Buying a Telescope- Newbie

vhuang168 · Post by **vhuang168** » Fri May 04, 2007 12:59 pm

Here's my 2 cents.

I would suggest picking up a small refractor. Eg 80mm Orion/Synta APO with a simple alt/az mount. Get a good star map, (Star Altas 2k or the new S&T Pocket Sky Atlas), learn the sky. With the 80mm, you'll be able to see most if not all the Messiers (depending on how dark your skies are). All the regular eye candy will be pretty easy to see too.

The best part is the FOV is quite big. Nothing is worse then a beginner who doesn't know the sky and has no experiance, starting with something like a C8. Even a C5 would be too long fl IMHO. It would be very hard to find something if all you see is a small sliver of the sky @ first. If you have extra $$ then spend it on good eps.

Vincent

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Fri May 04, 2007 1:02 pm

S&T pocket sky atlas is highly recommended. If a beginner's scope has a 7x50 finder and a red dot finder then it helps them to zoom in into the region fast!

Post by **weixing** » Fri May 04, 2007 2:08 pm

Hi,

I would suggest picking up a small refractor. Eg 80mm Orion/Synta APO with a simple alt/az mount.

I own one 80mm scope and I feel the aperture is too small to be the first scope of an inexperience observer in Singapore. Anyway, will start a 80mm observing project and check what actually can be seen in Singapore using a 80mm scope, but the weather is really bad lately...

S&T pocket sky atlas is highly recommended. If a beginner's scope has a 7x50 finder and a red dot finder then it helps them to zoom in into the region fast!

I'm using one now. The advantage is that it small, but the disadvantage is there are quite a number of stars that can be seen in a 50mm finder which are not plot in the altas... sometime those "missing" stars will confuse and miss guide you.

Have a nice day.

Post by **acc** » Fri May 04, 2007 2:19 pm

I agree with Weixing; in our light-polluted skies, a good starter scope could be a 5" or larger Mak/SCT on a alt/az mount. Anything smaller may result in disappointment

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Fri May 04, 2007 3:34 pm

Hmmm, sounds like after so many comments, there are some general qualities:

Short focal length (wider field, easier to find things)
Big aperture (in order to see sufficiently)
portability
ease of usage

Seems like a good candidate set will be Nexstar 130 SLT. But beginners are most uncomfortable with a newtonian.

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Fri May 04, 2007 3:43 pm

There's even a review on Nextar 130 SLT:

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/public/im/cel130SLT.html