radiocyclist

Hah - Santa has made a secondary web visit to FLO and bought the book, planisphere and a little red torch. I have downloaded a few apps including the one above and watched the DIY Astro vids relating to the scope. This is going to be amazing and I am sure she will love it! You lot are awesome - thank you for your help so far. Sure there will be more questions to follow.

Hi team - thank you all so much for your help. I managed to track a heritage 150 having read all the above and watched the video review. It will be here in 2 days and then hidden ready for Christmas!

upto £250 for a telescope as it will be us and grandparents pitching in. Any other ancillaries can be a combination of other family, sister, dog etc! In stock I can deffo get the 150P. The StarSense Explorer LT80AZ is apparently coming into stock end of the week...? I would however take any other suggestions! Thank you. edit - and a planisphere is now deffo on the list!

Thanks team - can I substitute an app from the Play or App store to get us some of the way to the starsense explorer app and that way make a 150P be the best of all worlds? I can actually find a 150P to buy as well as the Starsense mercury but the explorers are awaiting stock basically everywhere! ..now going to google a bird-jones.....!

Hi all, Totally new here and new to astronomy, pretty much. Many many years ago my parents bought me a telescope as a birthday present and initially it got loads of use but in time I struggled to find things and to know what to point the thing at / what I was looking at it got forgotten. I now find myself with a 10 year old daughter who is keen to discover the skies and we thought a telescope would be an awesome Christmas present. I have done some reading up / being confused and have, I think narrowed to a few options - and honestly I would really appreciate some advice if possible please! We live in the countryside with very little, if any, light pollution and a patio to set the telescope up on. 1. Sky-Watcher HERITAGE 150P Dobsonian - I understand this should be easy to set up once we learn to calibrate it. A 'dumb' scope I think with the value reflecting the optics. I wonder if the lack of dedicated app support as offered below would make it less user friendly - ie. an app to say 'spin this way till we say stop and you will see XXX' may be more engaging? 2. Celestron StarSense Explorer 127LT Newton Reflector - not too far off the above but with a guide app 3. Skywatcher Mercury 707 AZ-GTe SynScan WiFi GOTO - a refractor so perhaps less light/good imaging that the other 2 above but has the GOTO system to literally drive it to stuff. Worried re noise from reading some posts on here but also if it makes the process too easy perhaps our daughter will get as bored as if its too hard; ie. if you simply say show me X and it does you may as well google the picture? Alot of thought going into this as is my wont but I would really appreciate any help and advice please! Best, Mark