Suggestions On Which Telescopes

[Frostyricho (Stephen)]

Hi Everyone on IIS,
Im looking to get a new scope but i don't know what to get. I want something that will give me views of deep sky objects. But i dont want it to be like the size of a 10" dobsonian. I want it to be able to fit into the back of my mums car which isn't that big but the dimensions of it are 1.7m by 2m. But then I think i can just take it apart and fold the stand up. Also I would like it to have motor drive and imports for astrophotography as i want to start doing it. I've been doing research for months but can not find a telescope that i want. I joined this site in help for finding the perfect telescope for me.

The price range is about $200-$450.

Kind Regards,
Frostyricho

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Hi Frostyricho! and welcome to IIS

The thing you will start to learn as you research telescopes is that there is no one scope that can do it all. Any design is going to be a compromise that sacrifices some features to gain others. The most obvious one is one you have already alluded to. In order to gain portability you often lose aperture.

Your budget is very limited at a maximum of $450 so the first obvious question that must be asked is how important is astrophotography to you? Imaging is a very expensive trail in most cases. Yes you can do it cheaply doing star trails, time lapses or if you are keen on manually guiding wide fields or doing eyepiece projections of the moon, but in most cases much higher budgets are required.

Motor drives sound OK but in lower end scopes they are not good enough to gain really good images.

My usual advice to beginners is to get a small is 6-10" dobsonian. It will have plenty of aperture to see lots of objects, uncomplicated construction so little can go wrong, easy to set up and use and allows you to edecide if this hobby is really for you before investing $'000s of your hard earned.

Cheers

Malcolm

[Frostyricho (Stephen)]

Thanks Barx,
Well i might not get a brand new telescope maybe a second hand one. My dad's friend got a second hand telescope off eBay for like a quarter price of the original price and it was in good nick. With astrophotography i think i might just get a webcam or something and modify it and use registack but then i think i need motor drive and all that to track it so maybe i wont to that. But then next year i'm going to america and they have insane deals on telescopes so ill see then. But maybe ill get one now and then wait till i go to America next year and see if i can get a good deal. Maybe i can get a big reflector and then save up for a mount with a motor drive and then mount it onto there. I dont know what do you think i should do.