Telescope for loft apartment

WobblyDog

tonyh66 wrote: »

and remember, if you buy an astronomical telescope the hot neighbour you want to spy on will be upside down. The advice you will get from stargazers.com and other forums will be to start with binoculars and then move on to a telescope if you are still interested.

This is actually the main reason I haven't bought a telescope yet. I live in a heavily-overlooked suburban street and I'm sure at least some of my neighbours would be suspicious if I stood out in my garden at night with a telescope. I guess it will have to wait until I buy a house in the country somewhere.

AndyPix

Fightsback wrote: »

If you are interested in stargazing a very good free planetarium program is Stellarium:

http://www.stellarium.org/en_GB/



It's an excellent free educational tool.

I can see uranus - snigger

bluesnake

If you want ZOOM, there is something called a SPOTTING SCOPE, The advantage is that the zoom often varies between around 20 to 60x, and the image is the right way up. The optics are often not as good, or as large in diameter as an astronomical one.

Personally I would buy one that has a camera mount too.

[Deleted User]

Fightsback wrote: »

If you are interested in stargazing a very good free planetarium program is Stellarium:

It's an excellent free educational tool.

I don't suppose there's a version for Android?

[Deleted User]

AndyPix wrote: »

I can see uranus - snigger

That's a bummer.

RumRat

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

I don't suppose there's a version for Android?

Look in the Play store for sky maps/star maps....There are a few in there including Stellarium.

Kendall80

If you think you might want to venture further than your balcony at some point i'd suggest a Meade ETX 125 EC with autostar controller. A wonderful piece of kit for the money. Served me well for a decade.


Input your location/time info, orient it north, run through the 2/3 star alignment feature then just 'go-to' any object in its ample directories (which it will then automatically track for you).

[Deleted User]

Kendall80 wrote: »

Input your location/time info, orient it north, run through the 2/3 star alignment feature then just 'go-to' any object in its ample directories (which it will then automatically track for you).

I don't suppose it can be programmed to track the ISS?

theoretica

How dark are your skies? I live in the city and can see a good handful of stars, but it is a joy to get out into the country and see the milky way. A telescope is not going to help cut out light polution.

I would second tony's suggestion of binoculars to start with.

Mr_Toad

Cheap telescopes are a waste of time and money and will bring nothing but frustration. :mad:

It's not just the telescope, the tripod is just as important. As Andypix has pointed out, any movement, even the slightest and you can't see a thing!

Forget zoom, zoom lenses are a compromise and at higher magnifications are pretty dire. Any half decent astro telescope with have interchangeable eye pieces and again quality matters.

I too have a Meade ETX 125 and it's a good scope but definitely a starter scope. I've looked at the same tarfet through mine and better, more expensive scopes and while mine is OK the detail and clarity of better kit is so obvious.

I also have a decent spotting scope and it's no good at all for start gazing, it's not too bad for the moon but that's about it.

Looking on the specialized forums is good advice, also see if there's an astronomical group near you. I'm sure they will welcome you and let you try a lot of different scopes before you decide. I'm lucky enough to have an observatory near me and they they have regular open days and nights. It was thanks to them that I didn't end up making a costly mistake.

As for photography, any scope that takes and eyepiece will take a camera. I have a CCD imager on mine and because the scope is capable of computer control I can set it up outside and then search the night sky from the comfort of my armchair using the laptop.

Beware though, it can be addictive and like most addictions it can be expensive!!