Looking at things far away. or, Learn me: Telescopes.

When I was little I was fascinated by all things space. 

Now I am older I want to rekindle that passion. I live in the desert and we have >300 clear nights a year. I want to look at space stuff. I know nothing about telescopes, other than good ones seem to be expensive. Looking for something with a tripod, more or less entry level. What should I be looking at? (Telescopes, not the moon)

Don't be disturbed when you finally get a clear veiw of Uranus.

See if there's a local astronomy club, or an observatory with a big honkin' telescope.  Go big or go home.

The problem with owning a telescope is that the good ones cost a lot, and they take up space when you're not using them.

The good telescopes cost more than a used Miata and there is a learning curve on how to set them up, how to find the things to see. 

  I recently brought my 11 year old to an open night at the astronomy club west of Houston.  We looked through a really cool $5000 scope and could see Jupiter and all its moons.   Then we looked at Jupiter through a $10,000 scope.  Same view but more detail and 4 times the size.    And Saturn's rings were great.  Its like you are on the Enterprise a  light minute away. 

Its like that racing saying: "How fast to you want to go?  How much money do you have to spend?"

My buddy is a physicist, geo not astro. He started studying Astrophysics then realized he wanted to own a house one day. He owns a decent Celestron scope than ran him less than a grand. It has an automatic motorized finder and tracker. Very cool for looking at the moon and Mars.  According to him the step between this one and a good one is about $8k. Anything in between isn’t worth the extra cash. 

My dad was a Depression era kid, and became an engineer.  He never smoked, and kept track of how much he saved by not smoking. Eventually he bought a Questar telescope with his smoke money.

This model:

http://www.company7.com/questar/telescopes/quest35.html

Very nice machine. Borrowed it for the eclipse last year, was fun.

As seems only appropriate for GRM, make your own.

I wrote a fairly crude post on here a while ago about telescopes: Here you go

That covers most of the basics.

Things have evolved as motors and computers miniaturized and there's a lot better optics now on the entry level tripod mounted telescopes. Schmidt Cassegrain's have also become a lot more common, and come down in price quite a bit. So if you're looking for something compact with some decent light gathering capabilities SC scopes are pretty awesome. You should be able to get an entry level one for a couple hundred how as opposed to a couple thousand.

My opinion of the manufacturers remains pretty much the same: Meade, Orion, Celestron but that's just my opinion.

I guess what it boils down to is what you're planning on looking at and how big you thing you want to go.

Planets?

Messier Objects?

Deep Sky?

The further you go the more expensive and larger things typically get.

Well, after days of trying to get a hold of the guy who posted his telescope on cl locally only to find out he sold it already, I placed an order for a Meade Lightbridge mini 130. Should be good enough for my needs and cheap enough that I won't be too upset if it never gets used. I'll report on that once it shows up.

I did dig out my old montgomery ward 50x 42mm "science telescope" from storage. I remembered the tripod being broken, but have no proof since it seems to be missing entirely. It is only slightly better than the little binocs my dad got me when I was 10. Still fun though.

Telescope arrived! It is bigger than I thought it'd be. (Insert obvious joke)

I assembled everything that needed assembled, actually read the instructions too. I was able to set the collimation fairly well, I'll get better with practice I'm sure. Set up a table outside and aligned the red dot thing and WOW, I can see stuff.

This will likely turn into a bit of a log for me. I'll post pictures of the new toy once my wife gets back to town with her camera. Maybe I can find a way to use the camera to take telescopic pictures too. We'll see, as I don't have much interest in photography. Excited to see jupiter and saturn, both should be quite visible to me now. Stoked!

Scope came with two eye pieces, one good for 25x and one good for roughly 75x. Both are great for the moon. The higher power one lets me see the stripes on Jupiter (barely) and Saturn and it's rings, though not much more than a small ball that clearly has rings. Also 4 of Jupiter's moons, and a distinctly red ball called Mars. Pretty neat. I just received (on a Sunday, thanks amazon prime) a new higher power eye piece which is good for 100x and will soon be ordering a lens* which will double the magnification of any eye piece. Internet says I should be able to get good focus and clarity to slightly past 200x with this size reflector scope.

It is like I tried crack and now all I look forward to is my next fix. Though crack would probably be cheaper in the long run.

*Barlow lens

In reply to barefootskater :

Crack definitely is cheaper, at least in the midterm run. Wait until you get into gearless focusers (lashless ftw), then decide that you want to upgrade to 2" eye pieces, then decide that you want a low profile finder scope, then you may as well upgrade to that 16" mirror because some objects are too dim...

Luckily eyepieces are a durable good since good glass is expensive.