Best telescope

[Gian]

Can anyone recommend a telescope for astronomy for under about £200/ $US250?

Is there one, or do I need to go higher?

Thanks

GIAN x

[Genady]

What is the purpose?

[Gian]

10 hours ago, Genady said:

What is the purpose?

Just getting started with astronomy, so I guess I just wanna be able to see the stars and planets as clearly as possible 

[Sensei]

I would be looking for something that would allow me to plug in a USB cable and be able to record image..

 

[Genady]

1 hour ago, Gian said:

Just getting started with astronomy, so I guess I just wanna be able to see the stars and planets as clearly as possible 

Keep the expectations low. Stars will be just dots, anyway. You will see more of them, and they will be brighter. You will see some details of the Solar system objects, such as rings of Saturn and other planets' satellites. These will be exhausted soon. Nothing like crisp and spectacular images one finds online.

[Gian]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Keep the expectations low. Stars will be just dots, anyway. You will see more of them, and they will be brighter. You will see some details of the Solar system objects, such as rings of Saturn and other planets' satellites. These will be exhausted soon. Nothing like crisp and spectacular images one finds online.

I would still like to be able to gaze at Saturn's Rings, and Jupiter directly

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

I would be looking for something that would allow me to plug in a USB cable and be able to record image..

 

Such as?🙂

[Genady]

13 minutes ago, Gian said:

I would still like to be able to gaze at Saturn's Rings, and Jupiter directly

Then consider / compare binoculars. See e.g. here: How to choose binoculars for astronomy and skywatching | Space 

[Sensei]

29 minutes ago, Gian said:

Such as?🙂

I would not like to advertise/recommend a device that I have not checked myself. Here in a relatively large city there is a lot of dust, light pollution etc. We are lucky to see 1% of what a person in the countryside a few dozen kilometers away sees.

Ten+ years ago I bought a digital camera, and after the fact I noticed that it lacked a timelapse function (the device with the built-in function was twice as expensive as my device). This is an extremely useful thing for events that take a lot of time, such as astronomy. So I wrote a special app that sent 'take picture' commands to the device via a USB cable from my computer. I took nice timelapse transitions of the sun and moon in the sky during a trip across the sky over several hours. For real astronomy, you should have a device that tracks the rotation of the Earth during time-lapse sessions.

Photons from a distant object are needed to get a good quality image, but the Earth is rotating, so if the camera/telescope is not rotating properly, the image will be blurred. There are special applications to 'de-blur' images taken by home astronomers.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Sensei

[Gian]

22 hours ago, Sensei said:

I would not like to advertise/recommend a device that I have not checked myself. Here in a relatively large city there is a lot of dust, light pollution etc. We are lucky to see 1% of what a person in the countryside a few dozen kilometers away sees.

Ten+ years ago I bought a digital camera, and after the fact I noticed that it lacked a timelapse function (the device with the built-in function was twice as expensive as my device). This is an extremely useful thing for events that take a lot of time, such as astronomy. So I wrote a special app that sent 'take picture' commands to the device via a USB cable from my computer. I took nice timelapse transitions of the sun and moon in the sky during a trip across the sky over several hours. For real astronomy, you should have a device that tracks the rotation of the Earth during time-lapse sessions.

Photons from a distant object are needed to get a good quality image, but the Earth is rotating, so if the camera/telescope is not rotating properly, the image will be blurred. There are special applications to 'de-blur' images taken by home astronomers.

Thanks! that is useful info🙂

[Eise]

I find a small Dobson telescope a good start, e.g. like here.

You can easily take it with you (e.g. far from street lights...), place it on a garden table or something like that. But it is just good for direct observations of planets, nebulae, the moon, etc. Not well equipped for photography. But if you get the taste, your next telescope might be a more professional one.

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, Eise said:

I find a small Dobson telescope a good start, e.g. like here.

You can easily take it with you (e.g. far from street lights...), place it on a garden table or something like that. But it is just good for direct observations of planets, nebulae, the moon, etc. Not well equipped for photography. But if you get the taste, your next telescope might be a more professional one.

Agree.  The alt-azimuth mount makes it useless at higher mag or photos, as you noted, but it's a great "light bucket" (what we called it, back in my astronomy club days, for its large aperture) for low mag viewing.  

As @Genady mentioned there are also binoculars, for a wide field, ultimate portability.  And their chromatic aberration isn't a problem unless they are very cheap.  

If you want to do real astronomy, be sure and get an equatorial mount.  That has a clock drive which follows the stars in their apparent motion.  For planets, you would do well with the Dobson or a Maksutov or some other Cassegrain, because planets benefit from the larger aperture.  For deep-space objects, it's hard to beat the classic Newtonian - good price, too.  

 

 

[Genady]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

If you want to do real astronomy, be sure and get an equatorial mount.  That has a clock drive which follows the stars in their apparent motion. 

That was one of my first "jobs" in my astronomy club, when I was about 9. To manually follow a star with a telescope for a long exposure picture.