OT Astronomers, I Need Telescope Recs

i went to a 'stargazing party' at the local park here in nashville awhile back.


holy shite is all i can say.

these frickers were taking/painting pictures of far away nebula, computer controlled telescopes and the entire back ends of their suburbans were outfitted for star gazing, streaming NASA TV nonstop...

it was fun to enjoy with my kids..and then get away from them.

Oh, and it goes without saying. The bigger the better. The larger ones are just harder to transport and thus get used less often.

You could also look into these Celestron 15x70's. ~$70 on amazon. With mine I can easily see the Orion Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy and amazing views of things like the Pleiades and moons surrounding Jupiter. LINK

Build your own.

I have an Orion. I'm older..but still a beginner.
I love the Orion. My reflector is pretty "basic" for an 8" Equatorial Mount...No automated drive to keep up with left ascending motion. Only thing I have is a few lenses.

Go to telescope.com and/or call those folks at Orion. Great people to work with. They'll help you.

Refractor spotting scopes require a tripod, but are good for peeping toms.

For the money, Dobs are hard to beat. This is what it looks like when the OT and Tim the tool man decide to DIY.

Thanks for the replies. Anyone here actually build one before?

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Oh, and it goes without saying. The bigger the better

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This isn't necessarily the way to go. Just get a decent size and make sure a good bit of your money is going to a quality mount and a couple good eyepieces.
I have the Celestron 130 SLT like the one pictured in the post above. It's a great scope, came with pretty good eyepieces, the GPS feature works well, but the mount is subpar. The motor in the mount and the gears result in it moving fast, then slower, then fast, then slllloooooooowwwwwww, etc. The GPS will take it where it's going, but getting there might take a while. And it is unstable (note how the scope is cantilevered on the mount, not supported on both sides(. I live near the interstate, and if I'm set up on cement, the scope will jiggle slightly from vibration - much less if I set it on grass, and even less if I weight it down with bricks on the shelf . If I adjust the focus, it will jiggle for a little while and usually puts you off target just from touching the adjustment knob. Get one that has a VERY solid and stable mount.
Know the magnification for the type you are buying. For instance, focal length divided by eyepiece size = magnification. Mine is 650 mm focal length, so with the 9 mm eyepiece I get 72x magnification. However, I spent decent money on a good quality 2x Barlow lens, so that doubles me to 144x magnification. Or with my 3x Barlow I'm now at 216x magnification. That's about as high as you really want to go unless you have a really expensive, big scope. I can combine the 2x and 3x with my 9mm lens and get 432x magnification, but that can really only be used on very bright stuff like the moon or occasionally Jupiter. But leaving some money in your budget for a good 2x Barlow lens will get you a lot more practical usage than putting that money into just the next biggest telescope.
I'll say again, leave money in your budget for quality eyepieces. A cheap lower-mm size eyepiece will get you bigger magnification but shitty quality.
With a little research (or just an app like Star Walk that lets you point your phone at something in the sky and have it tell you what it is), you don't really need to use the GPS feature much. There may be a thousand things cataloged in it, but all of them won't be visible with your scope in your location at the time you're using. Pretty much everything worth viewing, I've found on my own.

Summary: Get a decent size scope but leave money in your budget for one with a high quality, stable mount plus some good eyepieces. A 2x Barlow will be the best money you spent. Don't fall into the trap of simply "buy the biggest scope I can afford."



That's a moon shot from holding my phone up to my eyepiece on the scope.

Bump

Searched and this thread came up. I’m looking for input as well and want to see if anything has improved or changed