What equipment got you into astronomy?

[badhex]

My Granddad's Charles Frank 6" Newt (I suspect maybe one of the kits), on a very heavy but sturdy cast mount and military tripod, modified with an AC motor clock drive. When I was a young lad in the late eighties I used to pester him to set it up and show me Jupiter, Saturn, the Orion nebula and other showpiece objects. 

He gave it to me about 10-15 years ago and after realuminising the mirror, it's still in working order. 

Edited November 25, 2021 by badhex

[KP82]

A Tasco #302675 60mm f/15. It was and still is pretty good, definitely not as bad as most people say about department store telescopes. I replaced the plastic 0.965 focuser with an 1.25 one I found on aliexpress. With decent eyepieces the views of planets, open clusters and double stars are indistinguishable from other more expensive long achromats. The mount in its default EQ mode is rubbish but it can be raised to 90deg and used as an alt-az (like AZ-EQ5/6). It's been given to my son along with a RDF, a couple of plossl eyepieces and a diagonal for his school camping trips.

[callisto]

Tasco 60mm Frac (Christmas 1984)...😲 moment seeing Saturn for the first time (bottom picture)

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by callisto
change wording

[Skyline]

A Prinz 10x50 Binoculars.

[Rob63]

Tasco 40mm circa 1973 - came with a table top tripod

Good on the Moon but not much else.

 

[SuburbanMak]

1981 Tasco 4 VTE - 40mm inbuilt 15x - 50x.  
Wobbly, useless above 25x but gave memorable views of Jupiter’s moons, the Orion Nebula and the Moon. 

Edited November 25, 2021 by SuburbanMak

[IB20]

7 hours ago, callisto said:

Tasco 60mm Frac (Christmas 1984)...😲 moment seeing Saturn for the first time (bottom picture)

 

Was 525x pushing it a bit? 😅

[John]

This thread has more mentions of Tasco than any I've seen on SGL for many years !

[callisto]

1 hour ago, IB20 said:

Was 525x pushing it a bit? 😅

Just a bit Lol 🤣

If this had been the 90's it probably would have had Hubble images on the box 🤪

[Nyctimene]

German Hertel+Reuss 8x30 binoculars. Got them as a confirmation present 1966 (cost 165 DM, about an average week's salary at that time). First steps with them at the moon; a solar eclipse (observed in Sweden, projection method), easy DSO's and comets etc. Trusty companion during many travels; have seen the Southern Skies several times. Well kept, and still in use, due the excellent optics (H+R, Kassel, produced top-notch optics close to Leitz and even Zeiss, IMO).

Stephan

 

[Marvin Jenkins]

2 hours ago, John said:

This thread has more mentions of Tasco than any I've seen on SGL for many years !

Tasco, Tasco, Tasco,  three more and if you say them really fast one will appear😂

[refractor2345]

22 hours ago, Pixies said:

Mk 1 special:

That is the same for me! Looking at the moon through eyes, making out constellation, the good times!

[Boki Aristarh]

My first "serious" scope was Copitar small refractor 50/300 mm, made in Japan.

It was so long ago, 25 years or so... Lot of nights with it, watching Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Moon, Sun, brighter M, doubles....

In mean time telescope was lost, used as parts donator....

And as a strike of luck and fortune and find same one scope on some bargain sale, and of course I bought it...

Now it is mine FOREVER!

 

[Louis D]

4 hours ago, Boki Aristarh said:

My first "serious" scope was Copitar small refractor 50/300 mm, made in Japan.

It was so long ago, 25 years or so... Lot of nights with it, watching Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Moon, Sun, brighter M, doubles....

In mean time telescope was lost, used as parts donator....

And as a strike of luck and fortune and find same one scope on some bargain sale, and of course I bought it...

Now it is mine FOREVER!

 

I picked up a Chinese made copy of this scope, except it is 70mm/300mm, for about $25 brand new just as lock down started.  Interestingly, there's a ~35mm metal aperture stop just behind the objective lens and another 50% stop midway down the focuser tube.  I assume both were to improve the image quality by doubling the f-ratio.  I removed the objective stop by simply pushing it out after removing the lens cell and focuser.  I then made a 2" focuser from PVC plumbing parts.  Now, I've got a 70mm super finder when used with a 2" 40mm eyepiece like my Pentax XW or Meade 5000 SWA yielding 7.5x at 9.3 degrees TFOV.  Field curvature is high, so I use a spare TSFLAT2 ahead of the diagonal to good effect.  I find it ironic I'm putting about $700 of optical parts behind a $25 70mm objective.  But hey, I had them laying around for other purposes, so no biggie.

[Paul73]

I accidentally bought a Skywatcher 10” Dob off eBay quite late one night. I’d always wanted a telescope…..

Little did I know what that scope would show me!

Great thread. 

Paul

[900SL]

For me it wasn't equipment but location. 

I went out camping with some friends into the Saudi desert a few years ago. 

It was a new moon, and June, so hot as hell. The Milky Way core was up in a (as I now know) bortle 2 location. 

Simply stunning. Diamond strewn velvet carpet overhead. That got me interested in Milky Way photography, then tracking, then DSO.

What gets me excited these days is my Fornax LT2. It just tracks, accurately. Removing frustrations from this hobby makes it much more enjoyable

[Taff]

My equipment was a pair of 10X50's Tasco binoculars for Christmas 1972, and i saw the craters' on the Moon for the first time. Mark

[DaveS]

Good old (Or more importantly *young*) mk1 eyeball, from a very early age (Certainly in single figures), then a pair of 8x30 bins (Which I still have somewhere), an ill-advised zoom spotting 'scope and the inevitable 60 mm 'frac, a Prinz 550 from Dixons., which I still have. Way back then even in London the milky way was visible at night, before we became obsessed with turning night into day

Couldn't afford anything bigger, so bought a 6" mirror set and some bits from Brunnings and built a 'scope with a mount built by dad using some taper roller bearings. Eventually I built an 8" f/8 Newt from wood, which went through various iterations. I still have the mirrors but the structure is long gone in a house move.

There was then a long hiatus before I bought my next 'scope, the Megrez 90 in my sig and HEQ5 from FLO.

[Concordia000]

My eyeballs. Being under starry sky the first time is magical. As I automated more and more of my setup I often miss the good ol’ days of having nothing but just a planisphere and my eyes. And of course I missed the days when I wasn’t as nearsighted as I am now…

Equipment-wise, I wouldn’t say my first scope which is a Celestron C5 on a CG-4 was a great scope. My first look through a telescope was an 80mm long FL achro, and my best look through a scope probably either came from a 4” Tak, my current NP-101, a 6” Newt, or a C8. My C5 was *good* and it went to places with me, but it never was the views never really impressed me.

That said, I do miss it from time to time given how light and compact it was…

[Luke]

It was this one:

My view through it was rubbish, but then I put the eye patch on my other eye and got much better contrast. I was able to locate Polaris thanks to the compass.

Ahem, it was actually a super cheap reflector from Jessops, 76mm I think. The view of the moon blew me away. I remember thinking about how expensive some of the gear was in the early days. There were people who spent hundreds on a single eyepiece! Never imagining one day we'd buy a 21mm Ethos! It's funny how your sense of expensive can change radically when you get into a hobby, if funds allow!

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by Luke

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Visiting the local society's observatory and looking into a Meade 12" LX200... I got to observe Uranus and a spiral galaxy. Immediately hooked, a few months later a Skywatcher 130P was delivered and I've been skint ever since!

[TerraC]

As a child an unbranded kids Halley's Comet telescope in 1986.  Couldn't see a damn thing with it, it was useless junk.   It got me looking up though and then using binoculars which were infinitely better. 

 

 

[StarryEyed]

22 hours ago, Luke said:

It was this one:

 

 

You'll need a bigger one than that.  Arrrrrrr. 

 

[Andrew_B]

My first ever view of Saturn was through an 1869 6" Cooke refractor shown in the photo below (sadly I'm not the dapper gentleman in the image!). It's an amazing feeling to look through even a small scope and see detail on another world with your own eye rather than just looking at photos from professional observatories or space probes.

 

[L8-Nite]

For me, it was a small unmarked used refractor that my Dad got for me at a Sears store parking garage sale back in 1965. Had some parts missing, but my Dad made it useable. As my interest evolved I got the 4" Pencrest reflector in the following photo.  Several years ago I gave it to the daughter of a close friend.