Help!! Too many telescopes to choose from...

[FFH]

So what should I be looking for? I have a budget of $500.00 and would like to get the best for my money, being a complete novice with so many types and brands of telescope I am now nothing more than a very confused novice.

What I want to do is view the planets, moon, nebula's and deep space objects and eventually get into astrophotography.

So where do I start, whats a good buy and whats not? I have been looking on ebay and have worked out there is a 1,000 of the cheapest ones (I do not want to go there) but there seems to be some reasonable ones as well.
Saxon, Seben are a couple that caught my eye but not knowing anything have held off buying. Meade seem to be quite good as well but passed out when I saw the price, I figured that will be in a couple of years time.

So any advice/comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[ving (David)]

many shops are selling the GSO 8" dobsonian reflector within your price range so that would be my sugestion.
this is what it looks like... dont pay any atentionto the dork next to it!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...b/Dsc03554.jpg

later when you want to do astro pics you can get a mount and make it look like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...attachment.jpg

and this i think is your best bet for the price you want to pay.

www.andrewscom.com.au (for GSO as above)
www.bintel.com.au (for GSO as above)
www.myastroshop.com.au (for a skywatcher one)

[astronut (John)]

FFH, That's great advice Vingo!! Couldn't add any more.

[iceman (Mike)]

Ving is on the money! Don't buy any of those cheap scopes off ebay, you'll regret it big time.

The 8" dob is great value for money and within your budget.

I wouldn't plan to do any breathtaking astrophotography at that price - you'll need to spend double and triple that on the mount, camera etc to start doing "serious" astrophotography.

But even with an 8" dob, there's nothing stopping you from taking a digital camera, holding it up to the eyepiece and clicking away!

btw, where abouts do you live?

It would be a good idea to attend an observing session with a local astro society or IceInSpace observing group - it'll give you a chance to look at the different types of scopes and actually look through them so you know what you're in for.

btw, to the site! How did you hear about us?

[acropolite (Phil)]

If you can stretch the budget an extra $179 Bintel have the deluxe 10 inch, larger aperture, better focusser and cooling fans, there's no substitute for aperture and if overall size for transport is not an issue then you'll see more faint stuff with the 10 inch.

[FFH]

Originally Posted by astronut

FFH, That's great advice Vingo!! Couldn't add any more.

So Guan Sheng Optical are the better quality scopes?

Which would be the better value newtonian, a Guan Sheng GS-280 for $449.00 or a Guan Sheng GS-500 for $499?

I am not too worried about how it looks, as long as it will be relatively easy to move around and give the best possible imagery for photography?

Sorry alot of questions I know but I wanna do this right the first time.

FFH.

[FFH]

Originally Posted by iceman

btw, where abouts do you live?

It would be a good idea to attend an observing session with a local astro society or IceInSpace observing group - it'll give you a chance to look at the different types of scopes and actually look through them so you know what you're in for.

btw, to the site! How did you hear about us?

Hi,

I'm up in North Brisbane area, Strathpine. I don't intend on doing too much viewing there I figured there would be too much light polution, however the Glasshouse mountains aren't far away and I figured it would be a nice run for the Clubby as well. Anything I buy will have to be reasonably transportable for this reason.

Thanks for the welcome, happy to be hear. I just googled and whalla, there you were. I would have joined yesterday but the site was down for maintenance.

I have been procrastinating over this for a long time now, and after watching Nasa TV for weeks and weeks thought I would get off my backside and do something about it.

FFH.

[ving (David)]

i dont know why those 2 scopes ate the same price. the gs500 has more aperture so i'd go for that one. the mount might not be stable enough for deep sky astropics tho... and it doesnt have tracking anyhow so unless you plan on buying a RA motor you might as well buy a dob.

wht sort of camera have you got?

ps: the gs680 is the same price.

[FFH]

Originally Posted by ving

i dont know why those 2 scopes ate the same price. the gs500 has more aperture so i'd go for that one. the mount might not be stable enough for deep sky astropics tho... and it doesnt have tracking anyhow so unless you plan on buying a RA motor you might as well buy a dob.

wht sort of camera have you got?

ps: the gs680 is the same price.

I won't be looking at the photography side of things straight up, I will bother with that after I have learnt a thing or two.

I have a Fuji Finepix 4600 at the moment, but it's got a bit of age on it now so I think I will be updating that as well. Any advise here would be good too.


How transportable are the Dobsonian mounts over Newtonian? And can I mount a Dobsonian on a tripod? And does the Dobsonian have tracking?

FFH.

[ving (David)]

i have the gs680 (8" dob) and i can lug it around quite easy in my astra hatch. the mount is easy to use and is basically up/down and left/right in movement.

even though it doesnt have tracking you can still hold your digicam up to the eyepiece and take shots.
heres a couple of jupiters without any tracking and a little 2mp sony digicam... this is a pretty old camera
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...h_dob/joop.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...b/jupiter2.jpg
heres a moon shot
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...b/Pict0007.jpg
or 2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...b/Pict0006.jpg
the whole moon
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...h_dob/moon.jpg
and finally the moon and jupiter together
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...b/44ba274a.jpg

with a webcam you can do alot more... have a look at some of icemans old toucam shots... all untracked.

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Hi
I have a GS-500 for about 2 ½ years now. And I’m quite happy with it. The mount was bit stiff when I got it, but after re greasing it, it works fine. I added RA drive to it and it tracks surprisingly well. Thought I’m going to upgrade to 200mm x 800 OTA when I build a pier, I will keep the original mount. I can recommend this scope for the price you can buy it.
Karl

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

Hi FFH, welcome to Ice In Space!

I was in the same boat as you about 4 months ago, and thanks to the great advice (or is that advise ) I got from many great people on this site I am now the proud owner of a GSO 10" dob...... and loving it.

I live up at Caloundra, there's quite a few more IIS members around Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast - if you want to see some scopes in action this very Saturday night have a read of this thread ..... there's a gathering up here in the Coast hinterland each new moon basically, Saturday included, you'd be most welcome!
If you're interested post a reply in that thread or get in touch by pm.

Just a quick note: the scopes we refer to as "dobs" are all in fact Newtonian reflectors (which refers purely to the design of the scope optics) mounted on Dobsonian bases .... the other pic that Ving posted is still a Newtonian reflector but it is mounted on a different kind of mount, an Equatorial mount (also known as an EQ, or sometimes GEM for German Equatorial Mount).

Dob bases, as is, do not allow for tracking of objects, but they can be modified (at fair expense) to do so. EQ mounts will allow for manual tracking as is, or some come with motorised tracking (can be "fairly" easily added), but are much more expensive to buy in the first place.

Hope you find this helpful!

Steve