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Post by garbulky on Dec 25, 2018 12:08:36 GMT -5
Hi guys,
I'm looking for help for a BUDGET telescope. Not looking for something fancy.
Main goal is to look at the moon. Also would be nice to see some of the planets like perhaps saturn or mars, maybe.
Ideally it would be between $60-80. But I can swing as much as $100.
Also it has to be from Amazon. And more importantly light. Heavy gear would be out.
Any suggestions?
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Post by LuisV on Dec 25, 2018 12:29:28 GMT -5
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Post by vcautokid on Dec 25, 2018 12:36:16 GMT -5
Yep I would agree. Not too much in the way of a good Cheap Telescope. I have looked. One way or the other a cheap telescope will let you down. I had a friend's cheap one. Wow the image was not so good. Optics are key along with great construction. Binoculars if a camera mount is not in the cards are a better buy. Great optics cost more and so on.
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Post by LuisV on Dec 25, 2018 12:44:47 GMT -5
Exactly... optics and vibration dampening are key. Also keep in mind that the optics should be aclimated to the outside temperature pior to viewing, otherwise the heat radiating from the OTA will blur the image. I used to take my setup outside an hour or two prior to use so it equalized in temps.
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Post by garbulky on Dec 25, 2018 13:43:48 GMT -5
@luisv
Clearly you guys know your stuff. I guess I'm just looking to get my feet wet.
I have a few limitations.
1. Price. I was hoping close to 80 but I could get up to 100 if I push or maybe even a $120 but prefer not to.
2. Weight. I have physical issues so even what people would consider light tends to be too heavy. I would love something at 5 pounds or close to that with a mount.
Perhaps expecting to see the planets is too much of an ask at this price range and weight. I will be satisfied with seeing the moon. Basically I'm looking for something that works and isn't a toy. And to be honest I can't tell the difference. I was looking at a 60 mm or 70 mm scope on amazon.
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Post by gus4emo on Dec 25, 2018 13:47:40 GMT -5
Hi guys, I'm looking for help for a BUDGET telescope. Not looking for something fancy. Main goal is to look at the moon. Also would be nice to see some of the planets like perhaps saturn or mars, maybe. Ideally it would be between $60-80. But I can swing as much as $100. Also it has to be from Amazon. And more importantly light. Heavy gear would be out. Any suggestions? Try to get a Dobsonian. |
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Post by knucklehead on Dec 25, 2018 15:54:36 GMT -5
$100 isn't going to buy you much of a telescope. A good pair of binoculars is probably the most used optics in the night sky. You'll need at least a 7x35 to get started. There are many good binoculars for $100 and under. As mentioned above, the dobsonian scopes are the best bang for the buck. They can be a handful to get outside and set up, especially when they get into the 10" and bigger range. If you already have a sturdy tripod and pan head you can find a short tube 80mm refractor for around $100. You'll still need a couple of eyepieces, and that can get more expensive than the scope. The standard in eyepieces are the 25mm Plossl eyepieces. Plossls are good optics for the money, but Plossl eyepieces aren't real good in the higher powers. The smaller the number the higher the power. I wouldn't own any Plossl eyepiece below about 12mm. Some of the best views of the night sky have been with my 32 & 40mm Plossl eyepieces. At higher (smaller number) the glass is tiny and usually has very limited eye relief, a very important item to consider when you buy eyepieces. A 5mm Plossl is nearly useless IMO. Orion has made a ton of short tube 80mm refractors, and they are quite good when used for wide field viewing. Check out the website Cloudy Nights in the classified section. I have two telescopes currently, a 10" F4.5 dobsonian (mirror) and a 5" F12.5 Maksutov. They compliment each other, the 10" is used mainly for deep sky, stuff like nebulaes and such, and the Mak is for the moon and planets and brighter star clusters. I also have a 16x80mm binocular, and my favorite pair, 7x50 Vixen triple element ED binoculars. I use them on a huge 6' tripod with a parallelogram head mount, under dark skies. Its a beautiful combo. I think I have 5-6 pairs of binos. Smallest of them all is my Eagle 6x30 wide field, handy for daytime viewing. The 'F' number is the same as you see on camera lenses. The smaller the number the brighter the view at prime (wide open). I picked up my 5" (127MM) F12.5 Mak for $200 shipped from a Cloudy Nights member. It is very good as a daytime spotting scope, and I get very good views of Saturn, Mars, etc, at night. I use a moon filter for partial moons. The full moon? Blah! You'd do well to consider a good pair of binocs, you can't buy more eyepieces for them but you will see things you can't see with the naked eye. You might find a pair of 16 or 20x70 or 80mm binocs for $100 or so. Those would work great for day and night use. Here's a link to good binocs for $100 and under. You might find something you like. I would buy used if possible. As long as the binocs are collimated properly and the glass is clean its hard to lose much on good binocs. Always look for prisms that use BAK4 glass, not the inferior BAK7 glass. Holding a pair at arm's length point them towards a good light source and look at the exit pupil opening of the eyepiece. If it looks sort of squared off, that is BAK7, you want round exit pupils. Warning! Astronomy is like audio, once you start buying, you cannot stop! |
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Post by knucklehead on Dec 25, 2018 16:22:01 GMT -5
@luisv Clearly you guys know your stuff. I guess I'm just looking to get my feet wet. I have a few limitations. 1. Price. I was hoping close to 80 but I could get up to 100 if I push or maybe even a $120 but prefer not to. 2. Weight. I have physical issues so even what people would consider light tends to be too heavy. I would love something at 5 pounds or close to that with a mount. Perhaps expecting to see the planets is too much of an ask at this price range and weight. I will be satisfied with seeing the moon. Basically I'm looking for something that works and isn't a toy. And to be honest I can't tell the difference. I was looking at a 60 mm or 70 mm scope on amazon. Stop looking at the junk! Here's a proven scope, Meade's 90mm Mak. For $125 shipped its a very good scope IMO. Mount it on a photo tripod with a panhead and you're good to go, day or night. You might talk that guy down a bit, or maybe he'll throw in a decent eyepiece, you never know. www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/item/157358-meade-etx90/And a few others to consider: www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/item/136654-meade-etx-80-80mm-optical-tube-with-red-dot/www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/item/155711-celestron-c90-mak-cass-ota/ |
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Post by 405x5 on Dec 26, 2018 20:44:44 GMT -5
Hi guys, I'm looking for help for a BUDGET telescope. Not looking for something fancy. Main goal is to look at the moon. Also would be nice to see some of the planets like perhaps saturn or mars, maybe. Ideally it would be between $60-80. But I can swing as much as $100. Also it has to be from Amazon. And more importantly light. Heavy gear would be out. Any suggestions? If you’re not sure 🤔 I can Lens you mine 😁 |
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Post by gus4emo on Dec 26, 2018 20:58:51 GMT -5
If you're not into astro photography, get a Dobsonian, then build the accessory with eye pieces for moon and planets, for deep space, filters and so on....
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Post by garbulky on Dec 26, 2018 23:35:05 GMT -5
I really appreciate the feedback from everybody. So what happened was I got a gift card from Amazon so it has to be from there. I am feeling down about this. Most Dobsonian models are much higher than a $100. I found one www.amazon.com/Celestron-21049-PowerSeeker-127EQ-Telescope/dp/B0007UQNKY/But apparently there's mediocre reviews on it due to a "collimating" requirement. And worse it's 20 pounds which is unfortunately something I can't manage. Even with a Dolly to move it, lifting something so heavy to the mount would put it out of the running. I hear ya guys on binoculars but the idea of a telescope has sort of cemented on me. So I guess I'm confused at this point. I've always dreamt of seeing the moon in better detail. Perhaps seeing some craters. Who knows, see a picture of saturn or something. But maybe I'm being too ambitious. |
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Post by knucklehead on Dec 26, 2018 23:42:34 GMT -5
Since garbulky is looking to spend no more than $100 he'd be well off with a used short tube refractor, which has a low F number, or a better yet a Maksutov 90-105mm. They can easily be mounted on a photo tripod, making them easier to move around, or for car travel. The Maksutov will give him good views of the moon and planets. The higher f ratio will give him higher useful power than a 4.5" dob. The drawbacks to a short tube refractor is the color fringing on low power bright objects like the moon, especially the full moon. It isn't located at the center but can be very distracting. The dob and the Mak will not have color fringing. A decent refractor that has very little color fringing will cost you about $300 or so for a used 80mm ED scope like the Orion or Celestron 80mm ED scopes. A great place to read about scopes of all sizes and $$'s is Ed Ting's website. Ed has owned more scopes and binocs than I ever will. And I've had a few of each.
My first scope was a home built 6" F11 reflector in 1994. I bought each part separately. The tube was a 70" long 7" round piece of irrigation pipe, aluminum. I had it powder coated a royal blue. I mounted first on a home built dob, and later grafted it to a German Equatorial mount, or 'GEM' and a Great Polaris wood tripod. The dob mount was an infinity more solid mount. Dollar for dollar dobs are hard to beat. I had a very small diagonal, 3/4" and on a brass stalk! Very small as reflectors go.
My second scope was a Coulter Odyssey 13.1, bought new in 1995. It would be safe to say it was spartan in build and design, but worked very well with low power eyepieces. With a 5" mask and a good high power eyepiece (5-7mm) I could get very good views of the planets and moon. The body of the scope was the same cardboard tube you find in concrete work, only bigger than most. 13" was considered a 'light bucket' back then, and still is! Cost me $700 shipped. You can't buy just a mirror for that price today. The diagonal mirror on that was 3.5", big central obstruction compared to the 6" scope. I've also had A Meade Maksutov 7" F15. Between that scope and the 6" F11 I've had the best views of Saturn and Jupiter you could ask for unless you're in an observatory. I got some very good views of comet One of the best scopes optically I've owned is a 10" Orion F4.5 reflector. I've also owned a couple of Orion/Celestron 80mm F6.7 ED(Extra low Dispersion Glass) that were very good optically. The 70mm Tele Vue Ranger was slightly better IMO, but I didn't own them at the same time. So now I have a very good 10" F4.5 Dob from Explorer Scientific that I just couldn't pass up. Got it on special for $414 shipped. And that is no small box. I also have a very sharp 5" Bresser Maksutov which I use on a Bogen tripod with a Bogen pan head. One for deep space objects, and one for planets and the moon, and brighter star clusters. And the 5" Mak works well as a spotting scope, kind of on the big side but very useful. I use it more than the 10" scope.
Most dobsonians are a reflector, by design, Newtonian. Issac was prolific with his optics. Some have a central obstruction, and some have no obstruction, but these are rare compared to the central obstruction design. The Maksutov and Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes are also reflector designs, and differ between each other mainly by the design of the corrector plate. The Maksutov is easier to build in smaller apetures and can be found as small as 70mm. They are a great choice for beginners, and most often come on a dobsonian mount. Easy to use, and easy to set up for viewing. The smaller the better IMO. I said 'most' dobs are a reflector design. I've had the pleasure of looking through a 6" F15(IIRC) refractor scope on a modified dob design. Jupiter looked like it was at arm's length away through a 2" TeleVue eyepiece, power unknown but I'd guess was about 10-12mm. It was called the John Deere scope. Must have been the paint job. That eyepiece made my little 1.25" eyepieces seem like looking through a keyhole!
Refractors can be cheap, or can be very expensive. Those 'department store' scopes are usually refractor & reflector designs. Those refractors often have plastic objective lenses, NOT GOOD. And the eyepieces are even worse. They aren't worth the $50-100 they cost. They promise big power, but the truth is most telescopes can't do much more than 200-250 power, and most of us don't need more than 50-100 power. The more active the atmosphere is the less power you can use. Are the stars shimmering? Bad night to observe. Wait for steady conditions. Don't buy that big power department store scope. You'll use it once and consider it a cheap lesson in scopes. Better doesn't cost that much more.
A lot of guys have more money in their eyepiece collection than they do in their scopes. You can go nuts, (and broke) buying eyepieces. Good quality Plossl eyepieces of no more than 12-15mm are abundant, and might cost you $20-25 shipped. If you have a low power scope in the F4-7 range you'll need at least one eyepiece in the 5-8mm range. It will likely be your most expensive eyepiece if it isn't a Plossl. If it is it's likely to be the least used eyepiece in your collection. The glass is about 4-5mm wide on a 5mm eyepiece.
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Post by jackfish on Dec 27, 2018 9:44:03 GMT -5
Is that a Green Bay Packers or Oregon Ducks scope?
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Post by garbulky on Dec 27, 2018 11:28:48 GMT -5
Looking at the sample pictures, I think it's obvious what spending say $300 gets you - clearly better images of the planets. That Maksutov produced very nice pictures imo but I don't have a camera mount plus it's $195 on Amazon which is a good bit higher than $100. I guess you get what you pay for.
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Post by geeqner on Dec 27, 2018 14:38:12 GMT -5
I can vouch for "Cheap" telescopes being GFS: When I was a kid in the 1970's, I had a Skillcraft with a 640X and 80X Reflector type scope. picclick.com/Vintage-Skil-Craft-Satelite-40-80-Power-Telescope-Box-382475768636.htmlThing LOOKED semi-cool, but all that it was good for was for looking at objects that were relatively close (like the squirrel in the back yard) -Aiming sight was WAY off / useless -Aiming Armature (ball-head) had WAY too much play in it and the slightest bump knocked it out-of-position -Eyepiece wobbled in the socket (NOT a precision-machined piece) just a lens on a tube that slided in/out for focus, but wobble made it near impossible to focus on anything of REAL interest -Tripod was wobbly -By the time I got something (nearly) in-focus, it would move out-of-frame and I would have to start the whole "fannagling" process over again A hundred bucks will probably buy you the modern equivalent of this hopeless P-O-S and is better to be avoided (maybe look for a clip-on telephoto / "telescope" for your smart phone instead) You'd be better off checking with a local Astronomy Club and see if someone is selling a DECENT one used Or maybe a used SLR Film-type Camera with a matching high-power telephoto lens (without film in it, it would work like a telescope) and "decent" stuff (Old Pentax / Canon / Nikon) can sometimes be had for next to nothing (but again, probably NOT on Amazon) Better off to spend your Amazon money on something else like a decent microphone for your portable recording rig - where a C-note could be of REAL benefit instead of aggravation |
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Post by garbulky on Dec 27, 2018 15:26:04 GMT -5
Ok let's rephrase my ambitions then.
What about just for the moon? Anything (telescope) in my price range of $100 from Amazon (only) which would work? Hoping to see stuff a bit better than with a cheap set of binoculars.
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Post by geeqner on Dec 27, 2018 16:43:54 GMT -5
On Warrior Princess website - search "Spotting Scope"
Those are more like a half of a more powerful binocular
usually, on a short tripod designed to be used while laying on the ground or a tabletop
There are a few for just a bit over your budget and one with a smartphone adapter for around that C-Note
Just make sure that if you have kids and any pretty or better neighbors that it does not give them the wrong ideas...
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Post by gus4emo on Dec 27, 2018 21:05:35 GMT -5
The hell with spotting scopes, those are for bird watchers, if you don't want to spend at least $250 on a Dobsonian, just go on the internet look at pictures, come on now......
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Post by wilburthegoose on Dec 28, 2018 7:05:57 GMT -5
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Post by garbulky on Dec 28, 2018 14:11:08 GMT -5
Thanks guys. So just to reiterate 1. Telescope with its own mount. I can't buy a separate mount or anything else extra to make this work. There's other ways to look at the sky like binoculars, spotting scopes etc but I'm dreaming of telescopes so let's keep it at telescopes. 2. Amazon ONLY even if it's cheaper elsewhere as I have a gift card there. 3. Light weight. Preferrably 10 pounds or less - at least the bit I would have to lift on to the mount. 4. See the moon 5. $100. Definitely Not more than $160. Max I would go up to is about $160 and that's a hard limit. So in this admittedly poor choices for this price range, which one would work the best for me? Basically at this point it's a choice between a telescope that's probably not great vs nothing. But which not great telescope is better?  I'm asking for the best turd here. A diamond in the rough. Or at least the prettiest costume jewellery! |
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I'm asking for the best turd here. 