What is the greatest zoom achievable by a consumer available telescope?

Question

And where do I get one?

There's a nearby hobby store that has one with 600x zoom for like $300 and Toys R Us has one with 650x zoom for an undisclosed amount and I dont know if that's good or not.

Answer 1

I concur with the others. How much light the 'scope gathers is much more important than how many times it magnifies. Before you buy something, check out some advice from experienced stargazers:

So You Wanna Buy a Telescope... Advice for Beginners
http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html

Buying your first telescope in Australia
How to get a telescope, not an expensive coat-hanger
http://astronomy.concreteairship.com/scope.htm

The second article is mostly general advice, only a few bits are specific to down under. But read those those articles before you plunk down a couple hundred dollars on a telescope that isn't very good. For just a little more money and some time doing research you can get a much better instrument.

In terms of getting the most aperture for your money, a dobsonian-mounted newtonian reflector is probably the best way to go, in my opinion. Check out the Orion XT series.

Answer 2

Cheap telescope companies prey on the misconeptions the average person has about telescopes. Power is not what you should be looking for in a telescope. In fact using high power more often than not allows you to see less.

(skip to the bottom to get a direct answer to your question)

Generally speaking, the amount you can see with a telescope depends on the aperture of it. Aperture is the diameter of the primary lens in refractor telescope and the primary mirror in reflector telescopes...the actual tube is slightly larger in diameter than the mirror or lens. If you've ever used a magnifying glass to focus light to a little point and burn something, what is happening is the lens is collecting the light spread out over an area which is the diameter of the lens, and condensing it together into that little bright point. Telescopes do much the same thing. It takes the very dim light (dim because light spreads out from the source) from an object such as a galaxy, that it has collected from an area of the size of the lens' aperture, and condenses is to make it brighter so your eyes can see it. The eyepeice then helps to magnify this little bright image so you can get a good look at it.

Telescopes that say something like 25x100 have an aperture of 100mm and the eyepeice magnifies something 25 times it's original size. Any reputable telescope has detachable eyepeices so the magnification depends, in part, on the eyepeice used.

All telescopes have a limit to which things can be reasonably magnified because when you magnify something in a telescope you magnify the turbulence in the atmosphere and the inevitable defects with the optics the telescope uses. In other words, if you use too high of a magnification you get a blurry image. In most situations, it's better to use low magnification in a telescope so you get a crips clear image and it fits in the entire field of view.
The larger the aperture of the telescope, the higher magnification eyepeice you can use and still get decent images.

To answer yor question, the "most powerful telescope on the market"..for live viewing, is probably the 40" truss tube telescope made by JMI (Jim's Mobile) http://www.jimsmobile.com/images/ntt40b.jpg

Of course if you have the money and want something larger, most companies are willing to work with and individual to make you a custom scope.

That all being said, if you have a moderate sized telescope with good optics and a nice CCD camera and some software, you can compensate for the smaller size of the telescope's aperture and get images which rival, and often exceed those taken buy observatories with giant telescopes 20 years ago.

Answer 3

A generic rule is the maximum usable zoom in a telescope is 50 times the diameter of the lens in inches. For example if the front optic is 4 inches in diameter, any zoom above 200x is next to worthless (the resulting image will be too blurry).

For most observational astronomy light gathering power is more important than zoom. The single most important number is the diameter of the lenses and mirrors. Zoom is useful for viewing planets, but not much else. Look into Celestron telescopes. They make excellent consumer available telescopes.

Answer 4

Go to Orion Telescopes.com. Request a catalog, they are free. The catalog contains a great amount information about what scope will meet you needs. I have a short tube 80mm refractor on an equatorial mount and an 8" Newtonian reflector on an equatorial mount. All of the above is explained in the catalog.
However, if I could do it again, I would ask Meade.com for a catalog. They are made in america, but cost more then an Orion.
Stay away from Dept. store stuff. Don't buy at Costco or Sam' Club. I bought my stuff on-line and it worked out just fine.

Answer 5

Do not buy a telescope based on the "zoom" or magnification, or power. High zoom is very cheap to obtain and is virtually worthless. I own a very large telscope (17.5-inch diameter and 7 feet long) and I never use magnification above 200. Telescope aperture (diameter) is much more important. You can change the magnification simply by changing the eyepiece and usually, higher magnification eyepieces are cheaper than lower power ones.

If you want to buy a telescope, the best way, by far, to find out what to buy is to hook up with your local amatuer astronomy group. You can probably find your local club online. There are also many stores that sell quality scopes online. Orion at www.telescopes.com is one of them.

Answer 6

Like the others have said, don't buy a telescope based on its magnifying power - a crappy image magnified 600 times is just a large crappy image!

Answer 7

If you find out..let me know......I have tried to find one at stores...and they all suck.....And the ones on-line........I am afraid I'll get ripped off.....I used to have one that was great that cost about 400 bucks.....Stupid me sold it for 50....now I want another and the astronomy store I bought it at closed shop several years ago.