Very new, going to purchase a telescope soon

[paulanthony]

Hi all,

My name is Paul, and I'm from London. First, I'm pleased to have found this forum. There's a wealth of information here, so I'm going to be doing a lot of reading.

I'm going to be saving up for a telescope. I'd like to get into astrophotography. I'm wanting to spend quite a bit of money, as I'd like to own this telescope for many years, and I'd like to seriously get into amateur astronomy.

I've been looking at the Meade LX200, and it seems to have some really amazing features. I'm setting my budget at £3,000, and I'd like to get your guys' recommendations.

I'll already have a DSLR, so maybe that can account for something. I'd love to take images of planets, and stars, and the moon, and in general observe the sky, and learn more about it.

Thanks a lot for your help, and I look forward to my time here.

[PhillyDee]

Welcome to SGL!

There are a lot of very experienced astrophotographers in here, just take a look in the imaging forums! What DSLR do you have? There are adapters to fit whatever brand of camera you have. I take it you are in deepest brightest london . . . in that case, do you have transport, and can you drive somewhere nice and dark? In/near cities the light pollution is very bad!

Anyway, Ive no doubt someone will come on and either let you know the best way to spend all your ££££, or they will recommend buying a £300/400 one to find out if this is the hobby you want!

I recommend these sites for weather:

www.met-check.com

www.metoffice.gov.uk

and some nice cloud images satellite images

SAT24.com, Satellite Weather Europe. Watch the Clouds and Sun over Europe

[The Warthog]

Take your time, as £3,000 is a lot to spend to find that you don't like spending hours outside, or to be frustrated because of light pollution and weather, or to wish you'd bought the other scope. I'm sure someone around London will put on a public display from time to time, and you can have a look and talk firsthad with the people who know the equipment.

[paulanthony]

Thank you very much for the advice guys. Yes, I won't just dive in and start throwing money about - I know I have a lot to learn, and I'm going to take my time. But if I'm able to take pictures half as good as some of the ones I've seen on this forum, I can't imagine I wouldn't love this hobby.

[Psychobilly]

Hi Paul,

Welcome to the forum... the LX200's are nice scopes but their long focal length can make imaging challenging requiring accurate alignment and tracking... The Field derotator can help with the field rotation you would otherwise get when using an Alt/AZ mounted scope for imaging...

Ideally you would want to mount the scope on an wedge to effectively "equatorially" mount the scope .. this is an expensive "add-on" and should be budgeted in if you ever want to get into longer exposure astrophotography.

You will also probably want to think about the additional hardware required to get an autoguided setup up and running - pretty much essential for imaging at long focal lengths - Rail and rings to mount the second guide scope and probably a counterweight system to keep the mount happy... all these "extras" eat into the budget...

I went for an Alt/Az mounted "scope" and have had to "make" a load of what would otherwise be very expensive add-ons for it to use it for long exposure astrophotography...

I would seriously consider looking at a reasonable GEM mount (EQ-6) and seperate OTA as this will be far more flexible setup... given the time again thats what I would do...

Peter....

[SteveL]

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter's comment about starting off with an EQ based mount if you intend to do any deep sky imaging in the future. Unless you are planning to build an observatory to store all the kit in, an EQ mount would be the way I would go if I had to start again. Also, an EQ mount will give you far more flexibility to upgrade and add/change scopes as required, depending on your targets for the night.

(In fact thats what I have done, gone from a wedge mounted Nexstar 8 GPS to a EQ6 plus a choice of OTAs to fit on it)