Telescope for astronomy at home

Look on eBay and you will find a lot of nice ones that people grew tired of.

I happen to like Schmidt-Cassegrain style. Compact and easy to handle. Get at least a 6" or 8" mirror. The smaller ones just don't gather enough light. The more power you want to view with means either a bigger mirror or bigger objective. You may be able to stick a high power eyepiece in a small scope, but you won't see much.

As a for instance, you want at least 100X for the moons of Jupiter.

I just took a look at that system, it's pretty slick! I had a similar jack-legged system I worked up with a T-2 and an HP-41CV that I programmed for demonstrating star-finding for my Geodetic Astronomy students some 30 years ago, but what you're getting does it straight out of the box.

Kinda takes the hassle out of stargazing and lets you concentrate on stars rather than button-pushing, star catalogs, and math.

Nice set of gear!

I bought a Meade 90 about 10 years ago at Costco. Haven't used it in years but it is pretty neat. You could input your lat and long, point it roughly towards north and do a two star or 3 star alignment. After you're all aligned, you just call up a star or constellation that you want to view and it would point to it and track it. Pretty neat.

I imagine the ones now a days are even better.

Edit.

Dave is right, the bigger, the better.

get a big dobsonian. they are rock solid mounts and cheap. no computers, but star-hopping and finding the objects yourself is half the fun.

Wild T1:-S

Of course my viewing is limited to the moon and sometimes Jupiter or Saturn.

Well, if you're thinking of Wild, I'd prefer my T4. 🙂

> get a big dobsonian. they are rock solid mounts and cheap. no computers, but star-hopping and finding the objects yourself is half the fun.

But Perry, I don't spill my beer as much operating my fancy computerized servo drive scope...:-P

Donald,

Don't go too cheap. Get a scope you'll use more than once. Go for light-gathering, not high power.

The motorized mount is more important than the scope. If you have good tracking, you can take killer astrophotos with even a marginal scope.

Get a scope that will take 2" eyepieces. That's a sign of quality. And read the reviews on the focuser. If the focuser isn't smooth and stable, you won't be able to see sharp stars.

My recommendation is the Orion ED80 (80mm) refractor scope and the Orion Sirius Mount. Top quality equipment.

Dave

http://www.scientificsonline.com/astronomy/telescopes.html

You can't go wrong at Edmund's!!

Thanks for the replies, guys...

Some worthwhile info here.

Dtp

My brother has a Zhumell Z8 and he sends me some mighty awesome pics he takes just using his cellphone camera. About 2 years ago he sent me an awesome pic of Venus transiting the Sun. He built his own sun filter for about $15.
No idea what he paid for the scope.

Speaking of the Venus transit, here's some pictures I took of that, and also pictures of my Orion ED80 (80mm) refractor scope:
http://undergroundcarpenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/venus-transit-2012.html

Dave

Cool pics Dave, and thanks BIGE for the other recommendation

Telescope for astronomy at home>QUESTION

Is it important to have a motorized drive to track objects?

I can understand that the 'go-to' feature might just be a money pit that isn't necessary, but how about following objects?

Telescope for astronomy at home>QUESTION

Donald,

The motorized drive with Go To remote is a must. Without the motorized drive, stars race past your view. And some of the coolest things to look at are not visible with the naked eye, so without the Go To remote, you'd spend most of your time sweeping the sky.

Dave

Telescope for astronomy at home>DAVE

I thought that the 'go-to' was a search feature not the motorized tracking which I thought was separate.

Telescope for astronomy at home>DAVE

Motorized automatic tracking can't happen without the Go To Remote setting the speed of the Declination and Right Ascension Motors, which depends on the alignment.

Dave

Telescope for astronomy at home>DAVE

To a first approximation, if you get your axis accurately on the celestial pole, declination is constant and right ascension is a constant rate. They got by with clock drives long before embedded computers came along. What factors beyond that make the computer necessary?

Telescope for astronomy at home>DAVE

The Go To Remote remembers how many "clicks" of each motor have happened since last position fix. If you want to go to say, M33, it tells the motors how to slew to the new position without the scope hitting the tripod legs. When it locks into position, it resumes moving with the apparent motion of the stars.

Dave