MountainSkies

On 2/26/2016 at 11:06, RikM said:

I have to say I almost entirely disagree with your 'ultimate guide' for beginners!

All the telescopes you 'recommend' are very small aperture and in the main come with lightweight unstable mounts that will do more to frustrate the user rather than give them a good start in observational astronomy. For visual observing, aperture counts. The larger the diameter of your objective, the more light you gather on deep space objects and the more resolution you have on solar system objects. For the budget conscious beginner, by far the best bang for your buck comes with a Dobsonian mounted Newtonian reflector. Not only does a 6" or 8" Newtonian give great views of all classes of astronomical object, but it has the added advantage of a very stable, intuitive, low maintenance mounting.

As for advising against a reflecting telescope as they are 'hard to manage', this is plainly wrong. Would you advise someone against playing the guitar because you have to tune the strings? Just as you can get pitch-pipes to aid in tuning a musical instrument, so you can get a Cheshire eyepiece to aid in aligning the mirrors. It doesn't take more than a few seconds and is nothing to be scared of.

For those wanting to make a start in astrophotography the advice of 'don't because it's difficult' isn't at all helpful. There are many wonderfully helpful and encouraging imagers at SGL who are more than happy to advise how to get started.

 

RikM, Though I prefer Newtonian reflectors, Many people need a telescope that is easy to care for than a Newtonian reflector that can be broken by a person's hands being dirty and then boom, the telescope is broken and needs to be taken apart again.  I would fully recommend a Newtonian to a person who has a helping hand, but sometimes a few posts online do not help with collimation. 

On astrophotography, I feel that people should learn about what they are looking at, see what they think of their views, and then buy an astrophotography camera if they are invested. You can also use a helpful phone or camera to take pictures of your objects, which works perfectly fine as well.

I will be changing the name of this guide.

Thank you for your opinion

MountainSkies

Fully agree with you michealmorris, and I will be renaming this blog post bases off your idea. I also will be adding your view about cheap telescopes into this blog post, and also will be adding a few newtonians to the list of reccomended scopes. 

Thank you for your opinion and ideas,

MountainsSkies

(Note: sorry for being off forums for so long, was out of country for a few weeks and was busy doing other things)

It depends on which telescope you are using. If you are using Celestron, I would definitely recommend SkyPortal. If not, then I would recommend Star Rover, as this was the first stargazing app I used and is very informative, as that is the goal of that app. It pretty much depends on what you need. 

I would recommend Star Rover, as this is probably the best. Loved this one because  it gave me a bit of backstory on the thing I was looking at, and was always in the correct location if location is on.