Need telescope advice???

[liamsantini]

Hello everyone, I have a department store 76mm reflector telescope, and to be honest, I want to upgrade. But to what? I love looking at the planets, and the moon, but want to have the advantage of planets and deep space, I also have a solar system camera for snap shots!

My budget is £400, what would you recommend ?

I would like Go-To, to see amazing views of Jupiter and really good views of deep space! Is this possible for £400?

[brianb]

Well my "best buy" at £400 would be the Skywatcher 150PL / EQ3-2 plus optional motor drives ... but £400 won't stretch to full "goto" which will start at around £550.

[Parus major]

You can get a 150PL and motor drives at FLO for £330 at the minute and you'd want to add a polar scope for £32. Excellent scope with a few good extras and under budget.

[rowan46]

hi welcome to sgl, unfortunately there isnt a scope thats great for everything but there are good compromises. the usual adage is to spend your money on the optics as thats what you see with. however a goto is good if light pollution is bad. you don't need go to for jupiter or saturn threy are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye and with a very small amount of research are easy to pick out.dso's are a different proposition however they can be tricky to find so goto is useful. unfortunately goto is expensive and at the entry level takes up much of the price of your scope. leaving the problem of finding an object. but having optics too small to see . so with that in mind here is a couple of scopes some goto some not

Maksutov - Skywatcher Skymax 102 SynScan AZ GOTO A nice little scope for planets ok for clusters an double stars

Maksutov - Skywatcher Skymax 127 SynScan AZ GOTO A better scope but at this size it has a reputation for being a little wobbly on this mount. excellent on brighter objects but has a narrow field of view

Reflectors - Skywatcher Explorer 130P SynScan AZ GOTO a good scope on a goto mount again a little wobbly on this mount but better for dso's but its not as good at taking magnification so not quite as good on planets

Reflectors - Skywatcher Explorer 200P EQ5 A big scope on a big mount it will show you most anything you want to see but its not on goto so you have to find it yourself

Dobsonians - Skywatcher Skyliner 200P Dobsonian this is the same 8inch scope but on a cheaper dob base an excellent scope but again you have to find your target yourself

if it was me and i was viewing from my back garden I would go for the dob as its most cost effective. if at some point i wanted to put a camera on i would choose the one with the eq5 if however my view of the sky was really bad due to light pollution I would choose the 127 mak goto

[liamsantini]

Wow, didn't know I would get this many replys, thank you so much guys.

You have given me a lot of thought now, and am a bit confused?

I'm gonna sound stupid now, but what is motor drive? Do I need my laptop to use it?

I've just found this one, Sky-Watcher SkyMax-127 SupaTrak Auto 5, (127mm) Motorised Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope (#128) - Warehouse Express

Is this the sort of telescope I should be looking at?

[Parus major]

A motor drive will automatically "keep up" with stars and planets as the earth turns, handy if someone next to you wants a look or if you can't be botjered to keep turning the control knob to bring it back into view. It doesn't use a computer. Dual axis means it's movement can is controlled with a box with direction buttons.