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telescope advice please


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Hi Cstring and welcome to SGL. :D

How old is your lad? and what sort of budget did you have in mind? A basic starter scope that isn't a toy would be around £130 - £150 brand new (s/h about 2/3 of that price).

But it all depends on what you want to do with it and what features are desireable or a must for you.

Cheers

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My son is very eager for a new telescope.

Brantuk gave some clues, but you montion your son wants a new scope... do you already have one? Wich?

And do you already own something very simple as binoculars? This's the best to star with.

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My 12 year old is enjoying his 6" Newtonian on an AltAz mount. Very easy to use, no twisting the tube, eyepiece is always in a good position. But lately he has become very fond of my dobsonian and indicated he prefers to use that. The dobsonian is a very basic design again and extremely easy to use.

I bought an EQ5 equatorial mount with dual drives as i thought Harry may like the object to be tracked. But he has a deep disliking for the EQ mount. Says it too awkward to use.....which i agree with.

Something like the Skywatcher Skyliner 200P dobsonian could well be the scope for you both. Slightly over budget at £269 but well worth it.

This is the scope i put together for Harry. It cost a total of £130 but i got very lucky with the secondhand market:

post-12650-133877492465_thumb.jpg

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i have seen a zenith 8" newtonian reflector for £189.99 are they any good and would i be able to use it straight out of the box. going into this a bit blind. His grandfather purchased the last one for him.

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i have seen a zenith 8" newtonian reflector for £189.99 are they any good and would i be able to use it straight out of the box. going into this a bit blind. His grandfather purchased the last one for him.

My advise would be to avoid all telescopes sold on ebay under the brand names Seben, Event Horizon, Sylvan, Optrons, Zenith, Ovilion, the white reflector, the black reflector and any other newtonian telescope with a specification of D=150 F=1400.

Peter

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Probably one of the makes to avoid (going by posts on other forums). Other makes to avoid would be Seben, Big Boss, Arena, Optrons etc. Stick with well known brands like Skywatcher. Meade, Celestron.

You'll get a very nice scope for your budget - check out FLO (link at top of page) for a good assortment of dobsonian and equatorial mounted newtonian reflectors. Leave a bit of budget for collimation tools, eye pieces, barlows and other essentials you are bound to need. :D

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You could get something like this Reflectors - Skywatcher Explorer 130P SynScan AZ GOTO

A reasonable sized scope, GoTo in case you cant find stuff (be aware GoTo isnt plug and play like your DVD plater - you still have to work stuff out).

Of you could go fully manual if you have time on your hands and can spend time finding things in which case go for bigger aperture and get something like this

Dobsonians - Skywatcher Skyliner 200P Dobsonian

There are various things to bear in mind with any telescope. To sabve me typing it up heres a link to a guide I wrote some time ago which may help your thinking on this.

So you want to buy a telescope ? - Part 1

The biggest issue here is your son. Either of the two scopes I mentioned would be a vast jump on the current scope but children are each very unique. My eldest needs an instant fix - ie stuff has to go quick as he doenst have much patience so if I were buying for him I'd get GoTo because he's be bored standing around waiting for me to find stuff and bored even quicker if he had to find it.

My youngest is very studious and patient (relatively) and wouldn't worry about stuff taking time. He loves to mess about with his chemistry set and so forth so for him something more manual would be better. He is however careless so I would get him a refractor rather than a reflector.

As I say - much depends on your child - they are all unique personalities.

One last word - most of tis kit is much larger than you may imagine from seeing it online. Take care to measure stuff and get a good understanding of its size and weight.

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Anything worth having in a refractor is gonna cost around £300 for the ota alone - no mount, tripod, finder, ep's etc. Glass optics are very expensive compared to mirrors. You could try "used" - you might get a bit more for your money :D

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Great advice from all. I opted for a Celestron 102mm spotting scope. Admittedly there are times I wish I had a more powerful scope but by fixing my camera on the end it's a great wildlife scope as well.

The thing I like about the spotting scope is it's wide angle, which makes it slightly easier to find things.

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Well if you upped the budget and got lucky you might find a TAL 100R going for around the £160 mark complete with its mount and some pretty decent EPs - they do come up periodically and that would be the best I could see you getting as a refractor.

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many thanks i am going to order the skywatcher from the referance which I received. I will keep you informed to how it is. Once again many thanks for guiding me in the right direction. I hope he likes it for Xmas.

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