telescope budget £600- observing the planets

[asiadra]

Hi ,

So I am looking for telescope which is suitable for observing planets with possibility to take photographs of the moon and planets.

I would love something portable ,not too heavy with good optics.

I was looking through William Optics telescopes and they are lovely for astrophotography but probably not suitable to see planets?

I can see that app series are probably good if it comes to taking images of the moon ,planets etc..

Will be grateful for any advice.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

This is a fairly specific requirement, and one not too dificult to fill. However I should point out that observing the moon and planets may not occupy you for much of your observing time, as the accessibility of these objects varies, so you should consider how you would use the telescope on other objects.

This also affects your choice of mount, as if all you want to do is the Moon and planets, a driven equatorial mount will suffice, whereas if you want to use the scope for general observing, you could consider a GoTo mount that will enable you to find faint and non-obvious objects. You don't need an equatorial GoTo mount for viewing, or planetary imaging.

For a planetary scope you want a large aperture, especially if you have imaging in mind.   You should look at Newtonian reflectors, in particular the long focus f8 variants.  With a larger budget, look at Maksutovs and SCTs (as used by almost all serious planetary imagers) as they are compact for their aperture and have a large depth of focus useful for accomodating imaging accessories such as flip mirrors.  Wiith an unmodified Newtonian you can have difficulty even getting a camera to focus.

I suggest looking at an aperture of at least 6 inches, more if you can afford it, e.g via a used instrument.

[KP82]

For £600, Celestron NexStar 6 SLT should fit your bill for planetary and lunar imaging:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/slt-series/celestron-nexstar-6-slt.html

 

Planetary imaging is normally done by capturing a video sequence of the target and then stack the individual frames in software to produce the final result. Since the Celestron comes with an alt-az mount, there will be field rotation. So you need to limit the length of your video sequence.

[vlaiv]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

Good advice already given.

I would say that best visual planetary telescope that we could still call portable is this one:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-200p-dobsonian.html

It would be a good idea to either be more specific in that "Want to take pictures of the moon and planets" part or drop idea of photography altogether. It is really very different / demanding field and if you are serious about it - good planetary camera and laptop will eat your budget alone. In any case - it would be a good idea to inform yourself of what lunar and planetary photography is all about - shooting techniques, gear needed and processing.

Another vague point is "portable". I would call 8" dobsonian portable telescope in more ways than one - I transported it to dark site in my car with ease. I carry it around my back yard small distances assembled.

It takes only two trips to take it from my basement out in my back yard - one carrying dobsonian mount and other carrying OTA. Neither requires great effort.

On the other hand - there are people that really mean grab'n'go type setup that you can just pick up assembled in one hand and carry it longer distances with ease, or pack everything down into a smallish bag that fits car boot with room to spare.

What sort of portable do you have in mind?

 

 

[Geoff Lister]

The Moon, Venus, Jupiter & Saturn, can, under good viewing conditions, be enjoyed with almost any telescope setup. With a tracking mount, you can take videos with a modified 640x480 webcam, and generate some reasonable stills. If the optical tube has an aperture of over 5", and the mount has GoTo, you should be able to locate and view Uranus & Neptune, as coloured disks.

This is my Skymax 127 with Synscan GoTo and Webcam, that I used in the south of France.

This is my UK setup for portable use

Geoff

 

[malc-c]

22 hours ago, asiadra said:

Hi ,

So I am looking for telescope which is suitable for observing planets with possibility to take photographs of the moon and planets.

I would love something portable ,not too heavy with good optics.

I was looking through William Optics telescopes and they are lovely for astrophotography but probably not suitable to see planets?

I can see that app series are probably good if it comes to taking images of the moon ,planets etc..

Will be grateful for any advice.

 

Welcome,

There is no one scope fits all due to the differences between visual observing and astro-imaging, and the requirements for viewing / imaging planets or faint deep sky objects such as nebula.  

• To view the planets in a fair resolution you need both aperture (ie large diameter) and long focal length (the distance from the lens or mirror that the image is formed.  For faint objects you need more aperture and a shorter focal length
• Taking pictures of planets is typically done using video cameras and then stacking the individual frames to produce a still.  So the mount isn't that critical. An alt/az mount like that shown in geoffs post is fine.  Taking images of faint objects requires longer single exposures, so the mount has to track the target and not have it rotate in the field of view, so an equatorial mount is needed.  In order to take the weight of the scope and any additional guidescopes a larger mount is needed, and thus the price increases
• Both mounts have advantages and disadvantages....

 

If your goal is to take images of the planets then something like the scope in Geoffs post would tick a lot of your boxes.