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1 Birding scope and 2 general Astronomy scope


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I am a keen birder (and dragonflies) and have been looking to get a scope for wildlife including digiscoping. I am also starting on astronomy so far with naked eye and binoculars. This is great fun but I want to be able to see with greater magnification once I have got a rough idea of the night sky with the binos. I think that I'll get a Zeiss/Swarovski/Leica ~80mm scope with a zoom eyepiece & tripod for the wildlife. If I get senior management approval, I might also get a scope and mount for astronomy

Q1: Can the spotting scope be used for astronomy?

Q2: If I get the spotting scope, which Astro scope would be a good addition? I'm lucky. The budget on top of the spotter is up to £5k.

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The 80mm would work, it would be good on bright targets like planets and the moon. In astronomy aperture is king and with a £5k budget you could get an amazing scope but in reality you won't have to spend anywhere near that the Skywatcher Skyliner 200p Dobsonian telescope is a great scope with 8 inches of aperture it will give you excellent views of deep sky objects (DSO's) and you can complement it with some really excellent eyepieces if you so wish. You can easily go bigger with a 10" or a 12" right the way up to 20" but you get to a point where the scope is so big that it's not easy to use and something that is often quoted on here is 'the best scope is the one you use the most'. Bear in mind though that you will not see Hubble like images through a telescope no matter what your budget unless of course you get into astrophotography but that's a whole different ball game and one I know little about.

With a £5k budget sit back and watch us help spend your money for you :glasses1::D

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You can use a birder for astronomy but astronomical eyepieces are built for their job and change quickly and easily, giving wide wide fields for their focal lengths. One issue with birders at night is aiming them. They are an irregular shape and a nightmare to point! You really need to contrive some kind of finder or reflex sight on the mount, and a birder mount is not competent when aimed upwards. The balance tips to behind the pivot so an astro mount is to be preferred by a long way. Also the kind of birder aperture, 80mm maybe, is very small for visual astronomy and will only get you introductory views. And lastly a 45 degree erecting prism has a miniscule effect on image quality by day but is a big degrader of astronomical views. They are never used in astronomy because intense point sources like stars are a cruel test of the optical train. I don't know whether star diagonals (90 degree mirror based devices) are available for birders but I dare say they are. Essential!

OK, now five grand to spend on an astro scope, mount and eyepieces. Stop! This is an area in which you could spend a fortune on very inappropriate equipment. You need to do a lot of homework because that budget leads straight into a load of not very good gear if you are not careful. I am thinking in particular of large electronically controlled Schmidt Cassegrains which are worth considering but which have huge focal lengths which will not allow the viewing of the kind of extended objects which are often the most interesting and accessible. In short they have extreme tunnel vision and show you more and more of less and less.

Some questions:

Who is going to be looking at what in this instrument?

Is it for visual or photographic use? (Astro photography is very complicated, image capture takes many hours and processing the data takes many more, once you have learned how to do it. It bears no resemblance whatever to any kind of terrestrial photography and is mostly about the mount.)

I get the impression that you are buying for an institution, maybe a school?

If so, the best setup for you will not cost five grand.

Do you have a dark site?

Will the scope have to be portable?

We need to know a lot more before we can begin to disagree amongst ourselves on how to advise you! But it will be a pleasure...

(My background is in teaching and I now provide astronomy facilities for the public. That doesn't make me an expert...)

Olly

Edit; apologies to Chris. We crossed in the post but are going in very much the same direction. I would go bigger than 8 inches, though. i would go for 12 or 14 if portability is not an issue.

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You can use a birder for astronomy but astronomical eyepieces are built for their job and change quickly and easily, giving wide wide fields for their focal lengths. One issue with birders at night is aiming them. They are an irregular shape and a nightmare to point! You really need to contrive some kind of finder or reflex sight on the mount, and a birder mount is not competent when aimed upwards. The balance tips to behind the pivot so an astro mount is to be preferred by a long way. Also the kind of birder aperture, 80mm maybe, is very small for visual astronomy and will only get you introductory views. And lastly a 45 degree erecting prism has a miniscule effect on image quality by day but is a big degrader of astronomical views. They are never used in astronomy because intense point sources like stars are a cruel test of the optical train. I don't know whether star diagonals (90 degree mirror based devices) are available for birders but I dare say they are. Essential!

OK, now five grand to spend on an astro scope, mount and eyepieces. Stop! This is an area in which you could spend a fortune on very inappropriate equipment. You need to do a lot of homework because that budget leads straight into a load of not very good gear if you are not careful. I am thinking in particular of large electronically controlled Schmidt Cassegrains which are worth considering but which have huge focal lengths which will not allow the viewing of the kind of extended objects which are often the most interesting and accessible. In short they have extreme tunnel vision and show you more and more of less and less.

Some questions:

Who is going to be looking at what in this instrument?

Is it for visual or photographic use? (Astro photography is very complicated, image capture takes many hours and processing the data takes many more, once you have learned how to do it. It bears no resemblance whatever to any kind of terrestrial photography and is mostly about the mount.)

I get the impression that you are buying for an institution, maybe a school?

If so, the best setup for you will not cost five grand.

Do you have a dark site?

Will the scope have to be portable?

We need to know a lot more before we can begin to disagree amongst ourselves on how to advise you! But it will be a pleasure...

(My background is in teaching and I now provide astronomy facilities for the public. That doesn't make me an expert...)

Olly

Edit; apologies to Chris. We crossed in the post but are going in very much the same direction. I would go bigger than 8 inches, though. i would go for 12 or 14 if portability is not an issue.

No problem Olly, wish I had that budget, but I reckon I'd buy a new sofa and telly before anything else :glasses1:

I took senior management approval to mean the wife.

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I used a Astro-Tech 66ed scope for birding and astronomy when on holiday. With the 66ed scope being built for astro purposes, standard eyepieces could be used.

I used a 45 degree prism diagonal for birding and used an eyepiece of about 40x mag(10mm FL).

For astronomy I used a 90 degree mirror diagonal and a range of eyepieces.

Andy.

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Thanks, that is very helpful.

Senior management is my wife but she is a keen birder and knows her way round the night sky better than I do. She likes the patterns and names of constellations rather than the science.

Given my previous track record of buying the most expensive kit and regretting it later, I probably should walk before running. So that means visual rather than AP - that can come later.

I am in Maidenhead, quite a lot of light pollution so being able to transport is essential. I do have an old Chrysler voyager so if I work out for a week I can take all the seats out!

Does this narrow things down? I had been looking at a WO 98 refractor to do both wildlife and Astro. Most of the wildlife will be from a hide. However it pours with rain whenever I decide to go birding so a rainproof scope is essential for that.

C

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