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Originally Posted by Sbonda
Hi, I'm completely new to all of this and only decided a few weeks ago that i would get a telescope for my son for his 9th birthday. I mean...i may use it myself from time to time...but it's mostly for him!
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Welcome to Ice In Space, Brendan.
You'll get plenty of good advice from the long time regulars here.
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I have a modest budget of $300 - $400 (closer to $300 will keep me happily married for a while longer). I live in Perth, Western Australia.
I've come to the conclusion that i would like a Dobsonian scope (seems to be recommended for beginners) and was planning on getting the Skywatcher Heritage 5" P130.
https://www.ozscopes.com.au/skywatch...telescope.html
However, i can't find stock locally. I did see find the Saxon Deepsky 5" dobsonian for $40 cheaper and up the road too.
https://binocentral.com.au/product/s...ian-telescope/
Having done some research i believe these are essentially the same scope with different branding so I'm about to take the plunge and order one......unless someone has other recommendations.
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They are very much the exact same telescope.
I've owned my P130 since late July 2018. With good eyepieces, it's a brilliant scope.
I'm not certain of shipping time, but Astro Anarchy here in Brisbane has stock of the P130.
http://www.astroanarchy.com.au/teles...ritage130.html
On occasion when they could not get stock of the P130, they've carried the Saxon scope.
The biggest advantages of the P130 are its weight and portability, and its light gathering capability.
It's small enough and lightweight enough to pretty well be takeen anywhere.
The light weight of the actual telescope means you can safely mount it on pretty well any suitable telescope tripod, without exceeding weight limits.
With an aperture of f5 and good eyepieces, what you can see in the scope will be nicely bright.
Eyepieces will actually be the bigger expense overall, but they can be slowly bought, so as to not instantly break the bank. The stock eyepieces are just good enough to get started with, but getting better ones will be a big improvement.
I use the Saxon Cielo HD eyepieces with my P130, having the 6.5mm, 12mm, and 25mm. The Saxon eyepieces are carried by Binocentral.
https://binocentral.com.au/product-c...pieces/page/2/
About the only other thing to think of, with the scope, is to figure out where and how you will set it up.
Being a tabletop telescope, the obvious thing to put it on would seem to be, well, a table. And you'd be wrong. You'd need to move the scope around the table, so you can see through the scope, turning it to point around the sky, NESW.
What you are better to set the scope up on is a classic round, flat top, unpadded, kitchen chair, or piano stool.
The pic at the bottom of the post, shows how I set things up on my east facing patio/balcony. An old, second-hand wooden kitchen chair.
Apart from that, the other things to have are a decent map of the sky, and an idea of what the skies will be up to of an evening.
For the maps, it's apps and programs, a planisphere, and books.
Stellarium has apps for Android and IOS, and programs for Windows and Linux.
SkySafari is for IOS and Android.
The IceInSpace Store has planispheres, as does all the decent astronomy shops.
https://shop.iceinspace.com.au/shop/...c-planisphere/
Binocentral has the Qasar Astronomy Australia 2020 book.
https://binocentral.com.au/product/astronomy-2020/
edit: fix typo