First Telescope?

[ZodiaK]

I'm thinking about buying myself a telescope.I'm a complete beginner in astronomy, but I want to see some cool stuff in space.

[CRITERIA]

• must cost 60 pounds/below.
  
• must be easy to use
  
• must be good quality
  
• must be easy to transport
  
• must be able to look at alot of different items (planets, stars, ect.)
  

sorry for being so nitpicky. I guess I just want an affordable, good quality, easy to use telescope.

does anyone have any recommendations?

[Red Iron Crown]

Some good advice a friend on another forum posted about this:

How good of an astrophotographer are you?

If your answer is "I've really not tried it before" then you're in for eight worlds of disappointment. The learning curve is rather cliff shaped. The cliff face begins now.

You cannot, and will not make anything better than a few blurry blobs unless you're already familiar with the night sky in binoculars and a small telescope.

If you're not experienced already with telescopic observation, then you're really asking us to recommend a good wing suit for advanced BASE jumping when you've never parachuted before and only sort of know what a parachute even is. It won't and can't end well.

Get some binoculars. 10x magnification is more than enough, maybe even too much, but a 75mm objective lens is essential.

If the kids are young, go with 5-7x magnification and 50mm lenses - Lenses are heavy and kids aren't strong.

AVOID (I'd make that red and flashing and come up with a big video and fanfare if I could) big magnifications and small lenses, like 16x50 or 25x60 (mag x mm). Go the other way, low magnifications and big lenses.

I built a 150mm 10 magnification field lens refractor for messing with, it blows away practically all department store binoculars, and I never did get the field lens alignment right. It'll show Saturn's rings. It'll show Jupiter's moons (but not its cloud bands). It'll show terrain and craters on the Moon. It'll show the phases of Venus. It'll show the Triangulum Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy, it'll separate the two components of Albireo. Better yet, it was made from old lenses (Binocular objective, small hand-lens and webcam lens, in that order) and cost nothing but a roll of duct tape, some heavy card and some (bad) measuring.

The point of astronomical equipment is to make things brighter, not bigger. Most of the things you'll look at are really quite big. M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) is three times larger than the full moon. M45 (Pleiades cluster) is four times larger. M42 (Orion Nebula) is six times the area of the full moon. Brighter depends on how wide your light bucket is, not how strong the pump at the bottom is.

You can stop down a big bright lens for looking at planets, but you can't expand a small inadequate one for looking at the deep sky.

Here's the thread if you want to know more.

[lajoswinkler]

60 pounds or less? heehee

Do not invest in a telescope. Buy a great pair of powerful binoculars. For that money, you can get awesome binoculars and only a crappy telescope.

[ZodiaK]

If I buy some binoculars, I won't be able to steadily view the celestial object, or take pictures through the lens.

[TheScareCake!]

well, i dont know how much 60 pound is because i live in Lithuania (im 80 percent sure that you dont exactly know where it is hehe), but i am going to buy one for myself as a gift. My friend is experienced in astronomy and he recommended me a dobson telescope (you should know what type of telescope it is), so i searched and i found this

(im not sure if its good for you as it costs 60 euros)

[Red Iron Crown]

If I buy some binoculars, I won't be able to steadily view the celestial object, or take pictures through the lens.

Sorry, didn't realize photography was one of the criteria. Can you stretch the budget a bit? Sixty pounds will get you a telescope in the "toy" range. Not totally useless, but very limited in quality and features. What sort of camera will you be using?

[ZodiaK]

I'll be using a coolpix L27 camera. how far are you suggesting I stretch my budget?

[ZodiaK]

well, i dont know how much 60 pound is because i live in Lithuania (im 80 percent sure that you dont exactly know where it is hehe), but i am going to buy one for myself as a gift. My friend is experienced in astronomy and he recommended me a dobson telescope (you should know what type of telescope it is), so i searched and i found this

(im not sure if its good for you as it costs 60 euros)

ooh, this one looks amazing! thanks for that shout. I might just purchase it but I don't want to bee too hasty. does anyone have any other recommendations similar to this?

[Red Iron Crown]

I'll be using a coolpix L27 camera. how far are you suggesting I stretch my budget?

Somewhere around the US$170 mark seems to be where the quality of telescopes starts getting better, not sure about the exchange rate to pounds. Something like this, maybe. You may want to look into some sort of mount for your camera, holding it to the eyepiece by hand gives suboptimal results. An example is here, though such things can be found cheaper if you poke around online.

[Horn Brain]

You really can't do astrophotography with that budget. Get some binoculars for now. I have a nice pair and they will let you see all kinds of wondrous things that you couldn't make out in the sky before. You can see Jupiter's moons, the crescent of Venus, nebulae, etc. Not to mention the multitudes of stars that are just a bit too dim to see with the naked eye.

For good astrophotographs, you need a camera mount and a telescope that can track your target automatically to account for Earth's rotation, otherwise you can only get grainy, dim snapshots of most things.

Basically, you can spend your money and get a great pair of binoculars and be pleased, or you can buy the cheapest possible tools for doing astrophotography and get crap for your money. Either that or wait and save up for enough to do it right.

[ZodiaK]

sounds like good advice. any binocular recommendations?

[lajoswinkler]

You can always mount your binoculars on a tripod.

DIY telescopes are a hassle if you're new to the telescopes themselves, so a Dobsonian one is too much work... unless someone is willing to make one for you. However, no matter how cheap Dobsonians are, 60 pounds is really nothing. Metallization of the mirror is the most expensive part in the whole process.

You can buy a cheap, crappy toy telescope from the mall, but you'll only get frustrated. Their coverboxes have some of the slimiest commercial lies ever. Nebulas, 100000000000x magnitude!!!!1!1, and they're pathetic.

[ZodiaK]

how does this look to you guys?

[lajoswinkler]

how does this look to you guys?

76 mm primary mirror, and the whole thing is 52 pounds? Seems to be quite expensive, IMHO.

[ZodiaK]

but do you think it would suit my needs?

[jwenting]

If I buy some binoculars, I won't be able to steadily view the celestial object, or take pictures through the lens.

if you buy a 60 pound telescope you won't be able to see anything, the optical quality will be so poor (and the mechanical even worse) that you're better off not using it.

[ZodiaK]

if you buy a 60 pound telescope you won't be able to see anything, the optical quality will be so poor (and the mechanical even worse) that you're better off not using it.

so what do you suggest I do?

[TheScareCake!]

so what do you suggest I do?

Keep your money for a while so you could spend more.. Thats what i am going to do!

[lajoswinkler]

but do you think it would suit my needs?

I'm not sure. What experience do you have? Have you ever seen planets through telescope? Do you know what to expect?

[RogueMason]

Allow me to interject here...

Don't. Go. Cheap. You'll get some good binoculars with £60, but you want a telescope, and £60 is not going to cut it. I will start by saying that I spent £150 on my Celestron Astromaster 130EQ, plus another £50 on a set of eyepieces and filters, and it has been so worth the money; the images are fantastic with this telescope; the Moon is sharp, and you can make out the cloud bands on Jupiter, plus the Galilean moons. (I've yet to see Saturn, Mars, or Venus, but I'm closing in on Mars; it's in the sky right now, and I can see it, but I'll have to wait for it to get a little higher).

Obviously, £150 is significantly more than £60, so my telescope is going to be much better than anything in the latter price bracket. That makes it difficult to say what you should get, but I know Celestron is high quality, so here are some ideas, cheapest first:

Celestron 70AZ Refractor -- Apparently a good beginner's telescope, and just £70. Might be worth considering.

Celestron Astromaster 76EQ Reflector -- A tad more expensive at £80 (not including P&P), but Newtonian Reflectors are good, and for the price, I doubt you can go wrong with this one. The equatorial mount also gives you considerable control over adjustments to the position of the sky you're looking at.

Celestron Astromaster 114EQ Reflector -- Yes, this one is shy of £120, but I was seriously considering this over the 130EQ at first because of the minimal aperture size difference and the considerable price difference. This one will surely be worth every penny.

If I were you, I'd start saving more money. You say you also want to do astrophotography? You'll definitely need a good telescope for the best images.

Jupiter:

Moon:

Pleiades:

Like I say, no camera mount. I just held my camera up to the eyepiece by hand (which is why that Pleiades shot is multicoloured; too much shaking). I'll be investing in a mount at some point because I too like astrophotography, as you can probably tell

Just be aware that Newtonian reflectors will occasionally need collimating/aligning to ensure minimal image aberrations. I think mine needs collimating a bit. Also, if you do go for a Celestron (or any telescope that accepts 1.25 inch eyepieces), do yourself a favour and get this too. You won't regret it

I hope this has helped you out a bit. One thing I can't do is predict our good old British weather to say when the best nights are

[montyben101]

I response to RougeMasons comment i got a astromaster 130eq for my birthday and it was amazing! I had to buy another eyepiece for it since the one it came with didn't seem that powerful. About 2 hours ago i saw mars which was just a fuzzy red dot (no matter how precise i tried to focus) Currently i am waiting for Saturn to become visible above my neighbors house. I will post what i see!

[jwenting]

so what do you suggest I do?

wait until you can afford something like this.

And yes, that's going to cost you something like 800 pounds.

[TheScareCake!]

wait until you can afford something like this.

And yes, that's going to cost you something like 800 pounds.

Dont you think that FIRST telescope in his life should be cheaper? What if he wont like the astronomy, he would waste so much money :|

[jwenting]

Dont you think that FIRST telescope in his life should be cheaper? What if he wont like the astronomy, he would waste so much money :|

Not really. Anything much cheaper will cause him to lose interest because of the terrible results he'll inevitably get from it.

That's in fact precisely my experience. Had something costing a few hundred dollars, so quite a bit better than the crap that you get in the supermarket already at least on paper.

Was optically somewhat decent, but mechanically so bad it was impossible to get stable long enough to even focus it.

Maybe the 4SE which is cheaper will do if all he's interested in is the moon and maybe some wide views of star clusters. But I'd not recommend anything in a lower quality range than that.

[Mr. Entropy]

I'd go with something from the Celestron Powerseeker line. Buy as much aperture as you can afford, and put it on an equatorial mount. Celestron makes it easy to do this, as equatorial mounts are designated with an EQ in the model name, and the aperture in millimeters is designated by the number. So one designated 114EQ has a 114mm aperture on an equatorial mount (also referred to as GEM, German Equatorial Mount).

You definitely want the GEM, as with proper polar alignment, it will allow you to keep the object you're looking at in view as the Earth rotates underneath the "celestial sphere". A manual alt-az mount is only good for terrestrial viewing.

I actually just bought a slightly-used Powerseeker 114EQ for $100 US (which if Google is right, is about your price range), and am actually quite impressed with it. The actual optics are significantly better than I was expecting, the only real complaint is that the stock finderscope is ass. But if you're smart, you can figure out a way around it's poor alignment. Just don't expect Hubble-quality views with this scope. But for $100, it's tough to beat.

To get an idea of what you can expect with it, at 225x (that is, using the 4mm eyepiece without the included 3x Barlow lens) Jupiter and the Galilean (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) moons fit comfortably in the field of view. Cloud bands (dark) and zones (light) were easily distinguishable. This view was also possible at 135x (20mm eyepiece with Barlow). The Red Spot would have been visible if it was facing Earth at the time, I just didn't feel like waiting five hours.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Mr. Entropy