New astronomer, need help picking out scope.

[livingsea2]

Well I am going to order my first telescope within the next week. I am just finishing up astronomy 2 in college and decided its finally time to get a telescope. Now the problem I am having is finding pictures taken with the scopes I am interested in. So if anyone can help me out.

I am most intrested in the "12 Meade Lightbridge. if anyone has any pics taken with this please post. It is going for around $1000usd on telescopes.com, so i am open to suggestions on better scopes around the same price. Thanks for the help.

[davewaldo]

Welcome to Ice in space Livingsea!

In my opinion you wont find a better scope for that money for visual use. However if you plan on using it to take photos of the cosmos you can basically forget about it. As a dob does not track the stars you will be limited to photographing the moon or other bright objects like planets.

If you do a search in this forum you will find plenty of happy lightbridge owners and also GSO dob owners. (GSO make the optics in the meade lightbridge scopes and also make a cheaper dob of the same optical quality).

If photography is what you have in mind a basic Orion 80ED setup on a HEQ5 mount would be your best and cheapest option. Again, searching this forum will give you a wealth of info on this setup. This setup however would not be good for visual use and also costs almost double the lightbridge.

This is my opinion anyways....

Enjoy!

[ving (David)]

as dave said, the 12" is a gret scope
but it isnt for astro pics it for visual use... you need tracking for taking pictures.
however as dave also said you can do moon and planet shots with a dob, and mike (iceman) has an artilce on this very site that shows kyou how (warning tho, its not easy).

[davidpretorius]

i have in my plans(one of my options anyway) to use a dob driver II on a lightbridge, so it should be possible to track with it with a few mods.

go the 12" LB

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

welcome to the facinating (if not addictive) hobby of telescopes yes as dave says if i had 1k to spend on my first scope it would be a 12in light bridge , above average optics in a compact package. also i think that they will become a collectable classic in their own rite so if you decide to do astrophotography you should not loose much on an upgrade . hope this helps .clear skies.

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

Originally Posted by livingsea2

It is going for around $1000usd on telescopes.com, so i am open to suggestions on better scopes around the same price. Thanks for the help.

If you have not done so yet, I'd encourage you to check out Astromart...there is a very active (and compared to Australia) second hand market in the US and that might be another way to increase your budget.

"Pre-loved" telescopes from good first owners are a very good way to get into the hobby.


From your comments I am assuming that you are more interested in Astrophotography??? A Lightbridge might not be the best choice for that purpose but it would do very nicely for visual use.

What type of scopes are you interested in? Thre are a few people here that take pictures and they could probably help match up some pictures to scopes for you...