farunj

All the suggestions for a 8" dobsonian are right on point as they are the best bang for the buck! Dobsonians, by virtue of their design spend most of your money on the optics, i.e. the primary and secondary mirror and the eyepieces. Hence, if all you intend to use the scope for is visual astronomy, then a dobsonian is perfect for you. An 8" dob is perfect as it hits that sweet spot between the scope being too bulky to move around and the aperture being large enough that you can see a whole bunch of objects. In fact, you can spot all of the messiers with an 8" dob in a nice dark sky! Since you said you will be observing in South Florida, I would suggest you check out High Point Scientific, specifically https://www.highpointscientific.com/apertura-ad8-8inch-dobsonian-telescope-ad8 this scope. It is a great deal and I would definitely recommend going for this! As others have said, you can buy a couple of eyepieces and maybe even a barlow lens with the leftover money. Might I suggest also that you consider buying the book Turn Left at Orion: https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Left-Orion-Hundreds-Telescope/dp/0521153972. I say this because this book has a great list of objects that you can see with your telescope and it also has tutorials on how you can go about hunting those objects down, i.e. what guide stars to look at and stuff like that! Good luck and clear skies!

Hi, Please do NOT use a solar filter that has a hole in it! It is very very dangerous and will definitely blind you. Just go for a new filter. The best way to test if a filter is fine or not is to hold it up to the sun with your naked eyes and seeing if you can get any light through the filter. If there is even a tiny hole through which light passes, then just throw the filter away and buy a new one. As Jojo said, you only have one set of eyes! Varun.

Hi Dusty, I come from a big city in India (called Pune) and there is a lot of light pollution where I used to live. I used to own a 5" f/7.2 reflector back then and I could quite easily resolve Albiero. In fact I remember being really excited on looking at the red and blue of the stars! I could resolve them with a 20mm eyepiece and they looked fantastic with a 10mm eyepiece. I recently moved to New Haven, CT, in the US, and this is much less light polluted than my old city. I enjoy much better views from here, and can easily split Albiero! So, unless you are severely light polluted and cannot see any stars when you look up, you should definitely be able to resolve and enjoy Albiero and many other double stars. I would also like to mention that if you are contemplating buying a telescope for observation purposes, then you should definitely consider buying a dobsonian. These are the best bang for the buck for visual astronomy as almost all of your money goes into the optics of the scope. An 8" dob from any of the big companies will guarantee not only that you will be able to split Albiero, but also be able to observe most of the Messiers! So do consider purchasing a dob! As always though, there is nothing that can beat a dark sky. You will always get your best views from a really dark new moon night from far outside the city. Hope this helps! Varun.