Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca.C
Hi,
my name is Luca and I am from Melbourne.
I've been interested in astronomy for a very long time, and now it's time to finally get a telescope, though I am still quite confused.
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Hi Luca,
Apologies for taking your thread in a somewhat different direction... so I hope that the digression threw up something of interest to you.
It's perfectly normal to be "quite confused", as you say - even after buying a telescope or two! As others have said above, there's no single perfect answer as the different mounts and telescope designs all have their pros and cons.
There's a good pair of articles in the stickies at the top of this forum - Article 1 and Article 2, which cover a lot of the aspects. Worth a read.
When I started (a whole 3 months ago!) by far the hardest thing for me was simply finding my way around the sky. When i looked through a telescope what I could see was a whole lot busier and more complex than what i could see with the naked eye, or on basic star charts. So I was glad that my first scope was a basic fairly low powered refractor. I still couldn't see, for instance, the whole of the Southern Cross, only a part of it at one time. But at least everything was "the right way up" so I was able to slowly get the hang of navigating through star hopping.
What scope you buy first depends a lot on your priorities. Mine was to learn more about the layout of the skies first, before diving into deep space object and/or astrophotography. So a basic refractor with a simple alt-az mount was a good choice - easy to carry about, easy to set up (open tripod and start viewing, no real setup to do) and easy to use. It even works with a camera attached. Then, as i got more familiar with navigating I bought a more powerful telescope.... and got lost all over again...
But it's a great hobby and whatever you choose will have more plusses than minusses.
Good luck with it.
Cheers.
Chris