how much money do you have to spend to get a telescope that can see other galaxies?

Question

is 900X enough? and dont want to see the the galaxy look like a dot more like the imake on this site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NGC_4414_%28NASA-med%29.jpg

Answer 1

You could not see a galaxy just like that with the biggest telescope on Earth.

Not with your eye. Pictures like that are made by using a very big telescope, and gathering the light for a long time, slowly building up the picture. They used to use film to gather the light, now they use digital cameras. It can take an hour or more of observation to get a picture like that. Your eye cannot do it.

Magnification, like 900X, has nothing to do with it. In fact, high magnification makes galaxies look dimmer. The important thing is how big the telescope is, like "6-inch". Never buy a telescope that advertises by power, like 900X. Sure sign of cheap junk. I guarantee you that you would see nothing but a blur with an inexpensive telescope if you actually tried to use it at 900X.

If you live in a city there will be an amateur astronomy club. Ask your teacher to help you find it. People in the club will be happy to show you their telescopes, what they can actually see, and how you can choose a good one. It would cost at least $500 to get a telescope that will show you a dim galaxie where you can just barely see the spiral arms. The $500 telescope would be an "8 inch Dobsonian".

But you'll never be able to see a galaxie just like that picture unless you become a professional astronomer and use a giant telescope with a digital camera, and gather light from the galaxie for a while. If you read the description below this picture you'll see the picture was made by the Hubble telescope (which would cost you billions of dollars) by gathering light on 13 different times over two months, and then combining all that light.

Answer 2

You are not going to visually see galaxies like that with anything less than 15 inch telescope and outlay of thousands.

However, if you have the time and the energy to get into astrophotography, you can achieve the same or better results with a much smaller telescope, since you use long exposure times to pick up as much light as possible.

However, you obviously need to be in a clear, light-free environment. To take a 20 minute exposure, the sky has to be clear for 20 minutes and any city lights will just fog the image.

Also, 900 magnification is not on without a star drive - that is a clock drive that makes the telescope keep pace with the object you are looking at. If you haven't got that, with such high magnification, the object will move out of view in seconds.

I am not sure anybody uses mag that high. It would be useless in any environment but at the top of a high mountain in a really dry part of country.

You have to bear in mind that magnification magnifies the air currents, the light pollution, and any vibrations.

Have a look in the back of Astronomy magazines. They publish amateur pictures, and usually say what equipment they are using.

Answer 3

It is a popular misconception that you need high magnification to see galaxies. They are not small at all. The famous Andromeda galaxy appears in our sky 5 times BIGGER than the Moon and is seen well in binoculars or even with the naked eye! But it is very dim. You need a really dark sky far from city lights to see it. Everyone is severely disappointed the first time the see it in any telescope, even a large professional one. Those great galaxy pictures in books and on line are the result of long exposure (many minutes or even hours) photography that makes them look thousands of times brighter than they appear to the eye through the same telescope that took the picture.

Answer 4

A 10 or 12 inch reflector will give you details of galaxies. Check out the new Meade lightbridges. A little over $1000 for the 12". Plus another $500 for some real eyepieces. You will need at least a 16" before you can see color, and IMHO is not worth the cost unless you are a professional, or a photographer.

Answer 5

You can see M31, the Andromeda galaxy, 2 million light years away, and the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds, with the naked eye. There are 17 galaxies including our Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds and M31 in the local group, and quite a small inexpensive telescope will allow you to study them. A 6 inch reflector will resolve the individual galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, about 20 million light years away.

Answer 6

Hello, fellow stargazer!
To get resolution like this you would have to hijack the Hubble Telescope. I'm not joking.

I have a similar telescope, and I have seen the Andromeda galaxy with it on a clear, moonless night.