Best telescope for £350

[great_bear]

Wow! I looked at some planets and that's awesome!! Thanks for that

WOAH!!! - wait just a second there guys!!

That web site doesn't even come close to showing you what things will really look like. It shows you the size of things in the view, but that's all that it is intended to do.

If you think the views of the planets will be anything remotely like what that simulation shows, then you'll be very disappointed indeed.

I'm sorry to have to tell you that.

In practice, Jupiter will just be a simple disc with two plain brown stripes on it, with perhaps the merest hint of other stripes if you look long enough. It will look pretty much the same every time you look at it.

It's only with bigger and/or more expensive scopes that you can more clearly see bits of interesting detail that changes hour-by-hour.

I'm sure that each and every one of us would own a Celestron 127SLT if it really did give views like these:

(from that web simulation provided above)

Sadly however, it most definitely does not! - not even close!

In practice, views of Jupiter in a 127 SLT or similar scope will look more like this:

- Hope that helps!

rgds,

J.

[M4lcs67]

Hey Great Bear. Yeah you are completely right. Some of the representions are well wide of the mark and do give a totally false impression to any newbies out there. The bottom pic that you posted of Jupiter is what I see through my 127 SLT.

[great_bear]

- it's still useful for field-of-view calculations though - the "Telescope Simulator" that I use has a prettier user interface but unfortunately only has six objects to view...

- so I'll still be bookmarking your link!

[IoHady]

Thanks great_bear. I did think that the picture of Jupiter that I saw on there was a little too close to Hubble material, haha. The bottom image you posted is still a lot better than my current scope, so still looking forward to really seeing like that.

[yata123]

try telescope planet they have got a good range of telescopes:cool:

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

Stellarium seems to give great impressions of what to expect.

[great_bear]

It's a shame that so few of these tools show the objects as they will truly appear. The best example of such a mismatch is the Andromeda galaxy which - with pro-standard imaging - is really big. Under live visual observation conditions however, it looks significantly smaller - the extremes of its edges being invisible to the eye even with a large scope.

I suppose you'd have to get specially-taken photos in order to really show how things really look when at the eyepiece - merely darkening a photo doesn't create a realistic rendition...

[saturn10]

Hello,

The 12Dstring makes objects look great with cheaper eyepieces?

Why buy expensive ones?

regards,

Rob

[Caldwell 14]

I have a Celestron 102 Nexstar 4" refractor on a GOTO mount which can now be had for as littlle as 315 quid if you shop around, I love mine and have nothing but praise for it. You would need a battery pack at some point

[IoHady]

I suppose you'd have to get specially-taken photos in order to really show how things really look when at the eyepiece - merely darkening a photo doesn't create a realistic rendition...

Yea, you'd have to buy or borrow each one of the scopes to take the picture, would be expensive.

[BazMark]

I don't know whether the electronics are better or not on the Celestron 127 but I have the Skywatcher version and have no problems with it. I believe the setup requires one more step (I stand to be corrected on that though).

The Skywatcher also comes with two eyepieces as opposed to the Celestron's one, a 25mm and a 10mm and despite what some have experienced the 10mm that came with mine works very well when used with this scope.

The Skywatcher also comes with a very nice optical viewfinder. I have used both both optical and red dot types and personally prefer optical over the red dot viewfinders anyday. However, that is my personal preference and does not reflect the views of everyone using this forum.

Just my two penneth.