what to get

[beanyboy1982]

hi all been looking at scopes now 4 a while come across this before would it really have 525x as a skywatcher 150 dob only has 306x i prob have around £150 quid at the mo to spend unless i waitabit longer or is their any good scopes out their for that money ?

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5800504/Trail/searchtext%3ETELESCOPE.htm

[beanyboy1982]

any one ???????????????

[Stargazer Jack]

You should have a look at the Explorer 130M if you wanted to start basic astrophotography like planets etc. The other option would be the Skyliner 150P which is a Dobsonion. Have a look at First Light Optics-link is at the top of the forum page

[beanyboy1982]

yeah looked on that site and had a look at the 150p would their be much difference in that and the 200p besides the price ?

[Stargazer Jack]

I'm not completely sure but 50mm would add quite a difference. You would see more detail in DSO and the planets would look better

[RikM]

The maximum magnification quoted for scopes are fairly meaningless. Any scope can be set to give almost any magnification you can imagine just by changing the eyepiece. Whether you will be able to see anything at that magnification is another matter.

In the UK, on most nights the air isn't steady enough to use any more than about 200x. With all the heat rising from buildings round me, I seldom use more than 170x, any higher and you are just magnifying ripples in the air. (Imagine you are looking at the bottom of a pond through wavy water. If you zoom in, you just see more ripples).

Aperture (the size of the primary lens or mirror) is more important than any quoted maximum magnification. The larger the lens or mirror, the more light your scope will gather and you will be able to see fainter objects or more detail on bright objects.

Because of this, the 150P Dobsonian would normally be considered the better scope. (Edit, better than the 70mm frac in your first post. The 200P is better again than the 150P).

[Mr Spock]

Those magnifications are horribly misleading. A 70mm achromatic refractor would be pushing it at x150.

What you need is aperture not magnification. A 130mm would be a good starter scope. A 150mm would be much better as it would show more detail and on a good night could get x200.

[onesmallstep]

Avoid the 70mm and go down the reflector route, either a 130 or 150. These are good for general observing and are the cheapest cost-per-inch scopes you can buy.

The Argos 'frac is a 70mm and the rule of thumb is to magnify a maximum of 2x per mm or 50x per inch of aperture so 70x2=140 times magnification and that is under 'perfect' seeing conditions.

[gdheib0430]

As a piggy back to everyone else as well...most DSOs do not require a lot of magnification anyway as they are actually rather large in the night sky just very faint, so the more light you gather the better not the further you zoom in...take M31 (Andromedia Galaxy)...it actually takes up twice the size of space in the night sky as our moon does, but it is so far away and faint that it is very hard to pick out unless you are in a dark sky so a 150p would be nice but if you have the monies I would so go with the 200p. the bigger the better is the name of the game in astronomy for viewing with the naked eye purpose.