where to buy a real good telescope?

Question

i used to have one but it wasn't all that great. i am looking for one that i can use around and take to gazing parties. and that is powerful enough to really make out details of what i am looking at. also like to get filters so i can look at the sun, and a good camera to take photos of things i see. any help will be good and appreciated

Answer 1

The answer is simple: a telescope store. That is, a store specializing in selling telescopes and other astronomical equipment. There are such stores in most larger centres; look in the Yellow Pages under Telescopes. There is a telescope store in one of the towns near me, and five more in the nearest major city. These stores have a variety of telescopes on display and are staffed by people who know about astronomy. They are the best places to buy a telescope.

If there aren't any stores near you, buy online from a well established telescope store. You can identify the real ones by seeing whether they have a real street address and whether they advertise in Astronomy or Sky & Telescope. I've ordered online from Khan Scope, Kendrick, and O'Neil in Canada, and Orion in the USA, and always received prompt and courteous service.

It's always worth seeking out and joining your local astronomy club. Their members often have used scopes for sale, and are always willing to "share the view" at star parties, so you can check out many scopes first hand.

One small tip. Don't bother getting a solar filter just yet. We are at solar miniumum and there hasn't been a sunspot on the Sun for months!

Whatever you do, don't buy a telescope from a department, discount, or toy store, or most camera stores (except a few which specialize in telescopes). Don't buy a telescope off eBay, either. Look for stores which carry at least a couple of the major brands: Celestron, Meade, Orion, SkyWatcher, or Tele Vue.

Answer 2

I wholeheartedly agree with Orion telescopes as the best source.
They sell excellent equipment at very reasonable prices and stand behind their products 100% even long after the sale.
Not knowing exactly what your expectations are, here are a few facts about visual observing:
Except for the planets, you will not be able to see colour through the telescope. Most deep space objects are very dim and the human eye cannot see colour under low light conditions.
This fact is well known and is reflected in the old-time saying: "At night all cats are grey".
So forget the pretty pictures in the advertisements and on the Box. They were all taken with special cameras. The camera can collect light over time, something your eye cannot do. Deep space objects look more like B&W pictures. In some cases like very spectacular ones.
The detail and brightness of the view in a Telescope are determined by the Aperture ( diameter ) of the main optics, be they mirror or lens.
So, why not just get the biggest diameter scope you can find??
Simple, you'll have to wrestle with the beast.
While the 12" scope will give you some spectacular views, it won't fit in my car!! And it weighs around 100lbs.! That is fine if you only set it up at home. But if you think of transporting it to a really dark site, where a scope of that size really comes into it's own, make sure you have the means to transport it and are in good enough shape to set it up and take it down in the dark. ( Nothing gets Astronomers more ticked off than someone turning on a white light of any sort, because it totally ruins their night vision and it takes more than 1/2 hour to get it back!!).
I would strongly suggest that you find one of the Astronomy clubs in your area. They will be glad to have you look through their Telescopes. That way you get a realistic idea of what to expect before you spend your money.
Anyone can take any camera and hold it in front of the telescope's eyepiece and take a picture of the Moon with a little practice.
Anything much beyond that requires special equipment.
At that point the Mount becomes the most important piece of your set up. And the mount can easily cost you much more than the telescope. I use a 10" Newtonian Reflector for imaging,( it's an Orion by the way) and the mount that is big enough to hold it for that purpose weighs about 100lbs. by itself. And mounts that can handle the weight of a 10" Telescope accurately enough for imaging are not cheap!! ( try around $2000.-) On top of that, you need a lot of other experience before you can even think about deep sky imaging.
So, get your scope first and get good at using it visually before you move on.

Adolph

Answer 3

First, read this. Ignore that it's from Australia, and ignore the money amounts, which are for AU$ in 2002. The principle is the same.

http://astronomy.concreteairship.com/scope.htm.

If you insist on going with a scope, look up Orion Skyquest Intelliscopes, which are a cousin of the one in your link. This type of scope is an excellent starter, even though they don't look like what most people think of telescopes.

http://www.telescope.com/control/category/~category_id=dobsonians/~pcategory=telescopes;jsessionid=93015BDE8A642E7633EE1FFD70F16927.ivprod1...

On this link, look at the XT-10 and XT-8 (or even the 12), with and without the Intelliscope handset, which is not necessary to enjoy the scope. This is called a reflector on a Dobsonian mount. They're simple to use, look impressive, and are good for most types of backyard observation because they can resolve faint objects as well.

If you're on a limited budget, get a good quality pair of 50mm binoculars and a book of sky charts, especially "Nightwatch" by Terence Dickinson, or "Turn Left At Orion". Come to think of it, buy the book if you get the scope, too.

Forget the photography for the time being. It's not as simple as you think. You'll get into it when you know the sky a bit, and have the patience to deal with it. You can take photos through the eyepiece of the Dobsonian of the moon, and maybe bright planets. You'd have to fork out for an equatorial drive mount and tripod strong enough to hold the scope dead still, and reliable enough to drive at the exact speed.

Answer 4

Well, I don't know where you are located, or what your budget looks like, and what you call "good." So being fairly precise for you is going to be rather difficult. Also, in the process of making a decision, you added the photography aspect which is a whole new ball game.

I recommend joining a local Astronomy Club at your earliest convenience to gain knowledge from others in your area, and avoid having to make all the mistakes that they made getting where they are now. This is most important unless you have an unlimited amount of money to squander on mistakes.

Please go and visit these sites:

www.meade.com
www.takahashiamerica.com
www.tmboptical.com
www.celestron.com
www.hoo-germany.de
www.astromart.com
www.cloudynights.com

In this list I gave you some low cost telescope mfgr's and some high cost telescope mfgr's. The last two listings are places you could go to and pick up a lot of information
and check out used equipment advertisements.

In looking through this list you will find telescopes ranging from $200 up to $35,000. Do not be alarmed...Good optics cost a lot of money. So you will obviously have to make a
choice which fits within your budget, and live with those limitations.

By all means, consider the portability of the telescope and mount...how much does it weigh...is your residence way out in the country where there are no city lights to interfere with looking into the sky. If not, you will have to travel away from the city to escape the bright lights at night, and the portability of your telescope assembly will be very important to you.

A really good telescope is useless without a good, solid, adjustable mount which prevents the telescope from wobbling all over the place and producing jittery pictures. My mount is a Meade LDX-75 GO-TO design which weighs about 75 pounds. It is portable, but just "barely" so. I canot lug it very far. So most of the distance must be traveled by car.

Two other aspects of your new telescope are very important...The size of the objective lense or mirror should be the largest you can reasonably afford, and the eyepieces should be the best that you can buy. Eyepieces can be quickly interchanged, so that later on, you might purchase better EP's and get better performance from your telescope. Eyepieces by Televue, Zeiss, and Pentax are a few of the better mfgr's and good EP's from them run $200 to $600 each. There are, of course, many others out there, and used EP's should be checked out as well if you are budget minded.

My telescope is a 6 Inch Meade Refractor and I have a collection of Televue Nagler and Panoptic EP's which make it a fairly good system, not excellent, just fairly good. The guys with 12 and 14 Inch SCT's run circles around me performance wise, and their systems cost four to five times what I paid for my rig. You should expect to pay $4000 to $6000 for a setup of that caliber, and it will not be really
portable. In fact, most systems of that size have a rather permanent home because of weight and problems hauling the equipment around. I would still love to have one.

Answer 5

The resolution of the telescope you can get will be proportional to roughly the third root of the amount of money you are willing to invest. So if you are willing to put up eight times the money, you will get approx. twice the resolution. But beyond something like a $10k investment (probably earlier) you will be seeing limited, anyway. And not much beyond that you will not be able to transport that instrument any longer and you will have to build an observatory.

And IMHO in no case will you be able to see the kind of details you are used to from looking at Hubble images. The physics of a multi-billion $ space telescope simply allows for a lot better image quality than anything you can do at home.

So in the end it really comes down to how good an instrument you want to afford and if what you can afford will make you happy?

Answer 6

A lot of good info here. I agree with most of it, and especially with Geoff. If you can find a local dealer who is knowledgeable, it will be worth the driving and the slight additional markup to get your questions and concerns answered by someone who is in the business. Sounds like you've been to some star parties, so you probably have an idea of what you like.

For what it's worth, what you are describing sounds like what I have. It's a Celestron C-11 on a really solid (not the new ones) german equatorial mount. No individual component weighs more than 40 lbf. When I want to do photography, I can. The scope is easy to set up and use. With Televue eyepieces, my views rival those in 18 inch Dobsonians. By the way - get a Telrad - very inexpensive, but a vital tool.

Clear skies and good luck..

Answer 7

that's apt to no longer artwork o.k.. you will ought to locate some thank you to mount a digicam head to the tripod. even in the adventure that your telescope mount has a one million/4-20 screw, the motions and controls is only no longer fabulous for pictures, and you does no longer have the skill to shoot portrait. additionally, photographic tripods are designed to be be transportable, and set up and take down promptly and easily. Your telescope tripod is probable appreciably extra awkward in this regard.

Answer 8

my dad recently bought one of off http://www.astromart.com .
He loves it but the guy who sold it to him was a dirty sleeze bag. but lets not get into that.

It depends on where you live. Look up local astronomy/telescope stores. Theres one around here called "Scope City"

Answer 9

Orion is best.

oriontelescopes.com

Answer 10

Brookstone .com