Beginers Help

[paulyoung89]

Hi guys. Need a bit of help, ive always been interest in the stars and planets etc. Want to buy a telescope but not too sure what to get.

I was thinking of getting a celestron nexstar 5 se??

Also like the idea of a telescope connected to my laptop and see through it but is that too expensive?

Any help much appreciated

Paul

[coffee_prince]

my first instinct was to buy straight away, but before you part with money you should learn the sky, it really helps, you only need your eyes, and some good reading material.

go check out your garden, whats it like there, a good view of the sky, is it north/south facing? Any street lights in view?

also, do some reading on what you will see, as i know a lot of poeple come into this hobby with too high expectations

[ronin]

The 5SE is a pretty good scope and for what you described should do it all. To display on a PC I assume that you will use a webcam and feed the output to the PC/laptop.

How I don't know exactly, but sure it has been done.

Now a few other thoughts:

The 4SE and 5SE share the same mount, the 6SE and 8SE share another common mount. So the 5SE is probably at the upper end of what the mount was designed for. There will be spare but how much I'm not sure.

If you are thinking of starting with a web cam and eventually a DSLR then the extra weight of the DSLR is probably too much, the mount is Alt/Az and the f number is too long. Simply not the best option if this is ultimately the intended course.

Celestron and Skywatcher are made/owned by Synta.

My main concern is that if you read around SGL there are number of reported problems with controllers and electrics of both SW and Celestron. So buy from a reputable retailer. Will say that the number of scopes running round that the reports will be a small percentage. Power is always one hiccup that is reported, forget batteries.

Other point is simple: They need the correct data supplied and they need to be aligned correctly. Neither seem to be easily accomplished. They do not align themselves, they do not know where they are, you have to do it.