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Old 17-12-2011, 11:40 AM
SyberJ94 (Timo)
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Need Help On Buying A Telescope

Hi, I was just wondering if I could get some feedback on a 10" Skywatcher Dobsonian telescope. I need a new telescope as the one I've had since i was 7 (10 years ago) isn't the best. I also live in Suburban Canberra so is this the telescope that I need? I plan to look at not only the moon and planets, but even further out with galaxies and nebulae. Any advice welcome.

Thank You.
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Old 17-12-2011, 11:48 AM
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renormalised (Carl)
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Hi Timo, welcome to IIS

The 10" Skywatcher would make a good scope for yourself. You'll see plenty of galaxies and nebs with it, despite of the light pollution in Canberra. Good thing is it's not too hard to handle as it's reasonably portable.
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Old 17-12-2011, 12:46 PM
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BlackWidow (Mardy)
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Great choice

You will love it.. Very wise choice




Regards
Mardy
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Old 17-12-2011, 12:48 PM
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gregbradley
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You would need 10 inch aperture to see most galaxies and even then they are usually just faint blotches. There are a few that are bright enought to see some detail. Centarus A, M31 if you can see low enough to the north, NGC253 the Sculptor Galaxy and a few others. Really what you see visually are nebula, star clusters, globular clusters and planets/moon. You won't see galaxies like they are shown in astrophotos as those photos are several hours long using highly sensitive cameras to get it in perspective. You won't see colour either.
Perhaps a slight tinge on the brightest nebula and colour in Jupiter and Saturn. You will see colour in some stars.

Go-to capability is priceless as these objects are quite small and unless you know your way around the sky I'd say you would get frustrated trying to find things.

So that limits it really to your Meade/Celestron SCTs.

Refractors are great but unless your thing is widefield star views (which are nice for about 10 minutes then you're bored) you won't be seeing too many of the above unless you are up around the 6 inch aperture range. Price is high for the high quality refractors and position to view is often uncomfortable.

Newts are good but short focal length so that makes it hard. Now you need a barlow and they are fussier and harder to collimate. Great for imaging machines with the right setup though.

Dobs are great for large aperture and you can get them with navigation devices to be able to locate objects and even track with them. If the ultimate in visual is your thing then a dob with the extras is the go.
Price wise I think you would be getting up there by the time you add the niceties.

So Meade/Celestron SCTs are fairly untouchable bang for buck for visual/portability/ functionality/quality in my opinion. This is the area where they excel. Also used for planetary imaging and are excellent for that.

Celestron with its fastar system opens the door for quite good astrophotography and fairly economically. Then if you like it you advance to more expensive and different types of setups - typically a german equatorial mount and a Newt or refractor etc.

The new Meade system which doubles as either an alt/az mount or german equatorial mount (new and I haven't seen any reviews yet) sounds clever and has an road up already in place should you want to do imaging.

Greg.
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Old 17-12-2011, 02:20 PM
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renormalised (Carl)
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As you said Greg, the Meade/Celestron SCT's are the best bang for buck and versatility. My 8" ACF is great. But, they're also quite a bit more expensive than even a well kitted out 10" dob.

However, as Greg has pointed out, you're not going to see this grand sweeping spiral in your scope, no matter what size it is. Your eyes just don't gather enough light to bring out that kind of detail. Nor, in actual fact, do they have the spatial resolution to do so. In a 10", about the only colours you'll see in nebs are a faint greyish green. Very rarely a dim red. You'll see some colour in the planets and some stars. But that's about all. If you want to see reasonable colour visually in a scope on nebs and such, you're going to have to get yourself some really serious glass. 20" or better. A light bucket, for sure.
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Old 18-12-2011, 04:10 PM
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NorthernLight (Max)
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hi timo and welcome to iis!

as the others wrote, a 10" dob is a real eyeopener and a quite affordable one, too.
get yourself a laser collimator for around houndred bugs and you are well equiped.
as often stated, the best telescope is the one that gets used regularly. and i can tell that whenever there is a clear night and i have a couple of hours i am at my dob.
photography is a nice thing as allows one to see things impossible to see at the eyepiece. but its nothing for a tuesday night with a chance of clouds rolling in and does not ( at least for me) provide that recreational aspect stargazing has for many astrophiles.
a dob is set up in a few minutes and works pretty much immediately. it needs to cool down to ambient, granted. but that doesn't mean you can't use it straight away. a 2" 30mm wide angle and mild thermal inequilibrium is neglecable when scanning starfields.
it gets better with time.
once you have balanced the tube well and positioned some magnets (counterweights), adjusted friction and got a feeling for the movement, it will be the scope you are likely to use the most. even if you go into ap and own eq mounts and other telescopes.
don't even bother about goto's and gps if you ask me. it is this pointing and scanning that rewards when all of a sudden you something strange in the eyepiece and you zoom in and you think wow, what is this, and then you try to find out. that, to me, is when i feel like an astronomer.
push goto on my mount and telk my laptop to take 20 exposures is nice but i know in advance what i am likely to get.
ps: if you suffer from a lot of light pollution, get a uhc filter for the nebulae. a barlow lens doubles your eyepiece kit.
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