New Telescope Help

[tamer]

Hi people, I am planning on buying a telescope, but as like anyone else buying their first telescope, I'm a bit lost for choice.

There is a very cheap 8" newtonion on ebay, called Seben Navigator 2, less than 250GBP, or a 8" dobsonion, which I can find for a similar price on telescopehouse.com

I would like to use it 'discover objects', and keep records of it, rather than to just look at star maps and view them. And possibly in the future, connect it to a laptop and be able to take photos, and control it from the PC. For this reason I'm not sure if a dobsonian is good enought, for a few reasons, 1, it doesnt have an equatorial mount, so I cant connect it to a pc, or be able to keep a record of the location of the item 'discovered'.

However, the Seben 8" Navigator seems to be a very cheap option, but being so cheap cast other questions into my head. Is it a good scope? The seller seems to be a reputable dealler, and has over 20,000 positive feedback. He also has a website www.Seben.com, for around the same price.

Any help please?
Thank you in advance

[JohnW]

Hi people, I am planning on buying a telescope, but as like anyone else buying their first telescope, I'm a bit lost for choice.

There is a very cheap 8" newtonion on ebay, called Seben Navigator 2, less than 250GBP, or a 8" dobsonion, which I can find for a similar price on telescopehouse.com

I would like to use it 'discover objects', and keep records of it, rather than to just look at star maps and view them. And possibly in the future, connect it to a laptop and be able to take photos, and control it from the PC. For this reason I'm not sure if a dobsonian is good enought, for a few reasons, 1, it doesnt have an equatorial mount, so I cant connect it to a pc, or be able to keep a record of the location of the item 'discovered'.

However, the Seben 8" Navigator seems to be a very cheap option, but being so cheap cast other questions into my head. Is it a good scope? The seller seems to be a reputable dealler, and has over 20,000 positive feedback. He also has a website www.Seben.com, for around the same price.

Any help please?
Thank you in advance
I've never heard of Seben, but a look at the website suggests that the scopes are probably the Chinese-made instruments which turn up under a lot of other brand names. Probably decent value for money, although that equatorial mount on the 8" looks undersized. In general, a cheap Dobsonian will be a better deal than a cheap EQ scope, simply because it's much easier to make a budget alt-azimuth mount. One possible red flag - they're claiming a 500x magnification. 50x per inch of aperture (i.e. 400x for this scope) is the generally accepted upper limit.

You don't need to conect to a PC to keep a record of an object's location - just write it down. Either look it up on a map, estimate the right-ascension and declination based on nearby objects, or make a sketch of the view in the eyepiece.

Reflectors are certainly usable for photography, but for anything requiring long exposures (i.e. anything except the Moon and maybe the brighter planets), you'll need a good, heavy, motorised equatorial mount, or a tracking platform for a Dob. They're not cheap. You won't need to connect to a PC, though - a lot of impressive work is now being done with digital SLRs.

Finally, be careful of eBay - a lot of the astronomical equipment on there is junk (although I don't want to imply that this one is). Ask lots of questions before you part with your cash, and/or look at some of the specialist astronomy sites, such as Astromart.

[redshifter]

An 8" dob is just about the best starter scope one can buy IMO. They're inexpensive, very stable (many non-dobsonian budget scopes have unstable mounts which can be frustrating), easy to set up, and with 8" of aperature will give good views of many of the 'faint fuzzies' out there, certainly better views than anything else at that price point.

Now, a dob isn't the type of scope you can connect to PC, take photos, auto track objects, etc. without perhaps investing in an equatorial platform of some kind, which can run into quite a bit of $. However, if you're just starting out, I'd recommend two things: 1) Attend star parties, look through the different types of scopes, see what you like. 2) Don't get in a rush to do astrophotography, PC work, etc. right out of the gate. Start slow, just get a feel for the whole astronomy thing before plunking down big $ for all that hardware.

Also, keep in mind that the atmosphere is your biggest limiting factor for magnification by far. 50X per inch of aperature is a generally accepted rule for max magnification, but that only applies to the very best of nights. 90% of the time, you'll be limited to 100-150X. I have a 10" dob, and in my 8 years of astronomy, have only been able to go above 200x a few times. Most nights I'm limited to 150X or so. That isn't as bad as it sounds, many deep sky objects look best below 100X.

[Blob]

Hum,
for that sort of money you only get a 4” refractor
However the STARTRAVEL-102 (EQ1) is quite a nice beginners scope.

http://www.telescopesales.co.uk/telescope-20.htm

[Dave Mitsky]

tamer,

Here are some web sites to consult:

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=ss&id=9

http://skyandtelescope.com/howto/scopes/article_241_1.asp

http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html

http://www.company7.com/library/begin.html

http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/telescope.html

http://www.r-clarke.org.uk/starting_astro.htm

http://www.celestron.com/education/tel4ast.htm

http://www.astronomics.com/main/category.asp/catalog_name/Astronomics/category_name/How%20to%20pick%20a%20telescope/Page/1

http://www.telescope.com/jump.jsp?itemID=0&itemType=HOME_PAGE

http://www.floridastars.org/telescop.html

If you can borrow a copy of Phil Harrington's _Star Ware_ (http://www.philharrington.net/) from a library, I suggest you do so.

Dave Mitsky