Teslescopes?

Question

What kind/brand of a telescope is a good at home star gazing telescope?

Answer 1

See the ref. to get a good grounding into what to look for in a telescope, what prices are like, etc. You can browse the rest of the SkyandTelescope website for lots more useful info.

Answer 2

The Schmidt camera telescope, invented in 1930 by Bernard Schmidt, is a catadioptric system used for wide-angle photography of star fields. The primary mirror is spherical instead of paraboloidal, which requires that a special correcting lens be used on the front of the tube. The Maksutov telescope, invented by D. D. Maksutov in 1941, is similar in design and purpose to the Schmidt telescope but has a spherical meniscus in place of the correcting plate of the Schmidt.

Mounting the Telescope

Equal in importance to the mirrors and lenses constituting the optics of a telescope is the mounting of the telescope. The mounting must be massive, in order to minimize mechanical vibration that would blur the image, especially at high magnification or during long-exposure photography. At the same time, motion of the telescope must be precise and smooth. To allow the telescope to be pointed in any direction in the sky, the mounting must provide rotation about two perpendicular axes. In the altazimuth mounting, one axis points to the zenith and allows rotation along the horizon and the other allows changes in altitude, or distance above the horizon. This mounting is used for small terrestrial telescopes and, since the 1970s, most new astronomical telescopes use altazimuth mountings that are computer-driven in both axes. Before the 1970s, most astronomical telescopes used the equatorial mounting, in which one axis points at the celestial pole and hence is parallel to the earth's axis.

Answer 3

A six or eight inch Dobsonian telescope is a good beginner's scope and one that you won't immediately outgrow. These are simple altazimuth (tilt & swivel) mounted Newtonian reflectors and offer the most telescope for the money.

The most important specification for a telescope is its aperture, that is, the diameter of the main lens or mirror. The aperture determines how dim and how small the objects and features you can see are.

Buy from a regular telescope vendor. Don't buy from Walmart, camera stores, or eBay vendors.