Suggestions on Buying a Telescope?

[Cyre2067]

Hey all, i was wondering if ya'll had any suggestions on buying a telescope. Had a friend who was interested in your basic star-gazing and she knows nothin on the topic, neither do i - so i figured, where's a better place to ask then here. Any introductory guide books or author's would be great, anyone whom you've might have found an authority on the subject?

And if any of you own a telescope, maybe suggest a website or retailer (where do you buy the darn things?) She's look to spend ~400-500$, or less, so any suggestions would be great!

Thanks!

 

[rs]

It depends on what you want to look at and why.

There are a whole bunch of new telescopes that are relatively small and portable that contain starmap computers. You align the 'scope (the fatal flaw in the procedure), enter the local time and location and it computes the pointing for you even moving to that point in the sky.

"Real" stargazers view this as heresy. The casual user might benefit greatly because they do not have to know the orbital parameters of Saturn.

As far as a telescope to really see stuff, the basic rules of thumb are:

1) aperture is everything. Except for the rarefied air of cutting edge research where manufacturing precision is everything, the general rule is size matters, bigger is better.
2) aperture costs money, so you should buy the largest aperture you can justify
3) mount is very expensive and only makes it easier to find and keep the target (neither of which are trivial problems to the novice). However a "Dobson" mount is a very basic telescope design that puts all of the money into the primary optics at the expense of making it difficult to find stuff and keep up with the rotation of the earth.

So my point is that the most important question is for your friend to answer the basic question as to why she wants a telescope. If she wants a little toy to look at Saturn, there are a variety of small aperture designs that can do the trick. If she wants to really stargaze as in "drive out to a place far from light pollution and stare at the heavens at 2:00 AM" a large Dobson mount is a good choice. Celestron and Meade are both popular brand names.

My local Fry's Electronics has a good selection but Fry's might not be in Phila. I have seen a limited selection at Best Buy. Also just go to Amazon.

You can spend as much money as you have on a telescope. The trick is to spend enough for it to keep your interest and not so much that when you get bored you think "Oh, gee, that was a terrible waste of money".

 

[dant]

If you have time, make your own. There are *many* sites that do just
that and will give you the HOW TOs. The flexibility in making your own
is that you can add stuff nilly willy as desired and at your cost and time
and not that of expensive alternatives.

Google: "Build your own telescope" and there is a lot there.

My ideal telescope would be that having remotely controlled gizmos
such as a high res. ccd attachment and easily removable if desired.
One advantage of a ccd attachment is manual or automatic digital
pictures, motion control and detection with automatic snapshots based
on pixel changes by percentage of change or deltas, automatic sky
positioning, automatic object tracking, just to name a few. All of this
gives you all sorts of flexibilities, osit.

Imagine if you will to let your automatic telescope randomly search the
sky while you sleep or eat dinner and with motion-detection software -
will snap a photo of the triangular craft flying by.... ah... dream on!

Yes, if you buy these from a manufacturer but WHATS IN YOUR WALLET (TM),
which is why I say: if you have the time, DO IT YOURSELF. It is much
cheaper, fun to make (if you don't muck it up) and you learn a lot and
is much more personally rewarding. Once you made your first one, you
might move into experimental mirrors/ccds etc and enhance your 2nd
telescope to bigger ones and you might beat the ones on Mt. Palomar
... uh.... maybe not :D.

Thinking about it though... I've often wondered if one might be able to
make a "mirror" with a parabolic hexagonal frame with a mirrored mylar
cover with a precision vacuum controllers for each hexagonal cells...
ah... never mind I am getting ahead of myself.

 

[dj]

If you're looking for a refractor rather than a reflector 'scope, (a refractor is the classic type - you look thru the small end and point the big end at what you want to see - like binoculars- as opposed to a reflector where you're looking at an image reflected off a specially shaped mirror) - then may I suggest you take a look at the
stellarvue(dot)com site - they sell refractor scopes that are inexpensive relative to the top end scopes with nearly equal quality. On the down side, they're still much more expensive than department store telescopes.

I purchased a small scope from them and have been very happy with the quality of it - especially compared to the cheap mass marketed scopes I've seen.

A reflector scope will give you more bang for your buck if finances are a big concern.

what a fun project - shopping for a telescope ---- enjoy!
dj

 

[ark]

I would suggest one of the Celestron series, for instance Next Star, as in

http://www.opticsplanet.net/celestron-nexstar-130-telescope.html

http://www.telescopes.com/products/celestron-nexstar-130-slt-32981.html

 

[name]

she may want to consider one of the meade etx series telescopes, which are IMO a good first for serious hobbyists.