Thoughts on getting or having a Telescope.

[Commander Wallace]

I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone for the insight and helpful suggestions regarding Telescopes. I appreciate everyone taking the time out to help a novice at Astronomy. The suggestions from Rockstar, Sean C and Otto Harkman, although his post disappeared, were especially helpful.
Sean C @ I noticed you had to get your Guitar in the picture. Rock on.

I know it's not very realistic but I would like to get out as far as Neptune. I'm sure it's far more realistic to maybe be able to see Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus. I would be thrilled with that. Mercury is difficult to view as it's always low on the horizon and hard to pick out. Betelgeuse, Antares, the Galaxy of Andromeda and Pleiades ( the 7 Sisters ) are also pretty realistic, in terms of viewing, with a decent Telescope.

In College, There were two gentlemen who had been with NASA and I believe the JPL laboratories. They were teaching course in Astronomy and Astro - Physics. I wanted to take a few courses with them but was carrying 5 classes ( 15 credits ) I had to get special permission from the Dean of Students to carry 15 credits. I had absolutely no time to spare as those classes were outside my discipline and would have been a luxury. When not studying, going to classes or working, I spent the precious few hours I had sleeping.

I will always regret not having been able to take their classes as they were highly acclaimed and the students who took their classes and studied with them raved about how great they were as teachers and professors.


Thanks again, everyone.

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Commander Wallace

I know it's not very realistic but I would like to get out as far as Neptune. I'm sure it's far more realistic to maybe be able to see Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus. I would be thrilled with that. Mercury is difficult to view as it's always low on the horizon and hard to pick out. Betelgeuse, Antares, the Galaxy of Andromeda and Pleiades ( the 7 Sisters ) are also pretty realistic, in terms of viewing, with a decent Telescope.

If money isn't an issue then you have these two Telescope.

https://optcorp.com/products/tpo-10-...-ota-telescope

https://optcorp.com/collections/prof...-25-edgehd-ota

These Telescope is taken from a homepage I linked to on page 1.

They are for professionel amateurs.

Markus

[Commander Wallace]

Originally Posted by mapuc

If money isn't an issue then you have these two Telescope.

https://optcorp.com/products/tpo-10-...-ota-telescope

https://optcorp.com/collections/prof...-25-edgehd-ota

These Telescope is taken from a homepage I linked to on page 1.

They are for professionel amateurs.

Markus

Thanks Markus, for the links. There really are so many choices, It's hard to decide. There are reflector and refractory types of Scopes and each type have their attributes. And, that's just the beginning. Still, the input I got here gives me a good starting point.

[Rockstar]

I will say this, I wanted to be a purist and discover the universe on my own like ol’ grand pappy used to do. So I purchased a manually geared German Equatorial Mount. Well it didn’t take long for me to figure out that wasn’t a lot of fun. Computerized GEM goto mounts are the way to go. Just have to polar align the scope then tell it what to point too and it slews to target all by itself, saves time

Fast 6 or 8 inch newtonian reflectors are easy to manage and let a lot of light in, known as “light buckets”. IMO they make great scopes for visual astronomy and do very well in the astrophotography department if you decide later to go that route.

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Computerized GEM goto mounts are the way to go. Just have to polar align the scope then tell it what to point too and it slews to target all by itself, saves time

What I like about motorized mounts it they continue to track the object. It's frustrating to spend all that time to manually point and focus a telescope on an object only to watch it roll past and out of view.