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New beginner seeks life time hobby


Kairan Leonard

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Hello, iv always been interested in the skies, especially night skies. Since watching Brian cox's tv series I have really really wanted go get involved with astronomy. I'm 24 from wales in the uk. Not great in cardiff for light pollution but I would love a telescope to take with me to the mountains which aren't far away. I was wondering if someone could help me, could you recommend a good beginners telescope for around 100 pounds? I don't mind spending a little more if I really have to but I would like to get some real good images of the moon and other planets, I don't know what specs go look for and I don't just want any old scope I want à good one that I can use for a couple of years. Thank you

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Hi Kairan & welcome to SGL.

Download Stellarium on to your PC, this shows where everything is in the night sky & its free.

As a fellow newbie I would advise spending a liitle more - have a look here: - http://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html

In reality you will only be able to see things in our solar system well, looking at things further away would need bigger telescope & a stronger mount (and possibly somewhere with less light pollution, so you will see more in the mountains).

This really is a hobby that needs to be taken one step at time - the best first step is to go to a local astronomy club & have a look at their scopes. 

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I hate to break it to you and crush Your dreams. I don´t mean to. But you will need to spend quite a bit more than 100 bucks to even think about imaging. Even if it´s just planetary.

Why not just start With Visual observing first?

You can then buy a Nice starter Scope, like this: http://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-astromaster-series/celestron-astromaster-130eq-telescope.html

Or: http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-skyhawk-1145p.html

Tho With the Celestron you get a bit more aperture for the price.

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... I would love a telescope to take with me to the mountains which aren't far away

... could you recommend a good beginners telescope for around 100 pounds?

... I would like to get some real good images of the moon and other planets,

I doubt you will get that combination. To get good images you will need to spend more and the mount would be heavy. The take it to a dark sky site presumably means you will want something very portable which might not be suitable for photography.

For £100 I would suggest ignoring photography for the moment and concentrate on visual. At that price binoculars or a secondhand short tube refractor would be my suggestions

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In reality you will only be able to see things in our solar system well, looking at things further away would need bigger telescope & a stronger mount (and possibly somewhere with less light pollution, so you will see more in the mountains).

For £100 you can easily get a scope that will see beyond the solar system. Just over £100 would get a fast 130mm reflector which would comfortably give good views of M42, pleiades, M31 etc. You won't be able to image with it but that's true at that price for solar system objects as well as DSO.

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Welcome to SGL - Have a look in the Beginners scope section on the FLO website http://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html. These scopes have been recommended by many members on here, so are a tried and tested  combination.

With regards to imaging, just enjoy the night sky for the moment and see where that takes you. Imaging is a very different beast and one where it is difficult to do it cheaply. There is a thread running here http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/206174-bare-minimum-read-cheapest-kit-for-dso-photography/ about how to do DSO imaging as cheap as possible.

Look forward to seeing you around :smiley:

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Ok so if I was to my budget out a little further and say 150? Cos I really want à good view of planets and other things, I'll take a look at those scopes thank you for the advise :)

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OK for £150 I would suggest large binoculars (e.g. Helios Quantum 4 15x70) with a tripod that would be portable, in budget and get good wide field views but low magnification

or something like the celestron 130 EQ MD , not so portable but more aperture, more magnification, fast enough to give bright views and a wide field. Down side is that for a beginner the equatorial might be a problem.

or a short refractor, something like the ST102.

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Ok so if I was to my budget out a little further and say 150? Cos I really want à good view of planets and other things, I'll take a look at those scopes thank you for the advise :)

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

For Visual oberving with the scope I linked, you can get excellent views of the moon and oke views of mars and Jupiter when the situation permits. But the planets will look like a small pea in Your Scope and that is With a further Investment for a decent 5mm eyepiece and a 2x barlow (easily adds another 100 bucks on top).

Don´t expect to see the planets like GBP sized coin. You will need a much bigger and more expensive scope for that.

So all in all. If you really mostly interested in planets, you will need to spend at least 300 bucks for a scope that can handle larger magnifications on planets and still give a decent view and not show a blurry pea in the eyepiece at high magnification. (like the 127 Mak Scopes in the 350 price range)

The celestron 130EQ MD is a Nice alround starter scope that will give you nice views on various Objects in the sky for the price within Your 150 Budget.

Other than that, you will need to double your Budget easily.

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Excellent response guys so thank you For that, I think maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself! I'm interested in the skies as a whole, I think what I'm getting at is ideally I'd like to get a scope good enough too see jupiters patterns and things like that, I think I my invest in some good binoculars for now and then save a little more money to get a scope that can give me such views. Again thank you very much and I'll stick around :)

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No problem. Hope we didn´t discourage you too much. :)  But it´s always best to keep Your expectations in check to what your budget allows.

If you really are interested in planets, then Your first saving point could lead to something like this:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/slt-series/celestron-nexstar-127-slt.html  or

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/az-goto/skywatcher-skymax-127-synscan-az-goto.html

These are extremely popular entrylevel midrange scopes in the 350-360 price range and give you a good starting point to explore imaging of the planets with modified webcams.

So hopefully that gives you a little encouragement again. :)

These 127 maks are also very portable. Easy With a car. Or if you have a large backpack you could fit it in there. It´s about 9kg. I have carried a lot heavier backpacks :p

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I'd suggest you go here:

http://www.cardiff-astronomical-society.co.uk/

For £15 you could become a member (less than a 10th of the cost of a beginner scope).  They have an observatory and organise regular observing sessions so you could have a look through equipment that is way beyond your current budget.  They even have an equipment 'library' so you could borrow some kit and try it out for yourself before committing to a purchase.  They set a 14 year old me on the right track in the hobby, and I seem to recall that Dave Powell (the club secretary) was around even then.

They also have monthly talks at the university with guest speakers.  I vividly recall someone giving a talk in 1980 or 81 about a fantastically expensive new device called a 'CCD' which allowed professional astronomers to take much better pictures.  "Don't worry" he said, "one day they'll be so cheap you'll all be squirting them around taking pictures of anything and everything."  Wise words indeed!

Highly recommended.

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Welcome to SGL  :smiley: ,

For just over £200 quid's you can get a 6" Dobsonian scope that will give you great images of the moon planets & DSO,   http://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/skywatcher-skyliner-150p-dobsonian.html

You get more aperture with  Dob scopes at far less cost than Normal scopes with there mounts?.

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Hi and welcome to the forum. Have to agree with many comments above regarding the practicality of imaging with a modest budget. I would stick to visual for now and as long as you buy from one of the main manufacturers (Meade, Skywatcher and Celestron) you will always be able to sell it on at a later date to recoup some of your original investment which then can go towards your next setup. In the meantime I would strongly recommend taking a look at a book by Steve Richards called "Making Every Photon Count". It is a very comprehensive guide on what kit you need in order to take the kind of images you are interested in.

Choices include:

Widefield, the use of a digital camera to take a wide shot of the night sky whilst possibly including some terrestrial detail to provide a context or reference for the final image.

Solar System, the use of a video camera attached to a scope to create a series of exposures from which the best are selected to help construct a final composite image.

Deep Sky Imaging, the use of a digital camera attached to a scope to track a distant object with sufficient accuracy to obtain enough data to construct a final image.

The list could be viewed in order of cost and complexity (especially with regards to the processing side) and the above mentioned book provides a great guide on how to go about each of the above in order that you can then obtain good consistent images. Clearly there is some very exciting and expensive kit out there that can do everything except make your breakfast but that doesn't mean to say that you can't start imaging on a modest budget, just as long as your expectations are equally budgeted for. If you want a feel for the what is involved, I would suggest taking a look over on the imaging sections and in particular the kit listed in members' signatures to build up a consensus of what people are using and more importantly, what has been proven to work. If imaging is your goal then you are in good company here as there are some very good imagers that can offer you the required technical advice and to help encourage you along the way.

Clear skies for now and hope you enjoy the forum

James

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Hi kairon welcome to Sgl. Why don't you pop along to the South Wales group page on the social section of Sgl. We have group meetings fairly regularly through the year in blaenavon on the outskirts of the beacons in fact there's one scheduled for this weekend actually although we,re obviously hostage to the weather. There's a few of the members that come from cardiff as the skies are pretty good in that part of the world. It's very informal and friendly and if you've never done it before at least looking through some of the scopes we all use would give you a starting point when you finally invest in your own scope.

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