First Time Telescope - Help and Advice please

rishishah

I am looking for a Telescope for my wife who would like to look at the night sky... we have never had one so not sure where to start...

Read around that a Refractor one would be better and all she would be doing would be to look for stars, the moon and other planets... basically just trying to start out as an astronomer...

We have never tried look at charts so would not know where to look at too... hence we need something easy to use.

I am happy to spend upto £250 for a good one, so any suggestions and advice would be very handy please.

Thanks.

TinyPablo

I was also looking for telescope for OH and found this
http://www.pulsar-optical.co.uk/prod/bresser/starter-scope/1145skyhawk.html
does anyone know if it's any good and does it come with the tripod?

cepheus

I have not bought any serious optical equipment for a long time, but I remember the general advice to beginners and I doubt if it has changed much.

I recall Patrick Moore recommends a good pair of binoculars to start with. That's what I did. These are better than a telescope to look at star-fields & open clusters. 7x50 or 10x50 provide a good view. Advantage is of course that you can use binoculars for other things.

Telescopes have far more magnification than binoculars but a limited field and are better for planets, moon craters, double stars and the more compact nebulae. Moore recommends a refractor with a minimum of 75mm or 3 inch objective lens, although my first telescope was 60mm. This was good enough to see the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's belts and moons, Phases of Venus, Sunspots by projection, spectacular views of a half phase moon. With clear magnification up to around 80x a bit fuzzy at 150x.

A refractor (Newtonian) needs a mirror about twice the size of this (150mm) for equivalent results.

The stand is almost as important as the telescope since the image can shake around and should be very sturdy. A good viewing spot away from lights is another. Personally if you live in the city or near lights, I wouldn't bother with a decent telescope

Try reading this as well

http://www.astrocentral.co.uk/telescope.html

rishishah

cepheus wrote: »

I have not bought any serious optical equipment for a long time, but I remember the general advice to beginners and I doubt if it has changed much.

Thanks for the advice... However any particular brand that is better than others?

cepheus

rishishah wrote: »

Thanks for the advice... However any particular brand that is better than others?

Not personally as I have only experience of an old one which fell to bits eventually. However this suggests Skywatcher telescopes may be worth looking at. I would check the source!

Patrick Moore on SKYWATCHER Telescopes

”I have used a great number of telescopes; some are good, some mediocre and some bad. To me the Sky-Watcher range of instruments are very good indeed, and suited to amateurs of all kinds – and they are not priced out of the market! Excellent value. Use them and enjoy them.“
Sir Patrick Moore CBE FRS

http://www.f1cameras.co.uk/shop.php?id=63&level=1&name=Telescopes&homebread=1

http://stargazerslounge.com/sponsor-announcements-offers/56490-sir-patrick-moore-endorses-skywatcher-telescopes.html