What telescope and how far can you see?

[Gem]

Thanks everyone for all of your advice, I can't wait to purchase my firt telescope and will let you know how my stargazing goes, just need to get a book so that I know how to find the planets etc!

[John]

Thanks everyone for all of your advice, I can't wait to purchase my firt telescope and will let you know how my stargazing goes, just need to get a book so that I know how to find the planets etc!

Try this software - its free !!:

Stellarium

John

[Capricorn]

First scope always gets lots of alternatives.

Small refractor is good as they are pretty robust and easily transported. Short ones will suffer from chromatic abberations.

Small reflector again good, usually for the same cost bigger then a refractor. May need collimating at times, generally seem to be a little less robust. Short ones will have some coma.

Dob (actually a newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount) simple scope where the main cost is in the mirror. Mirror is bigger (usually) so less transportable, will need collimating more often and a bigger mirror needs time to get to thermal equilibrium.

Goto, generally small (ish) scope that once aligned will point the scope to the object (not perfectly). Advantage is that it has a database and they usually come with tripod and the motors mean it is easy to move the scope when looking. You in effect pay up front for the motors and database, but it is a scope in a box and is usually a complete system as in unpack and go.

Most scopes need a mount (Dobs and Goto usually have), so when looking at cost factor this in. A £200 scope cannot be handheld. Motors on an EQ3 cost ~£100 if you want them - not necessary if you want to manually twiddle the bits.

[dark knight]

Turn Left At Orion is a good book..

[Milamber]

I couldn't resist this

"On a clear night... you can see forever.."

Or this...

Man walks into the doctors and says

"Doctor, my eyes are starting to go... I have trouble see distant objects..."

Doctor says

"Go to the window, look out and up and tell me what's there."

Man does as he is told and says

"All I can see right now is the Sun Doc..."

Doctor says

"So... just how much further do you want to see?"

Arthur

PS - my advice - don't buy cheap, try before you buy (local AS), don't expect published picture quality views, don't expect to find *anything* for a few nights until you get used to things.

[coolcolour]

Bear in mind that GoTo mounts are expensive and if you have a limited budget and buy a GoTo mount you will inevitably get a smaller telescope.

The GoTo system may have 40,000 objects in the database but the chances are that you won't get to see all that many of them because of the limited aperture at your disposal. Not only that but you'll have to align it manually and if you don't do that properly, it'll be very disappointing.

Have a look at some of the sites around for used astro equipment, my binos and scope are both second hand and for an outlay of just over three hundred quid I have some quality kit that provides for some breathtaking sights.

[Astro_Baby]

Gem, there are some real issues here. Some of them have been pointed out already. Sorry this is a longish post.

I'm mindful of your other post where you say you want to explore with your infant son. Now obviously until he's at least 5 thats probably always going to be a problem. Children have a great deal of difficulty with telescope eyepieces as a general rule.

Beyond that there are two broad options here;

1/ Get a small GoTo, let the scope do the work and you can just sit back. The pros to this are its relatively fast and will help prevent a child getting bored while you search for things. The downside is most small GoTos are just that 'small'. They may have an object database with a zillion objects but you'll only be able to see a tiny handful of them. In truth even a big scope probably cant see all 40,000.

So the upsides of GoTo are its fast, the scope will track for you so you arent constantly having to nudge it about. The downside is that its a bit limited on what it can see. YOu'll still need to set it up and if your a complete beginner I'd suggest, if you go this route, get something from Celestron. Their GoTo system is a bit more refined and better suited for a beginner in my opinion.

A GoTo may be best if you have limted time available while baby is asleep.

2/ Get a larger Dobsonian style scope. The upside is its simple, nothing to go wrong and will give you the biggest bang for the buck in terms of seeing stuff BUT there is a downside. You'll have to find it first. Children get bored quite quick and if the child is made to stand and wait while you potter about they can easily get fed up. Fed up children are not good. Either for them or for you.

Now the GoTo non-GoTo is a real tough one to resolve. I have seen another mum on here buy GoTo to explore with her daughters only to get fed up that theres nothing to do - press a few buttons and let the scope do the work. Take a look - press some more buttons etc BUT I have also seen beginners buy a non-GoTo scope only to get fed up that they cant find anything. Most beginners are amazed at how tough some objects are to find. More so if you have limited time to get to know the sky well enough.

I haven't mentioned EQ style mounts because if your toting a small child these will probably be problematic and at your level of budget there would only be a few scopes available. Admitted one of them is the Sky-Watcher 130 which lots of people start with but I really wonder if it would be right for you with a young child.

That leads me on to portability.

You dont say whether you have a backyard/garden or whether you will need to travel to observe. Either way portability and size could be an issue for you. I know the amount of kit my kids neded when they were small (changing bag, wet wipes, spare nappies, cream, plasters, bottles, etc etc etc) they only need slightly less stuff now they are 11 and 16. So size, storage and portability should also play a part. Take a look at some scopes first because often they are MUCH bigger than you may think looking at a picture.

Depending on your abaility to 'hide' stuff you may also want to consider robustness. My kids were forever pouring milkshakes into amplifiers, posting lego bricks into video recorders etc. Any kind of scope would have had to have been considered as 'held at risk' and in fact my old refelector stayed under the bed for years and just rusted away until it was thrown out due to lack of space.

As to how far you can see - well even with your naked eyes you are seeing objects many lightyears away.

A scope will make some of them brighter and even a small scope will bring stuff like star cluters into view - things which are only smokey indistinct patches will resolve into star clusters but even a big scope wont show anything like the pictures you see on web pages.

Most stuff will be smoky patches in space - there are some wow things to look at like the Orion nebula but mostly your looking at very subtle things. The thrill is in seeing stuff thats so far away rather than a technicolor 'experience'.

Planets - well I have an 8" scope, even at full power more distant planets like Neptune and Uranus are tiny blue dots. Pluto would look much like a star. Mars is a tiny pinkish blob for most of the time.

You'll see the rings of saturn and the cloudbelts of Jupiter. If you want an idea of what planets look like take a look HERE about halfway down the page there is an approximation of the view you would get with a 5" reflector. Thay are approximations of the view. In fact they were taken with a cheap digital camera and then airbrushed up so the scale is about right.

To maximise your cash you could look around on here for a 2nd hand bargain - they do come up but if buying 2nd hand be wary - someone on here will always jump in and advise if your unsure.

Avoid ebay like the plague - its too easy for a beginner to get caught out and end up buying a complete pup.

Bear in mind whatever you buy there will be invetiable extras, power supplies if you buy a GoTo, dewshields, moon filters, red light torch etc.

Anyway I hope that some help and if you want more advise just squawk and I am sure someone will answer you quite quick.

[The Warthog]

I don't have a lot to add to Astro-Babe's brilliant reply. (My son decided my VCR would make a great garage for his Hot Wheels.) But a Dobsonian telescope is probably your best option. Skywatcher makes an excellent 6" Dob which is still available. It is fairly easy to move around, and at f/8 makes a good planetary scope as well as a galaxy hunter. It will tolerate less expensive eyepieces, too. It comes with a decent pair of eps, and combined with some good guides would be excellent for getting to know the sky and for seeing some really interresting stuff.

That is, if the 8" that Daren suggested is beyond your budget...

[Capricorn]

Just come back from Warthog's neck of the woods. Took the train, 5 days, from Toronto to Vancouver.

Passed through one place that had 2 streetlights, passed through the next with 4 :eek:. Distance between the 2 places about 120 miles.

At 3-5am in the morning I could see things with the naked eye that I cannot see in a scope in the UK. Couldn't see anything else at all as it was too damn dark:D:D:D

Didn't sleep much at night, too busy looking at the sky.

[Sparrow]

I love this question - it's fascinated me since I first saw it. Perhaps it ought to be re-named - "how long ago can we see" - just brings home the vast distances we are looking at. Pinwhell Galaxy - 3 million light years away - I've been imaging something that is 3 million years old. It's just beyond what the brain can cope with sometimes.

[The Warthog]

Just come back from Warthog's neck of the woods. Took the train, 5 days, from Toronto to Vancouver.

Passed through one place that had 2 streetlights, passed through the next with 4 :eek:. Distance between the 2 places about 120 miles.

At 3-5am in the morning I could see things with the naked eye that I cannot see in a scope in the UK. Couldn't see anything else at all as it was too damn dark:D:D:D

Didn't sleep much at night, too busy looking at the sky.

And yet I live in one of the most LP areas of Canada. We took a drive from Edmonton to my home just south of Toronto last year. Unfortunately it was high summer, and the sky was bright until midnight.

[Talyn]

I have heard of people buying scopes from toy stores and being very disappointed!

Which is hardly surprising! Do NOT touch toy stores, department stores or Argos with a ten-foot bargepole for a serious astronomical telescope. Even high street camera stores are rarely any good. You want to canvas advice from forums such as this (which is what you are doing so you are off to a good start! ), as well as your local astronomy club or society.

I would suggest a six inch or eight inch scope to start with. You say you are interested in the planets, so a six inch f6 or f8 is an ideal starting place. If, however, you decide you want to get into deep sky observing, you will soon want something larger to see all those faint fuzzies.

Astronomers tend to think in terms of how faint, rather than how far we can see. There are some quasars we can see with smallish scopes, such as 3C 273 in Virgo, which is 2.5 billion light years away while you need much bigger scopes to see faint nebulae in our own galaxy. But it is still awesome to look at something so far off and realise that the light that left it, did so when life was just getting established on Earth.

[red dwalf]

Hi GEM,

welcome to the forum !

one thing to remember is the size is everything !

what i mean by that is the size of the mirror, the bigger the mirror the more you can see fainter objects, you can see galaxies with a 5" scope but they are faint smugges so with larger mirrors you grab more light making faint objects visable and preducing more detail in the objects, therefore to get the most for your money you are looking for a dobsonian scope, 8" or even a 10" second hand one and there`s nothing wrong with second hand dobs as there`s almost nothing to go wrong with them, also download Stellarium for your pc, it will show you what`s in the sky at the exact time of day you are viewing and help you to point your scope in the right direction.

good hunting

[Capricorn]

Sorry for the off-topic: You DROVE from Edmonton to S Toronto?

The train took 3 1/2 days.:eek:

Main view I had was north, that was where the compartment window faced. Covered the "glowing" emergency plaque and sat looking often at the plough and surroundings. The milky way was to the left and was spectacular. It was that which provided the small amount of light that was around.

The annoying thing is you realise that this is what the Greeks would have seen 2-3000 years ago. We haven't really advanced in some respects. A scope may pick out an object but fails to show the whole lot.

On the flight back Orion was visible, again in a dark sky so I could see more of that then previously. Also Aurora(?) present.

[Highflight]

Geared

Optical

Tube

Orientation.

Just something I was told a little while back.