Hi all! New here,but there's too many clouds!

[todd8137]

Hi and welcome

Pat

[JamesM]

Hi and welcome to the forum. As far as scopes go, the dobsonian (a type of newtonian) offers the best bang for your buck and if you want to get off to a cracking start, my recommendation would be the U.K's best selling scope the Skywatcher 200P which you can view here. If you are wanting a shop for the purpose of getting up close to some of this kit, you might want to think about contacting your local astro club or a local observing group (look under the 'Community' heading on this forum to see if we have any groups near you) to see when the next public observation session will so that you can go along and see this kit up close and even better, actually look through some of it! The advantage of doing some research 'in the field' is that you will soon be able to make sense of what all those scope specifications actually mean at the eyepiece which is where it counts. Computer aided scopes (Goto) are great if there is sufficient aperture to show what the mount has found for you and as this component isn't cheap, it doesn't make sense having it if it means depriving money that would otherwise be spent on aperture. Buying plenty of aperture as in my example above would be my priority and will probably mean finding objects manually but that's half the fun and will certainly go along way in helping you get started in astronomy.

Clear skies for now and hope you enjoy the forum

Clear skies

James

[telesto]

Hi and welcome to sgl and the forums

Clive

[robbie c]

Hi welcome to SGL

[sloz1664]

Hi and a warm welcome to the Lounge.

Steve