Celestron SE8 v. SkyWatcher and EQ5

[ABGD]

I'm sorry for retracing what I know is a fairly well trodden path... There are, perhaps, a few twists though.

I've always wanted a telescope. My partner used to have a 3" refractor and still misses it.  Our son is 6 1/2 and would probably enjoy looking at planets and 'wow' objects but realistically is likely to have limited interest at this stage. He's reasonably interested in space things - 'the Martian' used to be his comfort film (sick in bed, he'd watch it several times in a day).

I've settled on a Cassegrain type telescope, because my impression is that you get more for your money than with refractors. I remember being lifted up to look through the eyepiece of a big Newtonian when I was about my son's age. It was a bit awkward and I wouldn't fancy lifting my son for any length of time, so I hoped that something with the eyepiece at the mirror-end of the tube would be easier for him to use.

The next question is whether to get a GOTO mount or not? Again, I've tried to learn the constellations before and had limited success. But the cheaper mounts look very plasticky to me. I can see the point in a GOTO mount, but given the apps you have on mobile phones these days, are they as necessary as they used to be? Do you miss out on part of the astronomy experience if you don't learn your way around the sky? If I set up and aligned an equatorial mount with a motor drive, presumably a phone app could give me the co-ordinates to see whichever object I'm interested in? I note I could add a GOTO system for about £300.

At the moment I'm split between the Nexstar 8SE which is currently at £1104 on Amazon, or a combination of a SkyWatcher 180 Makutsov, which I understand may be a bit better for planets; decent for most deep-sky objects, and which I can get for about £1000 with an EQ5 mount. I am unlikely to get terribly interested in Astrophotography. I read about Schmidt-Cassegrains being a bit more delicate because of the thinner corrector plate and this pushes me slightly towards the Makutsov, despite the extra weight.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[cletrac1922]

Just for visual, I would go for a SW 10" collapsible dob

Easy to set up, and I use a laser pointer to find where want to view

Get a right angle spotting scope, as do not have to lay on the ground to align objects overhead

The dob comes with a 10mm and 25mm eyepieces

I use a 17mm wide-angle eyepiece for young eyes, and invest in a 2 X barlow as well 

With club belong to, go into primary schools, scout/guide groups

I use a small kitchen 2 step ladder for 6-8yo's to observe

Can relate to been kids yourself, and when that age used to lay on back lawn of our farm, and watch the yanks go over Gemini project

Have 6 and 3 yo grandkids, and they also interested as well

John

 

 

[Demonperformer]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

If you are only interested in visual, use an alt-az mount rather than an eq mount (which is essential for decent AP). Learning the sky is a good skill to have, but you an do this whether you have GOTO or not. The question I would ask is: do you want to observe objects, or is hunting them down part of the fun for you? For me, hunting down the object is just a means to an end, so GOTO is really useful (with limited "between the clouds" time), but if it is part of the fun for you then save yourself the extra cash.

Enjoy the journey.

[Cosmic Geoff]

1104 pounds for a new C8 SE sounds like a fantastic deal, if you can trust the seller.

I would not recommend the 180mm Maksutov on an EQ mount.  This is not a beginner's general purpose scope, but a narrow field specialist scope for viewing and photographing planets. If your prime aim is to image Jupiter's cloudbelts, get it, otherwise no.

Whether you want GoTo or not is up to you, a lifestyle choice. Do you want to 'Learn the sky' and enjoy hunting down objects, or just look at stuff without wasting observing time? Personally, I consider a large scope with no GoTo to be a complete waste of time, but other people think differently.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I would be wary of letting a 6 1/2 year old anywhere near a C8 unless well supervised.  The cost of replacing a damaged corrector plate would be around 900 pounds.

In my opinion, phone apps are definitely not a substitute for GoTo.

SCTs are great, but be aware that you can get the same aperture for a lot less money with a Dobsonian, provided your prime aim is visual use and you realise you will be dependent on your skill to find anything with it.  They also have fewer exposed delicate parts...

Avoid EQ mounts unless you have astrophotgraphy definitely in mind, as they are more work to set up correctly.  The cheaper alt-az GoTo mounts as you say are on the flimsy looking side, but the tripods contribute to this.  The alt-az GoTo mounts bundled with the Celestron SCTs aren't too bad for visual use.    If you really desire a solid-as-scaffolding alt-az GoTo mount, you can find one, but at a price.? 

[wheresthetorch?]

This has to be worth a look - a Mak on a WiFi GOTO alt-az mount. 

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-az-gti-wifi/sky-watcher-skymax-127-az-gti.html

WiFi links directly to an app on your phone; if you have a young child, GOTO makes a big difference as there's less hanging around in the dark while parent tries to find something elusive in the sky.  Instead, watch the magic of the telescope moving across the sky.  

[JG777]

I would say a C8 SE is a great choice and a low maintenance all rounder. A better choice would be an 8 inch Evolution as your power requirement is taken care of by the on board battery and with built in WiFi and far better gearing. Either way you will need some kind of dew control for an SCT on the form of a shield and some heat. GOTO is extremely useful and will allow you to see more in a given time frame, unless as mentioned you will enjoy manually hunting targets down. In light polluted skies this can become tiresome and GOTO starts to earn its keep. 

Dobs give you the same aperture for cheaper and come with GOTO and tend to be faster scopes typically F4. 5 to F6 compared to the F10 or thereabouts of SCT. So the dob will do wide clusters better but the SCT will pull ahead for planets all things being equal. Dobs need regular collimation and mirrors may need to be cleaned from time to time. 

[dweller25]

Hello ABDG and welcome to SGL.

A C8 is a good all rounder for planets and DSO's but with GOTO they start to get expensive.

For much less money and just as good (although some may say slightly better) performance is an 8" Dobsonian. They do make excellent scopes to get you started - and you can put the optical tube assembly on a GOTO mount at a later date if the astronomy bug really bites ?

 

[ABGD]

Thank you all for the food for thought.

Something I should have perhaps mentioned is that my partner and I started grinding mirrors for a large Dobsonian a while before my son was born. We finished a 6" mirror but haven't yet built an assembly for it. We have a 12" which is nearly done and a blank for a 20".

Kids are great but tend to slow down megalomaniac projects - or perhaps they are in and of themselves megalomaniac projects - but I think we will restart telescope building probably reasonably soon. My confession is that I will probably enjoy building the telescope at least as much as looking through it. So I was hoping to get something that would compliment a large Dob for when it is built - which realistically isn't likely to be imminent.

I talked to a shop today who said the EQ5 mount would be much too small for the 180, which changes matters somewhat as well as a large mount with guidance is more than I'm willing to pay.

The 8SE is being sold by Amazon themselves. I suspect it's discounted because it's old technology - RS232 ports etc... Probably clearance. I think they've stopped making them. Even at that price they haven't sold any over the last 2 days.

Edited December 21, 2018 by ABGD

[Owmuchonomy]

Regarding your topic of 'WOW' objects (planets) for the young man then I'm sure you are aware that they are not at all well placed in UK skies for some time to come (Jupiter a few years, Saturn even longer).  So I would concentrate on other targets.  In your shoes I would get a 5" achro on an AZ 5 mount.  Somewhat portable and they come up secondhand quite often too.  If you really want GoTo, which is not a bad idea for retaining interest, then put the same scope on an AZ GTi WiFi mount and download the free control App to a phone/tablet device.  Seems like you have the big aperture scenario covered for the future.

[Cosmic Geoff]

6 hours ago, ABGD said:

The 8SE is being sold by Amazon themselves. I suspect it's discounted because it's old technology - RS232 ports etc... Probably clearance. I think they've stopped making them. Even at that price they haven't sold any over the last 2 days.

There has not been any formal announcement about discontinuing the 8SE, though FLO no longer stock the SE range and other suppliers are out of stock.  It is still shown at Celestron.com.  I think the latest handsets have a USB connection rather than RS-232.   Old technology or not, it still looks a good buy at the discounted price.  The Evolution (a better outfit) is a lot more expensive. The SE handsets can be swapped (I proved that a Nexstar, Nexstar+ and Starsense handset all work.)

[Seanelly]

Since viewing is the priority, I'm with anyone else here suggesting a 6"-8" dob. I've owned (and used) a 10" for twenty years, and my daughter at 8yrs old was using it easily (once I set it up) after only a few evenings, getting the nudging perfected in no time. None of these scopes would be too big for your son to get used to (maybe with a small step-stool on occassion), they are a great bang for the buck, and they are the simplest to use, with no boring waiting around for set-up (most kids today have even shorter attention spans than they used to). Caring for them is easier than you might think, and collimating is a breeze once you've actively puttered around with the mirrors a few times to see how everything works. 

[ABGD]

Well, an update is in order, I think.

My heart was set on the Skywatcher 180 but at the last moment I swerved and bought an ex-demonstration Skywatcher Maksutov-Newtonian 190 with a second hand AZ-EQ5. My reasoning was that it would give better deep sky views and still have some of the contrast of a Mak design.

I also bought a titchy 90mm mak for £50 and a manual £20 EQ2 mount which I adapted to fit the telescope and a camera tripod I had lying around. I then took it to Canberra in Australia this summer where some of my family lives.

I also bought a Televue Ethos 13, Baader Hyperion zoom and some cheap 2.5mm and 4mm plossls.

The weather has not been kind to stargazers recently but I have snatched what I consider to be quite fine views of Jupiter and Saturn, with colour, bands and the spot in Jupiter clearly visible. I haven't really enough experience to know how good my views were, but I am happy. I suspect the seeing was quite poor so I am hoping for even better later in the year.

In Australia the weather was much better and I managed to catch the Jewel cluster and Ptolemy's cluster and the moon, Jupiter and Saturn but not much else. I quite enjoyed my constellation chasing but I have to admit that the guided mount makes it much easier to find things, particularly as I don't live in a dark sky site.

Something I hadn't considered: it also makes it far easier to show other people what you are looking at as there is much less time spent faffing, and the targets are not constantly moving away from the eyepiece. Admittedly a motorised equatorial mount would take care of the last point. My lodger had an outside birthday party on the one clear night so far, and many of his guests seemed thrilled when I set it up and we saw Jupiter and Saturn. Several had skysafari or similar on their phones, but hadn't ever looked through a telescope.

I am also very pleased I opted for the AZEQ5 rather than a purely equatorial mount. It's easier to set up in AZ mode and I may yet buy a little telescope to fit on the other side of it. That had been my initial plan for the 90mm but it was left in Canberra. The one drawback of the Mak-Newtownian is that my son can't look into it easily.

On the small telescope I loved the zoom eyepiece as when you are searching for things it really helps to be able to zoom in and out. However with the AZEQ mount I find the Televue views noticeably better and I found myself using it much more than the zoom. I used to take a lot of photographs so sadly have already developed an appreciation for expensive glass.

I hope it doesn't seem that I have ignored advice given. Perhaps I would have done better with a simple Dobsonian. But it was the advice on this thread that pushed me towards buying a less specialised 'scope. So I was listening. At least a bit.

Currently trying to decide on a wide angle eyepiece, though it may not arrive for a while as I have already spent more than budgeted... But I think it was worth it.

In the longer term I am thinking of getting into timing occultations. Coming from a (non-astronomical) scientific background I rather enjoy endeavours that make some kind of wider contribution and that strikes me as something that is both accessible and has not yet been eclipsed by Hubble and the superscopes.