Anyone got a telescope?

[simostorm]

Thinking of getting one.. anyone got one.. how much did it cost? What can you see with it?

 

[Ausguy]

stuff

 

[Parra]

I have one, an el-cheapo reflector, but we got a lot of use out of it. Mainly looking at planets. You can see the polar caps on Mars, moons of jupiter, saturns rings etc even on a cheap telescope. And of course the moon.

There is always something interesting happening in the sky and it is interesting to keep track of.

I have thought about getting another one. A useful feature is computerised auto tracking of objects. You'd be surprised how quickly the rotation of the earth takes the object you are looking at out of the view range and it is a pain to track by hand.

If that is not an option then at least go to an equatorial mount. This will make finding objects easier and tracking easier.


If you are thinking of looking at something other than the night sky then disregard even this little bit of advice as that is all I have used a telescope for. If all you will use it for is the night sky then a reflector is all you need.

 

[MSIH]

Good question. I'm looking into purchasing a house with a 2nd storey, a telescope will help my peeping tommery substantially.

 

[Parra]

Good question. I'm looking into purchasing a house with a 2nd storey, a telescope will help my peeping tommery substantially.

Different type of telescope is required. How happy are you going to be if everything is upside down?

 

[Twizzle]

Good question. I'm looking into purchasing a house with a 2nd storey, a telescope will help my peeping tommery substantially.

a second storey ?

should get you 3 metres closer to Mars

 

[God-King Dean]

Oh I got a telescope for ya...

 

[simostorm]

I have one, an el-cheapo reflector, but we got a lot of use out of it. Mainly looking at planets. You can see the polar caps on Mars, moons of jupiter, saturns rings etc even on a cheap telescope. And of course the moon.

There is always something interesting happening in the sky and it is interesting to keep track of.

I have thought about getting another one. A useful feature is computerised auto tracking of objects. You'd be surprised how quickly the rotation of the earth takes the object you are looking at out of the view range and it is a pain to track by hand.

If that is not an option then at least go to an equatorial mount. This will make finding objects easier and tracking easier.


If you are thinking of looking at something other than the night sky then disregard even this little bit of advice as that is all I have used a telescope for. If all you will use it for is the night sky then a reflector is all you need.

nice, thanks.

 

[Nuke]

Mine is a $99 special from K-Mart.
It's not bad for a starter, however it really is cheap and nasty. I've seen some pretty cool things on it -especially initially- however it's very limited in what you can see with it.

I've seen some of Jupiter's moons, the rings of Saturn, and of course Mars, Venus, the moon, and some comet about 7 or 8 years ago.

My biggest disappointment is that, really, that's all that I can see other than stars, which still look like flickering pin points in the black sky (I knew this before I even attempted though!). Venus, Mars, and Jupiter all appear as a perfectly round white circle (well, reddish for Mars of course), while Saturn is the same but with a distinct ring around it. There's no details to be seen. No polar caps on Mars, no cloud patterns on Jupiter/Saturn, ect. I'd love to be able to see another galaxy too, but I'm not really expecting to with a home-telescope.

One day, years from now, I hope to get a computerised, bigger, better telescope. The computerised aspect is mainly to keep track of objects in the sky. The pricetag of a few thousand dollars is what's stopping me!

 

[Burrzz]

Start with Binoculars and learn the sky first before you waste a lot of money on something and you can't use. It will take a year to learn where to point it!