Selecting a Telescope

[omni revz]

New to this scene have been doing research yet can't really get a good mental compare on image quality vs. price even with having watched many videos and plenty of Google searches and reading.

can anyone give me the breakdown/ is there anything "better" than the Celestron NexStar 8SE though cheaper?

Edited March 22 by omni revz

[Ratlet]

What do you think you will look at mostly? 

Are you thinking visual or imaging?

What is your light pollution like?  Or what is it like where you will observe?

Telescopes are like tools, different scopes do different things better.

[omni revz]

Border of Canada for location. Found a Orion XT10 for cheap at my American Science and Surplus near here though hear people regretting them ? Looking into the CCD cameras and am now wondering if I can pop it on a XT10 and buy cheap startracker of some kind.

Aiming @ deep space start off at Orion Nebula then work on building focusing skills depending on what I get and such for planet photos, I see these decent photos of nebulas then janky fuzzy planets on same telescope so assuming thats a different person same search issue. Seen the Esprit 150 with Trius 814 looking golden though thats a 10.000 $$$ rig started looking into modified digital camera with star trackers at this time until I have the $$$$ to do something more real and am depending on what info here I can get to continue from using such a set-up cause thats probably whats going to happen starting this week, have not seen any moon photos with the digital camera mod ill look into that now.

Let Me know what You think cause at this time I have about $600 which is the price of that XT10 though from what I have heard such as being said difficult to track objects and will save more cash to throw down on what can be suggested.

 

[happy-kat]

Hi. Where the telescope is stored to observing location can be a consideration particularly if it's far, heavy and includes stairs as a more portable telescope may be more likely to be used in that situation.

[Elp]

You haven't specified a budget.

Note, you'll have to spend more on the tripod+mount than the optics, it's the most important part of the setup, especially if you're looking to do deep sky imaging.

[Elp]

I wouldn't recommend a C8 to start with. Look to a shorter focal length, either camera lens or apo refractor on a good equatorial mount and tripod.

[Cosmic Geoff]

I think that you need a clearer plan before buying. It appears that you are interested in imaging rather than visual.  Be clear that some telescopes are not well suited to imaging because of the way they are mounted.  This includes the Celestron C8 SE and any Dobsonian mounted scope.

If you want to image, the possibilities are (in ascending cost)

a fixed digital camera (DSLR),

a DSLR on a star tracker mount (for widefield shots)

a small refracting telescope on GoTo mount, and CMOS astro camera (for EEVA, see other thread in this forum),

a small refracting  telescope on equatorial GoTo mount, with DSLR or CMOS astro camera, and autoguide, for medium field deep sky imaging, 

Various larger aperture telescopes, e.g. a SCT with focal reducer, equatorial GoTo mount, autogulde, CMOS camera or DSLR, for imaging small galaxies etc.

Lunar and planetary imaging requires a different approach. The bigger the telescope and the more  sophisticated the mount, the more satisfying the results are likely to be. You require a dedicated planetary astro camera, and take short videos (see 'lucky imaging' technique).  The telescope in this case will be the same as what you would use for visual observing of planets.

I almost forgot the Seestar S50. If you buy one of these highly automated devices, it will do the whole imaging thing for you.  To get a rig that outperforms it, you would have to spend a lot more money.  The only caveat is that with its short focal length it is not much good for planetary imaging.

Edited March 22 by Cosmic Geoff
Seestar

[ollypenrice]

One scope cannot do everything and a good beginner visual setup is likely to be totally different from a good beginner photographic one.  Narrow down your objectives and priorities.

Olly