Quote:
Originally Posted by enigma_0Z
I'm sure that every newbie and his brother has asked this on this forum, but...
What kind of scope is good for just starting out? (I've been using some borrowed 10x50 binoculars and want to save up for something NICE)...
What do I want to see? In particular, planetary and deep-space objects are a must. The moon and Sun would be pretty cool too, and binary stars as well so... everything!
From what I've been reading, a Newtonian Dob will be the best buy, so in that spirit, I have been getting opinions on a few prospective buys...
I live in a suburban neighborhood, and I have some clear nights, but there's some light pollution of course (The star across from Pegasi Β is just barely visible w/o aid...)
I'm looking at the Orion XT8 8" scope, and the Celestron StarHopper 8 8" scope... or maybe a 10?
But because of the pollution, I want to be able to move it around as well... But I've heard baaaaaad things about similarly priced cadiotropic scopes...
So, in short:
1. Orion or Celestron, aperture being equal, which is better?
2. What is a "Diffraction-limited" or "1/4 wave" scope?
3. How long are these scopes, and would they fit into a mid-size car (my car is about 65 inches wide)
4. What kind of accessories should I pick up? I think that I at least want a Barlow lens, and the Solar and Lunar filters...
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there is many kinds of scopes you can get, it all depends on what you want to do with it, do you want to take up astrophotography and what is your budget. a 200 mm is not to bad , its not to heavy and takes about 5 mins or so to setup.
now if your gona do astrphoto you need a motordrive for alt and dec
and a polor alingment tool, they go for arounf 175$ or so. eather for the price you can get a a good scope for around 700$ with tripod from skywatcher maybe even cheaper, for deep space its a good scope 8 inches is good enough for deepspace the Faintest Steller Magnitude is 14.2 and Highest Practical Power 400x basically its about 50x per inch depending on the seeing ,it can go higher like 65 if the waether permits it. its a fast scope at f/5 so for planets and moon close ups its good enough.
then you could always get a wbcam and do a few pics of the planets and moon , but that all depends what you want to do with