If I buy a telescope that is unable to "track"........?

Question

If I buy a telescope that is unable to "track" stars/planets will I be disappointed? How important is this feature to you? Thanks.

Answer 1

Before computerised telescopes came along, being able to track an object meant you needed an equatorial mount. You still do if you're planning on doing astrophotography. If this is your first scope, not having an equatorial mount may be an advantage. Using a telescope takes practice and a lot of people struggle with equatorial mounts and eventually give up. An alt-azimuth mount is much simpler to use and you'll get the chance to actually look through it. Another thing to think about is the cost - good equatorial mounts aren't cheap. If you get something like a dobsonian you're spending almost all your money on the telescope itself - if you decide that you really do want an equatorial you can buy (or make) the mount on its own and put your existing telescope on it. And then there's the issue of portability - do you need something that's easy to carry round? Equatorials can be heavy.

The world's moved on, of course, and you can get computerised mounts that will find the objects for you and then track them. That's great, but now you're spending an even smaller percentage of your hard earned cash on the bit you're going to look through! If money's no object then fine, but if you're on a budget you can easily end up with something that will very quickly find an object, but it wont be worth looking at because the 'scope's too small.

Answer 2

It depends. If you want to do astrophotgraphy, or take long views of the planets under high magnification, then yes, you will be disappointed.

However, you will also be disappointed if you buy a telescope that can track, but tracks poorly, or is too small to see anything significant unless you take a long exposure photograph of it.

Don't get anything smaller than 4.5" and, if you can afford it, most deffinatly get something bigger than that. Make sure it has a sturdy metal mount. If you buy a telescope with a good german equatorial, or a fork mount and wedge, you can always add tracking later.

Answer 3

I took the image of Saturn interior the 1st source with a 6 inch telescope and a webcam. there are a number of stable telescopes that length on your budget. See the final 2 components. via the way, making use of a telescope isn't as ordinary as many people think of. only getting the object interior the sector of view and retaining it there's a substantial subject for many beginners. They spend a gaggle on a telescope and don't understand the constellations and so won't have the ability to factor it and get annoyed and sell it on eBay for a million/2 what they paid for it. so it is rather useful to start small and easy. Even the smallest telescope will instruct Saturn's rings, so which you do no longer might desire to spend $a million,500 to start. There are stable beginner telescopes for $3 hundred or maybe much less. of direction they won't be computing device controlled, meaning it is going to likely be much extra important so which you would be able to get a large call atlas and learn the constellations. No all of them, however the vibrant ones which you are going to see that in the time of that ridiculously vibrant city sky you have there.

Answer 4

I have a 90mm refractor telescope that does not track. It requires that you adjust it every minute (give or take) to keep a star in the field of view, but that's not too annoying.

A higher power scope, or one with a narrower field of view, would require more frequent adjustments.

But the following is very important:
My scope has an equatorial mount, which means that it needs to be set up so that it rotates on an axis parallel to the earth's rotational axis. Once it's set up that way, I can just turn a knob slowly, and the stars don't move in the scope's field of view.

If you don't get an equatorial mount for your telescope, it will be more complicated to adjust it to keep stars in view. (I'm not sure HOW hard that would be, but it would be somewhat more complicated.

Answer 5

It really depends on how serious you are about this. Many people get telescopes and then don't really do much with them at all.

Others will get serious and need the electronic tracking to make things easier. The automatic track is actually secondary to its ability to find stars that you ask for. That's worth more than just tracking:
http://www.meade.com/telestar/index.html

Answer 6

Depends. Do you plan on having a lot of people over to look through your telescope? You'll have to keep adjusting it. Also, you can't use it for astrophotography. But if you don't plan on either of those things, you won't miss it.

Answer 7

It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to just gaze at the Moon?

Do you want to look at planets?

Do you want to search for comets?

Or do you want to take pictures of dim objects? You can "get away with", without tracking, taking pictures of bright objects as the shutter speeds are fast. But if you want to take pictures of very dim objects, exposure times will be long and all you'll get is a trail of the object that you were vainly attempting to photograph.

It depends upon what you want to do.

Answer 8

extremelyy importat


dont bother buying without