian.

There's more to go by though, you want it relatively inexpensive and upgradeable. For a telescope, being inexpensive is somewhat mutualy excluding. But, you don't need tracking hardware to take pretty pictures of celestial objects. Get yourself a used DSLR and any mounts needed to hook it up, and there's software to combine pictures. So you can take lots of pictures of your intended target, then combine them to compensate for the exposure time needed. This is surprisingly simple in reality. The software is free or not expensive to get. You can even use photo editing software to do it if you must.

So, with this, I'd say get yourself a newtonian refletor with an equatorial mount, and get a motorized zoom motor as the first motorization. You can move the telescope by hand to aim at your targets, take series of pictures, and combine them afterwards. Such is the benefit of digital photography today.

[Latcarf]

I found this site including a series of video explanation/tutorials on telescopes. I'll definitely be watching this after work today (using this forum thread as a post-it note )

http://www.buytelescopes.com/News/27-video-how-to-buy-a-telescope.aspx