Good base equipment to build on

[dman]

Hi Everyone

 

I'm brand new to star gazing using a telescope, visited a few planetariums in the past and loved it, always wanted to get into it, and now I have the chance to do it.

I'm looking for a good base setup, a greatish telescope that I can add to later on and build up, so later addons would be like a goto/motor, more eye pieces, getting a t connector and a good camera to take photos with, and anything and everything else I'm starting to learn about like barrow lenses/colour lenses etc.

Photography isn't my main goal, it's just a nice to have to snap a photo every now and again.

The telescope should preferably be compatible with most after market addons, either the same brand or others.

I want to mostly view planets and moons, and some other deep objects, I can compromise between a narrow and wide FOV.

The telescopes I'm currently looking at is the following, but I'm not sure all of them can be motorized and get good other addons for.

Also the problem is I live in South Africa, so the available options are limited in what I can get my hands on, we don't have the super large range that I see in the US/UK, and shipping from the US/UK on a telescope to South Africa is not really an option, smaller items are shippabl

Sky-Watcher 200mm (8") F/1200 Parabolic Truss-Tube Dobsonian, not sure how the gap between the two piece of it works or the drawbacks are.

Sky-Watcher SK15075PEQ3-2 Reflector Telescope

Sky-Watcher 130mm f/650 motorized Reflector (Black Diamond)

Sky-Watcher 8" Dobsonian Telescope with Tension Control, or maybe the 10", this looks to me like the best bet, not sure if you can add a goto unit to this one ?

Or the Orion Skyquest xt8 classic with crayford style focusser for a little bit more expensive, but it looks better all round

Starsense explorer 114az Nice features, but seems limited

CELESTRON ASTRO FI 130 NEWTONINAN TELESCOPE -> Seems very nice, is struggling to find a retailer in SA, and is a little over my budget

 

Any advice would be much appreciated or other recommendations, or pointing me in a direction.

 

Thank you very much,

 

Dewald

 

 

 

[happy-kat]

Welcome

If you are into DIY then you might make what is called an Equatorial Platform for a dobsonian mounted telescope to sit on, as you had realised you can't add motors to that sort of mounted telescope directly.

Will you be storing the telescope near to where you'll observe and are there stairs involved. Telescopes and the mounts can be quite big, heavy or awkward to carry.

[dman]

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

Welcome

If you are into DIY then you might make what is called an Equatorial Platform for a dobsonian mounted telescope to sit on, as you had realised you can't add motors to that sort of mounted telescope directly.

Will you be storing the telescope near to where you'll observe and are there stairs involved. Telescopes and the mounts can be quite big, heavy or awkward to carry.

Just googled "Equatorial Platform", and if I go for the dobsonian style then I'll definitely will be building one over the holidays now.

And I won't be carrying the telescope around to much, from here it will be stored to where I will use it is a few meters out the garage door, so being heavy won't be an issue.

 

The more research I'm doing the more confused or indecisive I am about a dobsonian or a EQ3 type of style

[M40]

Hello and welcome. The Dobsonian's are an excellent telescope being very easy to use more or less straight out of the box. They can be heavy (why I stopped using mine) and are large to store but if you are keeping it in your garage you have the best of all worlds in that it's close to where your setup is and it's already acclimatised. 

Enjoy

[KP82]

2 hours ago, dman said:

Just googled "Equatorial Platform", and if I go for the dobsonian style then I'll definitely will be building one over the holidays now.

And I won't be carrying the telescope around to much, from here it will be stored to where I will use it is a few meters out the garage door, so being heavy won't be an issue.

 

The more research I'm doing the more confused or indecisive I am about a dobsonian or a EQ3 type of style

If you're handy in carpentry, why not build the dobsonian mount yourself? If you can do that, a SW 200PDS OTA will be all you need to start off with visual first. Later on you can buy a proper motorised EQ mount and put the OTA on top of it to start taking pictures. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

Most of us upgrade by buying further telescopes or mounts.  If however you want an upgrade path from manual > motorised > GoTo, you should buy an Eq3-2 or Eq-5 mount.  A 200mm f6 Newtonian really needs, in terms of equatorial mounts, a HEQ6, which is somewhat expensive. The upgrade path from manual Dob to GoTo Dob is to dispose of it and buy the GoTo version.

I am not familiar with the equatorial platform, but the question has to be asked: if it's such a great idea, why does everybody not use one or why is it not a standard upgrade?