Are Certain Brands Better Than Others

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

18 minutes ago, mikeyjm26 said:

My bad. I agree with buying from a known source especially since it is a lot of money. I have been in talks with FLO about a telescope and they have suggested a AZ Gti, Astro Fi and a refractor. However from my limited knowledge I don't think any of them will be great for DSO's but I could be wrong.

It's possible to get a good view of several DSOs including open and globular clusters, nebulae and brighter galaxies with the smaller end of scopes. For instance my 120mm refractor has given me wow moments from a camp site and whereas at my urban home, I can find several DSOs but they're often of the grey smudge variety.

A lot depends on your sky quality. Are you living in a city/town, urban, suburban, suburban/rural border or rural?

[FLO]

23 minutes ago, mikeyjm26 said:

My bad. I agree with buying from a known source especially since it is a lot of money. I have been in talks with FLO about a telescope and they have suggested a AZ Gti, Astro Fi and a refractor. However from my limited knowledge I don't think any of them will be great for DSO's but I could be wrong.

I see you first started your conversation with my colleague, Ian, saying you wanted something portable that doesn't take long to set up. His suggestions were based on that and your budget, which you later doubled. I don't think you mentioned your preference for deep-sky until only this evening. After we had closed. I will let Ian know when we reopen. 

HTH, 

Steve 

[mikeyjm26]

36 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

It's possible to get a good view of several DSOs including open and globular clusters, nebulae and brighter galaxies with the smaller end of scopes. For instance my 120mm refractor has given me wow moments from a camp site and whereas at my urban home, I can find several DSOs but they're often of the grey smudge variety.

A lot depends on your sky quality. Are you living in a city/town, urban, suburban, suburban/rural border or rural?

I stay on the outskirts of a small town and relatively quite close to the countryside.

34 minutes ago, FLO said:

I see you first started your conversation with my colleague, Ian, saying you wanted something portable that doesn't take long to set up. His suggestions were based on that and your budget, which you later doubled. I don't think you mentioned your preference for deep-sky until only this evening. After we had closed. I will let Ian know when we reopen. 

HTH, 

Steve 

Hi Steve, yes that is correct. Ian has been great and yes I probably was not clear on what I wanted to hopefully achieve since I was unsure as to what some telescopes are capable of. Apologies for that.