Do you own a telescope?

[Leigha]

My backyard is on a small lake, and across from the lake, there is a wooded conservation area. It's very serene and quiet at night, and the sky is filled with stars, when it's not overcast. I'd like to buy a telescope, not a cheap one, but not a super expensive one. Just curious if any of you own one, and what should I look for in terms of quality? (Thanks in advance for any help)

[stryder]

Personally I don't have a telescope, but I did look into capturing images of the nightsky. So it's really dependent on what you want to do with a the telescope, if you are just using it to stick your eye to and point in a direction then you can pretty much get away with a cheap manual one, however if you want to find specific points in the night sky and track those points for long exposures, then you'll need more than just a telescope (Servo's, GPS tracking, as well as the way to fit your camera to it etc) all the bells and whistles can aid in finding points of interest that you otherwise will have to research manually (taking in the date, time of year etc)

I'd suggest having a look online at peoples pictures/video's that they've taken, some of the people that create them like to talk about the method they applied as much as what they were actually looking at, so you can learn a fair bit.

[Seattle]

My backyard is on a small lake, and across from the lake, there is a wooded conservation area. It's very serene and quiet at night, and the sky is filled with stars, when it's not overcast. I'd like to buy a telescope, not a cheap one, but not a super expensive one. Just curious if any of you own one, and what should I look for in terms of quality? (Thanks in advance for any help)

I have a couple of telescopes. I live in Seattle (overcast a lot) and it has plenty of light pollution so I used mine a lot at first but not so much now. It sounds like you are in a better environment.

There are a lot of factors.   The mount is probably the most important and how hard everything is to set up and how much you are likely to want to do. Aperture is important of course and knowing how you want to use it and what you want to use it for (planets, binary star resolving, deep space objects, photography).

You will either get a smaller refractor or a larger reflector. If you don't want a lot of set up, you just want to mainly look at some planets and resolve some binary stars then a 90 mm refractor will do the job. That's mainly what I use now.

I also have an 8" reflector that doesn't work at the moment. It's heavy to set up and takes longer mainly due to the heavy counter-weights and having to take apart and reassemble parts of the mount. With the refractor I can have it set up in a few minutes. Mead and Celestron  are two popular makers of telescopes. I think it's also important to get a motorized focuser or get it as an add on. You will probably want to buy a much better wide angle eyepiece lens than the one that comes with the telescope.

Light gathering is what matters with a telescope (not magnification) and reducing vibration is also important (so good mount and a motorized focuser).

It's one of those things where you either want to keep it relatively inexpensive but have everything that you buy be good quality or the sky is the limit with photography and electronic automatic object finding.

For most people it's going to be best to buy a basic refractor with few bells and whistles. If you like it and want to spend a lot more, you can more easily sell that and then spend the "big money" when you have more experience and know what is involved and what you like.

Most of the great views you see didn't look like that to the person looking though the eyepiece. Those are longer camera exposures with many shots stacked together using software. It's very expensive to get to the point where you can do that. Since you don't see those by looking though an eyepiece you can just as easily see those on your computer via the internet (other people's pictures) and save yourself the money.

It's nice to have a motor that tracks the movement of Earth but you can also do it manually and keep costs down as well. To use that kind of thing you still have to set it up properly each time and triangulate on stars first (especially for electronic systems that find objects for you).

There is only so much that anyone can see though a telescope anyway. For me it really peaked my interest, gave me a lot of practical knowledge and then I found it more interesting reading about aspects of astro-physics that you can't see though a telescope. Stephen Hawking said that he rarely looked though telescopes, even when he was more able to do so.

I'll stop here but if you have specific questions I'll be glad to answer those.

[Zinjanthropos]

Don’t have one anymore but the biggest scope I ever owned was a 6” Dobsonian or Dobbs. Highly recommended for amateur stargazers. Basically a large tube on a swivel mount. Light bounces of a mirror at the bottom to another mirror higher up and then onto an eyepiece. Mine had a smaller guide scope attached to the main tube to aid in pinpointing the target. There are various lenses you can buy, a new scope usually has a few with it. Be sure to add a Barlow* lens to that collection.

Excellent scope but with some drawbacks. You have to manually turn the scope to compensate for Earth’s rotation and it’s then when it can get a little shaky. All in all a great scope for beginners. Before I got rid of it I used it to show neighbourhood kids the moon, which you will gain a greater appreciation for when you first see it through a Dobbs lens.

I gave all my stuff to the local Astronomy club in Niagara Falls. I asked them if they wanted it, they came over and said yes. In Canada such a donation is considered tax deductible so it helped out with my taxes that year. Try joining the local club and see if you like it.

*Not sure if they still use them

[Leigha]

Wow, thanks guys! I'll be back a bit later, to ask some questions.

Here is one that I found on amazon for under $100. There's one for over $300, that received great reviews, as well.

What do you think? You can share in ''real time'' with some of these.

https://www.amazon.com/TELMU-Refracting-...way&sr=8-6

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Omg, I just read through some reviews, and a few people are calling this thing ''trash.'' You can see the moon better using a toilet paper roll.

Okay, I'm going to reread all of your posts, and see if I can find one that meets some of your specs (at a reasonable price)

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@ stryder, thanks for your input. I want to have a really good experience, maybe turn this interest into a hobby. I'd like to do more than point to the sky, and star gaze. I'd like to have a quality experience, for a reasonable cost.

@ Seattle - wow, great info, thanks! Okay, I looked up ''refractor,'' the definition, and I don't understand what ''light gathering'' is about. Where is the light coming from? I'd like to not spend more than $300, and would prefer something around $150. Could I find a telescope that has some bells and whistles, to give me a great experience, and awesome videos/pics to share with friends, etc. ?

@ Z - Thank you for the info! What is the difference between a beginner telescope and one for those who are 'more advanced?' I don't want a cheap one where I'm missing certain points in the sky. Or images aren't clear. I didn't think I'd have to factor in the Earth's rotation. lol Okay, so I'll check out Dobbs.

[Yazata]

Good thread.

I don't own a telescope and can't add to what the others said except to say that you should maybe look to see if there are any amateur astronomers groups near you. They usually are happy to welcome new people and can give you all kinds of advice about what does and doesn't work for them. They can also show you their gear and let you try it out. And they can show you more difficult and interesting astronomical objects and how to locate and photograph them. And if you stick with them, you will have like-minded friends to do it with, which can sometimes be good.

[billvon]

My backyard is on a small lake, and across from the lake, there is a wooded conservation area. It's very serene and quiet at night, and the sky is filled with stars, when it's not overcast. I'd like to buy a telescope, not a cheap one, but not a super expensive one. Just curious if any of you own one, and what should I look for in terms of quality? (Thanks in advance for any help)

We have a Meade 10" scope with a transit mount.  You can easily see Saturn - the rings and the four largest moons.  We have been having no end of trouble getting the mount aligned, so we mostly use it in manual mode (a little annoying.)

[Seattle]

For the money you are talking about this is probably OK.

https://www.amazon.com/Celestron-PowerSe...HJQC4XWHXT

To get more you will be looking at closer to $1k than $100 and then it goes up from there.

[Leigha]

My backyard is on a small lake, and across from the lake, there is a wooded conservation area. It's very serene and quiet at night, and the sky is filled with stars, when it's not overcast. I'd like to buy a telescope, not a cheap one, but not a super expensive one. Just curious if any of you own one, and what should I look for in terms of quality? (Thanks in advance for any help)

We have a Meade 10" scope with a transit mount.  You can easily see Saturn - the rings and the four largest moons.  We have been having no end of trouble getting the mount aligned, so we mostly use it in manual mode (a little annoying.)

Wowzers, did you pay over $3k? I just googled that. lol

For the money you are talking about this is probably OK.

https://www.amazon.com/Celestron-PowerSe...HJQC4XWHXT

To get more you will be looking at closer to $1k than $100 and then it goes up from there.

But, there's no reviews? lol I could take a chance - it has what I want and that's a good deal.

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Good thread.

I don't own a telescope and can't add to what the others said except to say that you should maybe look to see if there are any amateur astronomers groups near you. They usually are happy to welcome new people and can give you all kinds of advice about what does and doesn't work for them. They can also show you their gear and let you try it out. And they can show you more difficult and interesting astronomical objects and how to locate and photograph them. And if you stick with them, you will have like-minded friends to do it with, which can sometimes be good.

I hadn't even thought of that, Yazata! Joining a local astronomers group. What a great idea. 

[confused2]

As a child I had (still have) a 2 inch terrestrial refractor (it's a telescope). Terrestrial means the image is the right way up. Astronomical telescopes (then) gave you the image the wrong way up (less lenses so less light loss) - probably a pig to follow things by hand if the image is the wrong way up + everything you see is the wrong way up. They say a refractor (say 2") is equivalent to a 4" reflector.
Mine about (70x mag) was good for looking at the moon - moon bigger is just bigger - not sure how far it's worth going in that direction. I think you need something really expensive to see any detail in galaxies (much more than my 'scope).
Best moment was Saturn's moons. Probably the best thing about it was hanging with my father - he was good at finding things (probably did some homework to be able to do that). I suspect you can get telescopes that you can ask to point at Mars and they'll find it for you - at a price. There are "What's visible tonight." sites which might be worth finding before purchase.
If you live by the sea anything you take out at night immediately gets condensation on it - for that reason my 'scope mostly stays in its box.
Everything is going to be way outclassed by the Hubble telescope.