Starfazed

Indeed, I looked into the astrohopper when deliberating over what first telescope to get and got a goto in the end, as that could help ne find things and track them once found.. Seems to only be web based not app but sounded like a clever idea potentially.

How does that compare to Astrohopper which is a website (I guess you need to open it to load somewhere that you have mobile reception though of works off grid once loaded). https://artyom-beilis.github.io/astrohopper.html Would that work on an iPhone? Or just Android? And are there any Android apps that do the same thing, ie attach phone to side of scope, align to known visible star, save position, choose mew target and phone's position sensors tell the phone when it (and there scope as well) are pointing at same target? As I just got a goto I javemt tried it out but looks like a clever idea assuming it works precisely enough to be useful.

Indeed - so what I'm angling (pun intended) towards is, how close to the theoretical limit can a consumer grade telescope get and how would you go about testing? 0.77 arcsecs at 325m is about 1mm. So in theory with a perfect mirror and no atmosphere I presume a 6 inch telescope could not resolve two lines as separate if they were 1mm or less apart. But in practice if you could only resolve lines 2mm apart, or 5mm apart? Where do you, er, draw the line?

Sort of extension to the "what can I expect to see" question, based on available equipment. I appreciate my new telescope (Star Discovery 150) is going to be no match for the Hubble telescope in aperture, mirror quality or lack of atmosphere. But just how well can it resolve before detail is lost to mushy blur I wondered? To test this I pointed my scope at a distant terrestrial object, in this case a sign on a building which according to Google Earth was 325m away, and tried a variety of eyepieces. I could clearly make out the layers of bricks and mortar of the building, the mortar being around 1cm thick. I could just about make out capital letters 2cm high - the bars and spaces between the bars of the letter "E" for instance would have been about 4mm high and I could separate these using my sharpest and highest power lens (6mm redline) though they weren't very sharp. I can't say for sure the telescope couldn't resolve to under 2.5 arcseconds as the only other text on the notice was much too small to read but I could see there was text on it. Adding the lens onto a Baadar didn't make the letters any clearer; indeed, if anything the reverse. And my 7-21 zoom was more blurry at the 7mm end than the 21mm end meaning I had to really squint to resolve the "E", as it was sharpest when zoomed out midway. According to trigonometry a 4mm space at 325m is 2.5 arcseconds so more than twice what I think I could clearly resolve, and according to formulae for Rayleigh resolution a 150mm telescope's theoretical resolving limit is 0.9 arcseconds. On the basis of my observations with a beginner scope (albeit one with a fairly decent mirror) and a £50 eyepiece, does that sound about right, or should I have been able to read closer to the small print of a newspaper from that distance? (Returning to the Hubble analogy, had I been looking through that in my room I reckon should have been able to see individual bacteria on the wall from 325m away!) For comparison with celestial objects, I gather Saturn (including rings) and Jupiter are both in the region of 30-45 arcseconds wide depending on position relative to Earth. A brick at 325 m is 41 arcseconds across so approximates to the size of either planet at its closest. I couldn't see much detail on the bricks but could clearly make out the layers of mortar between, which implies I'd be able to at least see major cloud bands on either planet - again, does that sound reasonable?

Just been through this myself so can share a few thoughts. You said your budget was 1000 and you are in Europe - is that 1000 Euros? And specific UK brands mentioned here like Stella Lyra may well not be available where you are (but similar scopes come from the same factory under brands like Zhumell). Having the strength, space and budget for a 10 inch Dob is a nice problem to have. Question 1. How much can you afford to spend (including the cost of extra eyepiece, Barlow, sack trolley and foam padding, carry straps, laser collimator etc) Question 2. What's the biggest size you can confidently and safely carry AND store - where's it going to live when not being used? Question 3. Do you prioritise aperture or clever tech? By clever tech, I'm thinking of the balance between a "pure" visual experience with no batteries to go flat (optical rather than red dot finder, manual movement only) scope versus a push to solution like the Starsense, through to fully motorised Goto that can find and track objects (the only Dobsonian I found that does this is the Skywatcher Flextube range, which has the added bonus of being collapsible so is easier to store). But that comes at a cost. Around £1000 will buy you a collapsible Goto 8 inch, a pushto Starsense 10 inch, or a top of the range but no electronic no frills 12 inch Stella Lyra. It will also buy you a 5 inch Celeston 5SE Nexstar Schmidt-Cassegrain, which goes to show the added aperture you get from a Dob for the same price. One final thought - your budget also allows you the possibility of splitting the money on two decent but contrasting scopes if you think you might want to travel with something more compact. For example you could just about squeeze a no-frills 10 inch Skywatcher Classic Dobsonian plus a 127 Skymax Matukov into £1000.

The brief was to find a telescope that wouldn't be so big that my wife would object, whilst ensuring good all round visual image capabilities. I settled for a 6 inch reflector on a GOTO, having discounted larger OTAs (nowhere to store at home, at least whilst testing the waters for a new hobby). Altaz mounted GOTO felt essential due to living in a Bortle 8 city area in which even a star like Polaris on a perfectly clear night seems barely visible so limited opportunity to learn star hopping. Plus having experienced some beginner Dobsonian telescopes at a recent public observatory I felt a little frustrated at the thought of having to look for a feint smudge in the streetlight-filled sky only to lose it to the Earth's rotation a few seconds later. The SDi150p comes in two large cardboard boxes and assembles pretty easily. My initial thought was that the azimuth rotation felt very stiff compared to the (adjustable via dial) altitude rotation, and I wondered if it was even intended to be manually pushed. Subsequent posts suggest the opposite can happen in operation and if the azimuth clutch becomes too loose the GOTO fails to position correctly. We'll see. The OTA is a deep red - not my favourite colour but blends well with my red LED headtorch. It's quite lightweight and easy to carry when off the scope. However, the tripod needs a bit of disassembly to fold as the brace that doubles as a lens holder has to be unscrewed first. I have to carry the scope around 100m to get to the centre of a large park nearby with good protection from streetlights and no trees in the way. I'm debating whether it's better to carry the scope and tripod in separate hands (using straps for the scope, and maybe or maybe not folding the tripod - it needs to be in a single trip), or whether to carry the scope attached to the extended tripod, lugged over my shoulder. I did that last night and it sort of worked but felt clunky and only just got the tripod through the front door. How do you carry yours? Controlling the scope is entirely by mobile phone app. Simple to find my way around, though wasn't always sure if pressing the "move" buttons actually did anything after landing on a star. One very simple trick I found was to turn my phone 90 degrees to landscape when looking sideways through the eyepiece - that way the controls are oriented to the viewfinder so if I press the "down" button the star moves down, and if I press "right" it moves right etc. Whereas if I hold my phone landscape and look through the red dot finder the button "down" obviously corresponds to a movement down etc. First attempt wasn't great though it was on a grassy field and I doubt the tripod was totally level. The GOTO seemed to have problems deciding where anything was and took me to maybe a degree of what I was looking for but no better. Second attempt, last night and I mounted the tripod on a concrete path then levelled it using a spirit level. What a difference! Much better GOTO performance, though it seems that even after two star alignment if I move to something else, it may be bang on the centre of the eyepiece, or it might be half a degree off or so. Is it possible after centring a point object, to use the newfound object to improve the alignment accuracy further? I can't find three star alignment in the Synscan phone app menu. Incidentally, I'm using 1.5V 2800 AA rechargables at the moment. Could anyone who uses this mount advise how many hours I can expect from them, and if it's worth getting a powerbank, what type to go for? The Celestron powerbanks are in excess of £100 which may be hard to bite after everything else so far, especially when rechargeable lead acid 12V power supplies appear to cost a fraction of that. The other quirk I noticed is that when tracking stars if felt like the scope was tracking them, but maybe not so good when tracking planets. Unless planets are supposed to track at a different speed? Anyway, they seemed to shoot out the eyepiece much sooner than stars. Any suggestions? Finally, optical quality. I haven't used the 25 or 10mm lenses as I went for a 7-21mm Skywatcher zoom. It's pretty lightweight but gives me pretty sharp images across the range of magnification. I also got a 2x Baader and the Moon looked astonishing at 3.5mm (214x magnification). I struggled a bit to focus on Mars (as others have commented, the focuser is a bit of a let down though necessary at this price point, it's possible to get really good focus but you have to be really careful how you do it). I cheated for Mars at high power - I first went to the Moon and focussed at high power. Then I went to Mars - nowhere in the viewfinder. Switch to 21x (with Baader) - there it is so recentre WITHOUT refocussing. Then zoom in to 7mm / 3.5mm again and it's centred and in perfect focus. The "tonight's highlights" was quite a useful list of clusters, nebulae and double stars, arranged from brightest downwards. Surprisingly many were very low in the horizon, around 6 degrees or so and below the distant tree line. Most were in the north western sky which I wonder was because the Moon is close to full and lightening half the sky at the moment. I maxed out at a magnitude 7 fuzzy object. Actually there were several fuzzy things in the frame, not sure which I was meant to be looking at. But I guess nebulae aren't easy to see in Bortle 8 areas. The double stars were incredible, and I had a go at the Beehive cluster and a few other clusters I had never previously heard of, absolutely magical stuff. I might only have been outside for an hour but saw more up that scope in one hour than I've seen in the sky the whole of my lifetime prior to last night. Sure it has a few compromises. And I guess if it gets me excited enough to persuade my wife to let me upgrade to the 500mm Flextube in a few years' from now I'll have a clearer idea of what more to look for. But I can easily see this being a fantastic entry point to learning a new hobby.

I tried to buy a Heritage Virtuoso 150 from several retailers, and they were out of stock. So instead, a slight change of plan and I got myself a Skywatcher Star Discovery p150i. I'd factored in a laser collimator with the Heritage and as the Discovery has a non-collimatable primary (and user reports suggest it's pterry good at staying in trim) I took the risk and cancelled the laser. Overall price therefore not that much more expensive than Plan A plus laser. I'll post separately my initial thoughts.

The train analogy is a little helpful to a befuddled father who is having to explain to his young son with a growing interest in astronomy that (1) nothing can travel faster than light (2) the universe is 13.8 billion years old (3) the universe is at least 90 billion light years from one side to the other (4) that as Carl Sagan used to say the universe is more weird than we can imagine. I always thought intergalactic space was a vacuum, with the occasional stray hydrogen molecule showing up. In which case what is expanding? If it's actually more like a lattice, in which the poles connecting the junctions are getting longer at faster than the speed of light, then what are the "poles" made of? And is only intergalactic space expanding? is interstellar space also getting bigger? For that matter is the solar system expanding? Are the atoms that make up my body bigger now than they would have been when the earth came into existence 5 billion years ago? Or are they further apart? If not, then suppose I created a rope so long it could stretch from one galaxy to another. As the galaxies fly apart will the rope get longer? Or will the nearest galaxy to one end get further away from the end of the rope over time? My brain hurts.

Good guess ENS. And some larger Flextubes at tempting prices. I can't see how we'd store a full size Dob larger than 6 inches hence the attraction of the 8 and 10 inches My very sensible wife thinks the 150 Virtuoso is the best compromise, with the promise to consider a bigger upgrade if on using it we find it too limiting. Interestingly my son doesn't like rhe idea of a goto as he thinks we should learn to find things in the sky manually. Though he likes the idea of a scope that tracks. That almost goes full circle again as a motorised EQ without goto would be much cheaper than the HEQ5. But as I struggle to see Pilaris in my Bortle 9 sky I like the sound of the Skywatcher system that if I understand correctly allows you to manually move the scope then it will track what you have found? Anyway, back to purchasing. If I get the 150p and had another £200 for accessories, what should I get in addition? I'm guessing something to help collimate, maybe a Barlow, or maybe a couple of primes, a filter or two and maybe just for fun and experimenting with, an eyepiece phone cradle? If I said the priority for the first additional lenses would be for getting the clearest views of the main planets what eyepieces would be suitable, given weight limitations of the helical focuser? 4mm and 8mm? 7mm plus Barlow (as stock 25mm plus Barlow woyld give 12 5)? Any lughtweight brands? Oh, and I tend to wear glasses when viewing so eye refmlief might be something to consider.

Thanks that's really encouraging to hear. I actually bought a 130 flextube as a Christmas present for a family member a few years ago and got to see it out the box, having since seen Crayfords I appreciate the limitations but expect I could tolerate it. Is it worth getting a Bahtinov mask (would one fit) to assist focus? What eyepieces, Barlows, other accessories if any have you tried it with? I must be missing something but what's so good about catadioptic scopes of similar aperture that people pay three times the price of this for something like the C6SE, even the basic Celestron SLT or Astro FI mentioned above is double the price of the Heritage. I appreciate that they have longer focal length at the expense of field of view, but if the atmosphere limits any 6 inch telescope to around 150x magnification, why would that design (or smaller like the 127) be more sought after for planetary observation if the Heritage can deliver the same view in a compact (at lest, once folded away) form factor and with a wider field of view for DSOs? Finally, I just spotted a handful of elderly looking Meade LX200s of 8 or 10 inch size for between £1000 and £1500 in a second hand telescope store not a million miles away from where I live, but too far to go just for browsing. At the top of my original budget, and I'm guessing they are both technically more complex for a beginner to master and come with the risk of obsolescence and malfunctioning? Or are they so much more superior that they should be snapped up without questioning?

For goodness sake don't tell my wife I could get a portable goto and a bigger Dob for less than original budget, she'd kill me if I did that 🙂 Seriously though, there's nowhere to store more than one, and my attraction to the 200 or 250 GOTO was largely that it was much more portable. My back yard is hemmed in by other houses so very limited viewing potential, but there's a nice open field 100m away. But I'd have to carry everything there by hand, and consensus above seemed to be that it was too far to expect something to not need collimating by the time it got there. Thus thanks to comments so far, I'm leaning somewhat towards the Heritage Virtuoso. I guess not optically quite as good as the 200 GOTO but looks far more compact for the loss of those two inches. The visual calculators of things I might want to watch seem manageable, though it would be nice if the planets could be a bit bigger to avoid disappointing the children..... What would be considered the highest practical magnification on a 150mm 750mm focal length scope (or smallest decent eyepiece), and what advantage if any do I gain by adding a Barlow? If if makes reduces field of view so I'm looking down a straw that's no good. But if it doubles focal length, does that effectively give me back the optical advantage that comes from a compact SCT design scope (like the C6SE, at three times the price)?

Thanks - any suggestions for an 8 inch SCT (or Mak, or basically anything that's not a Newtonian), with Goto, and that won't break the bank? I could get a new 200 flextube or used 250 flextube with Goto for in the region of a grand, though sounds like they will be too unwieldy for my needs. Alternatively FLO have a Celestron C6SLT for £760. That's nearly double the Virtuoso 150 GTI. Same aperture, more compact, longer focal length so less field of view and issues with cooling and dew versus collimation on the Skywatcher 150. What do I gain from paying double and getting the Celestron (or paying triple for the C6 SE)?? If it's better views of the planets in a heavily light polluted area that might possibly sway things, given I struggle to see much else at the moment through the haze. But earlier suggestion above was that in light polluted areas it would be better to go wider in the field of view. Put another way, Why is the 127 SCT so popular when it's got a relatively low aperture? Bonus question - would any of the StellaLyra Cassegrain or Matsutovs fit on a goto mount and be a credible alternative to the Celestron?

Many thanks for all the suggestions so far. In response, Thanks, I was wondering how practical the 250 GOTO would be, and it sounds like it's not going to work if it has to be carried 100m away to set up. Sounds like in reality the scope would be mostly Moon, planets, and any DSOs that are visible through urban haze, with occasional treats to dark skies where it's all hands to the pump to see what's available. Plus maybe a bit of dabbling with EEA. I hadn't noticed there's a 6 inch Goto version of the Skywatcher for £400, the Heritage Virtuoso GTI. On paper that looks almost like the perfect solution - probably the largest aperture yet still easily portable telescope with Goto for anywhere close to that budget. I've never used a Cassegrain type telescope so have no idea what to expect over a reflector of the same aperture. The Skywatcher 127 has a smaller aperture yet costs more than the Virtuoso. The Celestron 6SE has the same aperture yet costs three times as much, and I'd previously discounted the 8 inch SCTs/Mats etc as being above my budget so what extra do they offer above the Virtuoso? Unless I'm missing something, it feels like there's not much inbetween the Virtuoso at 6 inches and spending a great deal more for something at 7 or 8 inches with Goto. is that the case? Are no Goto AZ mounts available for a compact 8 inch reflector like the 200PDS? It feels like I have the budget and leaning for something with a slightly bigger aperture than the Virtuoso, but an 8 inch SCT is probably overkill. If we keep the budget at £1000 and I opt for the Virtuoso 150 that would still leave room for a no-frills 10 inch Dob, though I'd better not tell the other half.... So, with that in mind, can anyone recommend anything at 8 inches (which from brief experience plus looking at lots of images online struck me as being the sweet point for starting to get really nice stuff)? And if the consensus is to check out the Heritage 150 Virtuoso GTI, besides the obvious mods (focuser PTFE and light shield) are there any extras such as really decent lenses that would take the viewing up a few notches?

Background - enthusiastic about astronomy at school but at a time when telescopes of any optical competence were only affordable to the likes of Patrick Moore. Some recent stargazing at the excellent recently opened Grassholme observatory and seeing how enthused the children were has made me rethink my attitude to affordability, especially after trying out the 8 and 10 inch Skywalker dobbies there that they let people try out. After a few hours of playing, and many more looking at images and opinions on these fora subsequently, my immediate thoughts were that whilst I'd like to up the game from the 12x50 binoculars I'm currently using, I need to plan carefully around local circumstances. For starters I live in a manor UK city (probably Bortle 8. Across the road (100m to the entrance) is a large park that in the centre at least gives a large unobstructed viewing area, though the sky is pretty light polluted. At the observatory my immediate frustrations were (1) difficulty star hopping under a near black sky due to lack of familiarity and I'm unlikely to learn starhopping when I can't see many of the dimmer stars visibible to the naked eye, and (2) the speed at which objects [assed through the viewer, which given the effort finding them under light pollution is likely to be frustrating. I expect from time to time we'll want to take a drive to rural skies; I doubt that would be more than maybe once a month, but would want something that could go in the car and be easily set up to maximise viewing time. And of course it needs to be transportable 100m to the park when looking at home. 1. I was initially drawn to the Stellalyra 10 inch dob, the idea of precision two speed focussing and not twisting my neck to look through the viewfinder are positives. But I'm guessing it's bulky, and I'd need an equatorial platform to keep objects tracking. which seem hard to come by in the UK. Plus the steep learning curve of finding my away around the night sky where I live. 2. Next on the list, a goto Dob. The 250 Skywatcher flex looks fabulous, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to cart 100m down the road (or to the car, which might be parked down the road too). Might be a squeeze to get through the door too. Sack trolley perhaps? 3. Then I spotted the 200PDS Newtonian and HEQ5 with GOTO combo. Equatorial mount, shorter tube but still 200mm aperture, and dual speed focus. I have no experience with EQ mounts but would be willing to learn. I appreciate there's a knack to things like getting the eyepiece in the right position. Also would be better for long exposures if I do decide to explore astrophotography - but I'm unclear whether EQ is still considered important now that GOTO allows tracking for multiple short exposures and image stacking, to give the same overall exposure time as a single long EQ-mounted shot? How transportable would this combination be? 4. Alternatively, should I be ditching the idea of a reflector altogether and instead be looking at a refractor (probably can't afford anything more than 4 inches) or a 6 inch Cassegrain type (e.g. Nexstar 6SE - think the 8SE is over budget). What do people think about the StellaLyra 6" f/12 (in which case what GOTO mount would be advisable)? Few other points people will want to know. 5. What I want to be using it for, in the city it's going to be limited to what can be seen which will be mostly Moon, major planets and any DSOs that poke through the haze. And on the occasional visit to dark skies it will be whatever I can find in it. But it will be to inspire me, and my children to appreciate the sky above us all the more and learn more about the wonders in it, starting from what we can find and see. 6. I expect it will be nearly all visual at first, though if possible I'd like to be able to add astrophotography or EAA later. I'm budgeting at present for a cheap eyepiece holder for my phone camera, but would like to have a go at some of the deeper sky objects, and rather like the idea of tinkering with EAA at some later stage to get around issues like image rotation etc as an alternative to an EQ mount. 7. Budget. Not expecting to spend less than £500, could go up to about £1500 new, but seeing some nice stuff (all the above examples) second hand around the £900 mark. My wife's going to kill me if I get the 16 inch dob even though that's within budget and on special offer at the moment from FLO, so it's got to be no more than 10 inches, probably 8 inches tops or smaller. What's package with some form of GOTO will give me the best images from a reasonably transportable package for my budget?