Stars / Astronomy / Astrophotography / Telescopes / Astro

London’s famous light pollution will hide them too.

Fucken light pollution... I blame Trump.

Star gazing holidays

Mars last night, still a bit low and fuzzy

1 Attachment

Lovely sky tonight, showed my daughter the rings of Saturn & the moons of Jupiter through my cheapo telescope. Easy to find them as the moon is right in the middle

It’s a brilliant sight tonight, isn’t it? Mrs Ludd agrees. I might pop out later to see if I can get a good view of mars. A bit windy though.

Clouding over a bit now where I am :(

Yep, shame about that. I will keep checking, as I now have a £65 laptop that can cope with my fancypants high speed planetary camera.

Mars getting a bit clearer last night

1 Attachment

noice!

Just found out that my 3 1/2 year old niece would like a telescope for Xmas, which I think sounds awesome. Unfortunately Uncle Brun knows nothing about them.

There are some pretty garish 'my first telescope' types, among other more normal looking models that are branded 'for kids' but I've no idea what differentiates the latter from regular low-end telescopes.

Any suggestions on a budget of £50-£100?

Binoculars for that price. Any telescope in that range won't work properly and only be a disappointment.

Minimum price is 250 to 300.

I've been toying with idea of getting a Dobsonian telescope, but they all seem to be out of stock

Fairly decent guide here from Virtual Astro on Twitter

https://www.meteorwatch.org/choosing-family-telescopes-guide/

I'd recommend one of these two, depending on which fits your budget best:

http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/beginners-telescopes/heritage-100p_dobsonian.html
http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/astronomical_telescopes-sky-watcher-sky-watcher_iya_2009_special_edition_telescopes/hertiage-76.html

Dobsonian telescopes are a great place to start IMO. The simple mount means you get more bang for your buck with the actual scope. There are two main types of mount, alt-azimuth and equatorial. With an alt-azimuth mount, you rotate the scope left-right and up-down (Dobsonians fall into this category). With an equatorial mount, you basically align the mount with North star and this means you only need to move the scope side to side. While this is obviously a better solution for following objects, the mounts bump the price up and it also requires aligning every time you want to use the thing. A sure-fire way to get a kid bored of using it IMO.

The other category to worry about is the type of scope itself, mainly broken down into reflectors (these use a mirror to focus light) and refractors (these use a lens to focus light). Once you get above a certain aperture, refractors get costly very quickly due to ease of manufacturing of large mirrors vs large lenses I imagine.

I'm sure there are much more knowledgeable & experienced people here than I who may be able to offer some more detailed advice. But feel free to fire over any questions you might have.

Btw I have the slightly larger version of the above scopes (the 130p) and I'm a big fan. Takes no time at all to set up which is one of the main advantages in my book.

Edit: Just re-read your comment and spotted it was for a 3 1/2 year old, for some reason I misread it as older originally. Most of the detail up there is probably largely redundant but I still stand by getting a simple scope like the little Dobsonian up there.

Any telescope in that range won't work properly and only be a disappointment.

Think my Skywatcher 130p was around £130 and I was able to see the red spot on Jupiter from Crystal Palace. I'd say that's pretty decent going.

I suspect the heavens aligned pretty neatly for the red spot to be clearly visible. Any scope under 250 will just have such a wobbly mount and such poor fine control settings that it will mostly be underwhelming...

So for 250, what would you suggest?

Here: https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/sky-watcher-explorer-130ps-az5-telescope.html

The tripod and mount are a new style to me, it looks robust from the pictures but I'd give it a wobble in person before buying.

As you can see, this scope: https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/all-sky-watcher-newtonian-reflector-telescopes.html?scroll=1368

Is 50% telescope and 50% mount by price, OTA : Telescope tube only. An EQ5 mount is the minimum I'd bother with.

Quite possibly it was ideal seeing conditions. The mount stability isn't an issue as it's a small Dobsonian. Basic, but solid.

But still, to be able to see that from a spot in London for not much over £100, I was impressed.

It's been my one and only scope to date (since moved to rural Ireland so looking to upgrade at the moment), so I'm not exactly the most experienced in how various scopes compare.

Here: https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/sky-­watcher-explorer-130ps-az5-telescope.htm­l

Possibly showing my lack of knowledge here, but what's with the price difference and the same size Dobsonian that I have? (https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/sky-watcher-heritage-130p-flextube-parabolic-dobsonian-telescope.html)

It's still an Alt-Azimuth mount but just offers finer control? I mean they also have an similar EQ mounted scope for cheaper here: https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/sky-watcher-explorer-130p-parabolic-newtonian-reflector-telescope.html

I'm sure there's a valid reason for the pricing, but it just seems odd that (admittedly at a glance) that you're getting a similar scope with an alt-azimuth mount and paying more than an EQ mount. (I know very little about the various EQ mounts, the one linked is an EQ2 so may be complete trash for all I know)

Thanks for the advice above, although it's started to go over my head. Realised I might've got ahead of myself and not considered whether she wants this for looking at the night sky or West Yorkshire countryside (they have a new house with views, bastards). Need to give my sister a call but figure if it's the latter then binoculars would seem to make more sense.

Or I could default to getting her some my little pony stuff.

Binoculars are good for star gazing as well, you can pick out some nice clusters and the planets including the Galillean moons quite nicely. Plus they're easy to use and can be taken out for daytime viewing as well.

The OTA, Optical tube assembly, is basically the same for the Newtonian and the Dobsonian. The price difference will be the mount. Note how my second link varies in price from 250 for the OTA to 1000+ for the OTA plus a fancy mount.

Equatorial mounts have there uses for non computer controlled systems but the EQ2 is rubbish. It gets really floppy and wobbly really quickly. And the setting dials aren't worth looking at. My scope was 600, with the OTA at 200 and the mount at 400, telescope pointing is so crucial to the experience that the mount and tripod should be a major concern for purchases.

The particular arrangement is less important than the machining and quality of the components in the drives and bearings, much like bikes!

i'm amazed binocs can make out moons, when we went to mill hill i seem to remember we had trouble picking out detail on the planet we looked at through the big telescope and it was still quite small in the eye piece
or am i mis remembering

The tripod on my Skywatcher Newtonian reflector has cracked, can you get replacement bits? It has a GoTo mount, hope I don't have to replace the whole thing?

I was actually thinking about giving it away to my local special school and getting a refractor for portability. Would I be able to mount one on a camera tripod? Or am I better off getting some nice, big binoculars and put those on a tripod? I want something I can stick in the back of the car and set up really easily out in the bush... Max magnification for buck!

They can't resolve the moon's into discs but you'll be able to see them as points on each side of Jupiter.