telescope for beginner

mercman1969

I went through this exact pain last year
After 3 months of researching i finally purchased a

Skywatcher 200P Dobsonian

Have to say, it was the best decision i have made. So easy to use and really great views. Its awesome being able to see the different colours of Jupiter

I would highly recommend joining stargazers lounge. Without them, i wouldnt have reached a decision. A guy even came with me to look at the 2nd hand scope i finally bought

The scope was for my as then 8 year old daughter......I have got as much pleasure out of it as she has

Mr_Toad

mercman1969 wrote: »

I went through this exact pain last year
After 3 months of researching i finally purchased a

Skywatcher 200P Dobsonian

Have to say, it was the best decision i have made. So easy to use and really great views. Its awesome being able to see the different colours of Jupiter

I would highly recommend joining stargazers lounge. Without them, i wouldnt have reached a decision. A guy even came with me to look at the 2nd hand scope i finally bought

The scope was for my as then 8 year old daughter......I have got as much pleasure out of it as she has

This is one of the most sensible responses to a question about scopes.

A dobsonian is a superb, but not always popular, choice.

You get what you pay for with scopes and every £ you spend on fancy electronics means poorer optics. With a Dob what you get is pretty much just a light bucket with a couple of mirrors and one or more eye pieces. There's no fancy mount or electronics, no computers, in fact there's not much of anything but the absolute essentials so the cost is almost entirely for the optics giving better quality.

Yes, you have to find things in the sky the old fashioned way but what better way to learn astronomy and the night sky. Far better, if not as quick as telling the computer to point at <insert object here>

£ for £ they offer some of the best views for the least money after decent binos.

If you then get hooked on the hobby you can buy an all singing and dancing GoTo with all the bits but you'll have to spend a lot to match the optical quality of a decent Dob but at least you won't be making a significant outlay on something you may not enjoy once you've tried it.

InsideInsurance

There was a post on here previously and a link to a starters thread on another forum that was very good. The "issue" is that unless you can afford to buy Hubble you wont get the images that hubble achieves. The thread was good as it gave the Hubble type images of something and then 2-3 other hobbiest pictures of the same and that amazingly coloured nebula was just a grey smudge on the mid range scope etc.

If you get into it its supposed to be a very additive hobby but I believe it has a very high drop out rate initially as people are disappointed they do not get the results they expected.

Most recommend starting off with some good binoculars and a star gazing atlas so that you learn to find things in the sky. Then moving on to a basic scope before jumping both feet into the money pit that the hobby is. It does seem a good way of learning and avoiding wasting money but may increase the drop out rate.

Mr_Toad

InsideInsurance wrote: »

There was a post on here previously and a link to a starters thread on another forum that was very good. The "issue" is that unless you can afford to buy Hubble you wont get the images that hubble achieves. The thread was good as it gave the Hubble type images of something and then 2-3 other hobbiest pictures of the same and that amazingly coloured nebula was just a grey smudge on the mid range scope etc.

If you get into it its supposed to be a very additive hobby but I believe it has a very high drop out rate initially as people are disappointed they do not get the results they expected.

Most recommend starting off with some good binoculars and a star gazing atlas so that you learn to find things in the sky. Then moving on to a basic scope before jumping both feet into the money pit that the hobby is. It does seem a good way of learning and avoiding wasting money but may increase the drop out rate.

Which only goes to prove how little some people know about the Hubble telescope and the images produced. :mad:

Even if you could afford to buy Hubble you still wouldn't see those colour images because Hubble does not take colour images. All the Hubble cameras are black and white!

Those wonderful images we see are made up. Colour is added to accentuate features that are otherwise easily missed.

You will never see images like they produce from Hubble through any telescope, no matter how how expensive, because they are in effect Photoshopped and not actually real.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/

barbiedoll

The high "drop-out rate" is probably also connected to the fact that being an astronomer in the UK is very hard! The weather is against you every time something interesting is happening in the sky (I speak as a veteran of the 1999 eclipse which, despite being in the totality zone, I ended up watching on tv, because of the cloud cover :mad:)
The best observing times also coincide with the coldest season and the equipment can be fiddly, expensive, and increasingly hi-tech.

It is, however, an excellent armchair hobby. The plethora of fantastic books, magazines, and websites mean that there is always something new to read about, even during the worst weather.

For anyone interested in this sort of thing, there are a couple of good programmes on BBC 4 tonight (5th Nov).

8pm, a "Horizon" edition on the Russian meteor which burned through the atmosphere last year.

9pm, "Secrets of the Universe"..scientists in their own words, explaining their work and their latest theories of the Universe (and everything, no doubt!)