Newcomer needs help =X

[eMinity]

hi people. i'm quite new to astronomy and have been reading up on it for about a year.

recently i've been thinking of getting a telescope but i have no idea of what to get. i have not much knowledge about telescopes so i would really appreciate your help.


im interested in deep sky objects and planetary so any idea of what telescope i should get? i was thinking of getting Celestron AstroMaster 114EQ. do you think it would be good for me to get it? any other suggestions other than that?


as im staying at the east, are there any places selling the telescope suggested near the east other than the science centre? because its quite inconvenient for me to travel from east to west. =X


another question i would like to ask. i've been looking up at the night sky with my naked eye and have been seeing these 2 stars near the moon and they are pretty bright. any idea what stars are they? or are they just satellites?


hope to receive a reply soon. haha thanks. =D

[shawnpoh]

I am also new. Check out these websites for an idea of the prices.

http://www.astrobargains.com/index.htm

http://staropticsscientific.com/skywatcher

http://www.starmatrix.biz/smtelescopes.php

Good luck!

[chrisyeo]

http://www.singastro.org/web/mediawiki/ ... _telescope

Let me know if this helps.

Clear skies!

[Dragon Man]

eMinity,

I'm sorry I can't help with which telescope you should start with as I am unfamiliar with your skies.

I live with very dark skies in a small country town in Australia where BIG scopes are the choice.

But consider whether you will need it for just visual or for Astrophotography.

Not knowing your sky I can't help, sorry.

But I can help you with your query regarding the 2 big bright stars near the Moon. They aren't actually stars. They are the planets Venus and Jupiter.

Venus is the lowest one and Jupiter the highest one

[Meng Lee]

Oh hi,

Recently I saw so many newbies somehow got suggestions of pretty useless scopes. The short answer is, if you get Astromaster 114, you will be well on your way to ending your interest. Other scopes in the Astromaster series is OK. Powerseeker is another line to beware.

The 2 "stars" u see near the moon are Jupiter and Venus. The lower one in the west is Venus, the higher one is Jupiter.

The final answer is, buy a pair of binos and download Stellarium and join Singastro observing sessions. Don't buy a telescope.

Meng Lee

[fizzy123]

I suggest if you are planning to buy the 114mm Newtonian on EQ, why not go for something smaller in size like a refractor, more portable one, as you are 16 and dont drive. So portability is your main priority. Besides refractor have a simpler optical design with an unobstructed optical system. A reflector the position you view is a little awkard for beginners.
I suggest the ETX80 by Meade. It is portable, GOTO and is supported by 2 prongs rather than one in celestron designs, thus should be more stable

[shawnpoh]

what is the difference between a telescope, a reflector, a refractor, a finder scope and a spotting scope????

They all look the same to me. And the difference in price?

Thanks.... always forgive newbies.

[fizzy123]

A telescope is an instrument that is responsible for the magnifying and resolving of objects that are far away from the observer. There are various optical designs for telescopes and they can be broadly defined as refractor and reflector.

Refractor is what many ppls perceive when they first think of astronomy. It is a telescope consisting of only lenses. the front lens, the objective, refracts the incoming light and the light rays converges and is again refracted by a second lens, the eyepiece, before entering the eye of observer.

Reflector is a pure mirror system. a Concave mirror at the end of the scope, reflects the incoming light rays onto a small secondary mirror at the front of the scope. The light is then made to travel through your eyepiece before entering your eyes

finderscope is a low power, wide field of view sighting scope with crosshair mounted on the telescope so as to assist the locating of the desired obj to be observed. You can imagine it like the sighting device in a tube mortar. The sighting device is used to aim at the region you want to hit, while the mortar tube is responsible for firing out the projectile.

[shawnpoh]

A telescope is an instrument that is responsible for the magnifying and resolving of objects that are far away from the observer. There are various optical designs for telescopes and they can be broadly defined as refractor and reflector.

Refractor is what many ppls perceive when they first think of astronomy. It is a telescope consisting of only lenses. the front lens, the objective, refracts the incoming light and the light rays converges and is again refracted by a second lens, the eyepiece, before entering the eye of observer.

Reflector is a pure mirror system. a Concave mirror at the end of the scope, reflects the incoming light rays onto a small secondary mirror at the front of the scope. The light is then made to travel through your eyepiece before entering your eyes

finderscope is a low power, wide field of view sighting scope with crosshair mounted on the telescope so as to assist the locating of the desired obj to be observed. You can imagine it like the sighting device in a tube mortar. The sighting device is used to aim at the region you want to hit, while the mortar tube is responsible for firing out the projectile.

Thanks.... still trying to visualize... better join a observatory group first.

[weixing]

Hi,
Reflector, refractor, finder scope and spotting scope are all telescope.

A reflector is a telescope that use mirror to reflect light and form the image.

A refractor (those long tube telescope) is a telescope that use lens as the main objective to form the image.

A finder scope (usually a refractor) is a small telescope (smaller than the main telescope) use to help the larger main telescope to find object in the sky.

A spotting scope is a telescope design for the observation of terrestrial objects. Unlike astronomical telescope, all spotting scope will give an correct image.

Price will vary depend on type of telescope, aperture, brand, telescope quality & etc.

Anyway, before you start to think about getting a telescope, I would suggest you do some reading on telescope in the internet or go to library to read some books on observation astronomy (which usually will have some introduction on equipment) to get some idea on different type of telescope, eyepiece, mount and etc. You can also join in some observation session and look through other people scope to get an some idea of what to expect and how a telescope actually look like... telescope usually look a lot smaller in book/magazine/photo.

Have a nice day.