Astronomy

[nellyleelephant]

Anyone do this as a hobby?
It's something I've wanted to start up for a while now and the g/f is willing to spend up to £200 at Christmas for a telescope.

What will I get for that? I've had a look around....Skywatcher and Celestron seem to do fairly decent stuff in my price range, but I don't really know how good they are / what i'd be able to see.
Any tips?

Thanks

[Eric Mc]

Do a search on PH as this question has been raised a few times. You might find some Astronomy threads over in the "Boats, Trains and Planes" forum (don't ask.... )

[nellyleelephant]

Thanks, will do.

I had originally thought that maybe I should have posted in the photography section, but thought better of it......but the boats and planes section?? So confusing these days.....

[Puggit]

How much is your budget - anything from £300 to thousands is feasible.

Personally I have a Meade ETX-90 which is all a budding astronomer needs. The moon looks great, you can make out Saturn's rings and the main stripes on Jupiter (as well as the Gallilean moons).

[jmorgan]

My experience.

I spent around a year researching and looking at what I wanted and how I could use it. I tried to get to the local astronomy club but their meeting days were when I was usually working but do look them up. They will have the gear you can look at and probably try.

Take into account portability, I live in a light polluted area so I wanted to get it to a dark site (still not done it yet, job a weather etc). On the bracketed comment, you get shafted a lot by the H2O, at least I have in Wales when I have time off.

Look into expansion. That is I looked at scopes I could add to. So buying initially without the motors and a manual system saves money. I can add motors at a later date. I did not but a GOTO system as it was more expensive and a bit of me says I should know my way around the sky.

Good tripod, very important, unless you look for a dobsonion, not sure how they are kept stable. This is for a stable platform, makes for good viewing and even more important if you get into imaging.

I chose a Skywatcher 200 as it ticked the boxes and was ideal for planet watching, something I can do with the light pollution. It can aslo take a DSLR and a webcam. It can have motors added, on me list and it came with an EQ5 tripod. Well made and stable and solid when assembled.

£200? I would aim higher.


I am still very much new to this but it is good when it works.

Edit. During the time I did get interested to buying the scope I got a chart and a pair of binoculars and a deck chair and started to learn my way around. Hastily dropped the binos when I realised that walking around in my back garden at night when all the houses local back on to me........ onest ocifer

Edited by jmorgan on Thursday 10th September 09:00

[Puggit]

jmorgan said:

£200? I would aim higher

Not bad for a starter

[nellyleelephant]

Thanks for the good advice people.

Looks like i should up the budget then, I've been looking at Newtonians as apparently you get better performance for your money (or so i've read)

Light pollution shouldn't be a problem as i'll be mainly using it in France, and our garden is in the middle of nowhere, even without binoculars the night sky is breathtaking there.

[selwonk]

Useful link for you:

http://www.stellarium.org/

[Pooh]

If you really want to get into astronomy, how about doing a coarse like this

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/...

It is not cheap but I got a huge amount out of doing it and I am a planetary scientist rather than astronomer, we did some fascinating things like analyzing the spectrum of light we had collected reflected from the surface of Jupiter's moons.
The tutors are professional astronomers and cosmologists so they can give great advice regarding equipment etc.

[jmorgan]

Puggit said:

jmorgan said:

£200? I would aim higher

Not bad for a starter

Ah. See? I am still learning but my criteria I realised at some point I wanted more than a 6" reflector newtonian, the newtonian I had decided on. 10" was a bit too far for me personally for a first scope so went for the 8". Very pleased with it. What I did find was what someone might want, A N Other would have something else for slightly different reasons.

Not having a pop.

[Puggit]

nellyleelephant said:

Thanks for the good advice people.

Looks like i should up the budget then, I've been looking at Newtonians as apparently you get better performance for your money (or so i've read)

Light pollution shouldn't be a problem as i'll be mainly using it in France, and our garden is in the middle of nowhere, even without binoculars the night sky is breathtaking there.

Whereabouts in France? The best time is in winter, and at our house in Sarthe it's too damn cold to sit outside.

So I got one of these Meade LPI - I can watch the night sky from my laptop. And take photos too

[nellyleelephant]

We're in south west Normandy, draw a line 20 miles long, directly east of Mont St Michel and you find us.

It does get cold in winter, but not much different from the UK.

[Puggit]

nellyleelephant said:

We're in south west Normandy, draw a line 20 miles long, directly east of Mont St Michel and you find us.

It does get cold in winter, but not much different from the UK.

Ahhh - bit more of an Atlantic climate compared to us. Gets down to -10 for us in winter

[nellyleelephant]

Yep, not far from the sea, so you know it's winter, but it's not that cold!

[zakelwe]

I'd always advise people to get a good pair of binoculars first to see if they do really like looking around the sky at night for more than just a week or 2. If you find astronomy is not your thing then you can always use the binoculars for birds or planes or just on holiday on those topless beaches.

Pentax make a reasonable 12x50 pair for about £100.

Regards
Andy

[nellyleelephant]

I had thought about some binoculars, i found a pair of 70mm aperture celestrons for not bad money, but I'd be worried that although they would be ok, I would feel as if i wanted more, ie, a telescope!

[The Black Flash]

The bbc sky at night forum is quite a good place for advice on this, I found.

I went for a skywatcher 8 inch newtonian a couple of years back - like jmorgan says, you can add motors and all that stuff later.
If you buy a GOTO scope at this end of the market you'll loose a lot in terms of apperture - again like jmorgan I felt I should learn my way around the sky, which is quite an art in itself. Astronomy now / Sky at night magazine both have monthly sky charts which are brilliant to get started with.

Dobsonians give you the largest apperture for your money, and hence you will be able to see more and fainter things; but they cannot be upgraded to do photography. They can be very portable.

Newtonians are next, and are generally reckoned to be good for deep sky objects (nebulas etc). The larger ones are rather heavy, mine is something like 50kg with the stand.

Refractors give you the smallest apperture per pound, but are generally said to be best for planets.

[road ragette]

For free and brilliant astronomy, do this
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
You learn all about different types and classifications of galaxies, then do them. The pictures are taken by a robotic telescope and, apparently, the human brain is better at figuring out the shape than very powerful computers so they need good people to help out. Enjoy!

[DIW35]

If you think you are going to be happy just looking around the night sky, then a good pair of binoculars, and possibly a tripod to mount them on, is a very good starting place. You will be able to see way more than you can with the naked eye, and almost as much as you can with a smallish telescope.

However, if at some point you think you will want to try photographing the night sky, then a telescope is definitely the way to go.

[Maxf]

Living in central London - is a telescope a complete folly with the light/environmental pollution? I've always fancied one, but am not sure if it is better left until I eventually move out of the city.