telecope for 12 year old

[The Mekon (John Briggs)]

[QUOTE=ausastronomer;973315]Geoff,

I am not getting personal, I am being accurate and truthful and I have no doubt that my comments above are 100% correct.

Having been involved in astronomy for just over 40 years; having used over 300 different telescopes including some of the best amateur telescopes on the planet which range from 50mm refractors to 36" dobs, to 20 " Classical Cassegrains, to 15" refractors; and owning one of the best telescopes on the planet 14"/F4.5 SDM (Zambuto Optics), I can pass on the following information.

I have seen a lot of people come and go from astronomy over those 40 years.


John,

We must get together sometime, and debate our contrary views! I also have been in the game for over 40 years (47 to be precise!) I have seen first or even second scope 8" dobs lie gathering dust in garages.
And I still reckon my 130EDT is in many ways a better scope than my 18" SDM! I hope to have them both together at the SPSP.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

I've tried all sorts of scopes over a period of 30 years, and I now have a 90mm apo refractor, and love it! No maintenance, easy to set up and wonderful views, and manageable for my ageing body.
The best scope I ever owned was an A-P 155EDT refractor, and I would back it for image quality against anything-the most perfect scope I ever had the privilege to look through.
People say small refractors are limited in what you can observe, but they are not taking into account its advantage over any other design of scope-contrast. I find I can see a huge range of objects from my heavily light polluted backyard because of that superior contrast.

[Satchmo]

Originally Posted by The Mekon

And I still reckon my 130EDT is in many ways a better scope than my 18" SDM! I hope to have them both together at the SPSP.

Thats a pretty big claim .I look forward to look at your setup at SPSP . It would be interesting - assuming your telescopes are cooled , collimated and optics sitting properly to compare some easy and difficult objects at the same exit pupil on each scope .If you are serious about comparisons , you could make sure your optics are clean and relatively dust free.

[moonunit (Joe)]

Skip the 8" dob, go straight to the 12, not much of a price difference, plus it's his 12th birthday not his 8th.

[Jen]

Originally Posted by moonunit

Skip the 8" dob, go straight to the 12, not much of a price difference, plus it's his 12th birthday not his 8th.

Haha I like the way your of thinking can you be my dad lol lol I just turned 40 so can I have a 40" SDM

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Jen

Haha I like the way your of thinking can you be my dad lol lol I just turned 40 so can I have a 40" SDM

Good thinking Jen. Is somebody giving away 60" SDMs or Obsessions?

[Jen]

Originally Posted by mithrandir

Good thinking Jen. Is somebody giving away 60" SDMs or Obsessions?

[2stroke (Jay)]

Lol i think you guys think more from your perspective then a 12yr olds, next year its something new, buy him a basic 100mm refactor because it will wind up in the back of the closest 2 weeks later. At that age i wanted an rc plane, the next year it was a kx80 2stroke gahaha and by the time i was 16 a suzuki PE 400cc 2 stroke w00t w00t screw your nerdy scopes.

Its only now my inner geek has came out of the clostest

[norm]

Hi Liss79,

Are you still around and taking notes......

Once you get your scope get your son to read these threads so he know's what can of worms mum has opened up and hopefully he may appreciate the efforts you made into your research ........

As you can see we have a bunch of passionate, opinionated folks out here.

Seriously, I hope this doesn't deter you from getting him a scope


Norm

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

When I bought my boys their telescope, a 60mm refractor on an alt azi mount, they enjoyed it, for about a week. All we could really see were the Moon, Saturn and a few of the brighter nebulae.
Skip forward a year, the kids are a little older and we upgraded to a 10" Dob. The kids loved it. They could use it on their own, there were no knobs to loosen and tighten if you wanted to move to another object.
And those faint fuzzies were so bright compared to the little refractor.
They have since lost interest in the hobby sadly. But if I had my time over, I would have bought the Dobsonian first off.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

I didn't weigh into this thread as I am REALLY busy at the moment. I am alway happy to recommend an 8" dob for beginners for anumber of reasons,
1 I had one and it was brilliant. Easy to setup, easy to find stuff (I managed nearly the entire Messier list that were visible in my sky in the time I had it along with over 100 other objects.)
2 They are easy to handle. I know that it would not have been a problem when I was 12!
3 Collimation is not that hard. In fact on mine I checked it the first day, never touched it again, each time I checked it was OK. Sometimes we get all het up about collimation. I would challenge any but the most experienced observer to detect the difference in views in an 8" between a perfectly collimated one and on a bit out. I did a test a while back on my 12". Colimated it did some observing and then deliberately knocked out of alignment. I really had to muck it around to make a significantly noticeable difference.
I honestly think we do a disservice to novices scaring them with tales about needing to get collimation perfect. The best thing for an new observer, get it pretty close and get out and use the scope!! Once they decide they are hooked then there is plenty of time to learn the fine points of collimation.
4 As John has said the optics for the price are pretty good. I am sure there are some duds out there, but I haven't seen any. And again, a mirror would need to be pretty seriously bad for a beginner to even notice. The most important thing is not wasting time worrying about collimation, or whether a mirror is 1/12 or 1/10 wave, but get out and observe!!

As a final point, come on guys!! As I said in a previous thread, we need to develop a bit of respect for OPs. Someone has come here looking for advice and ideas. Respect the OP! Especially in a beginners thread.

Malcolm

[ngcles]

Hi All,

I too have been involved in amateur astronomy for more than 40 years and there is some good advice with differing opinions in this thread. There is also quite a bit of mis-information about optics, aberrations and the value of aperture and therefore light-grasp and resolution of detail. One thing I'm sure we will all agree on is that there is no single, simple answer as to which is the best choice. For what it is worth, I agree with the idea of the 8" Dobsonian mounted Newtonian, simply because the telescope is generally uncomplicated and offers a very significant advantage in light-grasp over a smaller refractor. While the small refractor does offer advantages with daytime viewing and its low-maintenance, the plain facts of life are that in comparing a 10cm refractor with a 20cm newtonian, the images in the Newtonian will be four times brighter (it will also therefore see things 4x fainter) and will resolve detail twice as well as the smaller refractor if the optics are well collimated. It will need a bit of maintenance like aligning the mirrors occasionally and cleaning them gently from time-to-time. Though collimating telescopes can look frightening, it is no more difficult or time-consuming than tuning a guitar once you have become proficient. The Newtonian will be a bit heavier and bulky to move around, but really, not that bad.

The only thing I would add liss, is that if you live somewhere near an astronomical society, a visit to one of their meetings might result in an offer to allow you to look through several different 'scopes and you can make a more informed choice after a bit of a "test-drive". One hopes if you do that, that the individuals at that society won't carry on like a pork-chop as we have seen some people here.

Very best of luck with your choice. Please don't be put off by the petty squabbling you have seen here.I think there a few people here who need to go and take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves whether they have made a worthwhile contribution to this legitimate simple inquiry about a gift to a budding amateur astronomer.

Best,

Les D

[iceman (Mike)]

I've cleaned this thread up and deleted a bunch of posts.
Please don't be offended if your post was deleted. I will not be PM'ing anyone whose post was deleted.
The squabbling was not appropriate and most of the information was certainly not appropriate for a newcomer asking about a scope for a 12 year old.
A beginners thread isn't the place to have these sort of arguments about the which scope is best and who's been observing for the longest time.

For everyone who complained about the thread, not a single person reported the thread or any posts until this morning when Alex did.

Moderators simply DO NOT and CAN NOT read every single post or thread on IceInSpace. We rely on the community to report posts that they think cross a boundary or are getting out of hand.

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Another good choice for a 12 year old is the Orion Starblast 6 for $379. If the budget stretches to $579 the Orion Starblast 6i Intelliscope, would be a better choice. They are both the same basic 6"/F5 Tabletop dobs. The 6i model has the same "push to" Intelliscope Computer the larger scopes have, but in a more compact package. They both have a parabolic mirror, which is important.

Here they are advertised on the Bintel website.

Both these scopes are the same except for the push to computer object locator. They should have the capability to run to between 250X and 300X on the moon and planets which is ideal for those targets. They have a decent aperture of 6", so they can bring in quite a few of the brighter DSO's and do a decent job on them as well as the moon and planets, yet still very small and light being a table top scope and only about 75cm long.

Whilst these scopes don't have quite the same optical performance as an 8" dob, they are a lot smaller and more portable to store and handle for a 12 year old. They will outperform a 4" achromatic refactor on all types of targets.

If you wished to go with a small refractor so that it could double as a terrestrial scope, I would recommend the Meade Star Navigator 102 which has a focal ratio of F7.7 and the capability to run to over 150X on the moon and planets, but is restricted by its smaller aperture and is limited in its ability to view Deep Sky Targets

Another reasonable choice would be this 90mm/F10 refractor advertised on the Ozscopes website. This is similar to the 4" Meade in that it will go to 150X on the moon and planets, but is restricted by its smaller aperture and is limited in its ability to view Deep Sky Targets.

If you wanted a telescope that was very good as a telescope for viewing terrestrial targets due to its portability, with a limited capability as an astronomical telescope, due to its inability to go much past 100X on the basis that is a 4"/F5 achromat and also limited in its ability to view DSO's due to its small 4" aperture, then the SW102 would be a good choice. As mentioned in the description on the Bintel website, this telescope is proposed predominantly as a Terrestrial based telescope, with the capability to do some astronomy; and IMO this is pretty accurate description of its capabilities.

Cheers,
John B

[astroron (Ron)]

John, it looks like the 6" model has now been withdrawn from Bintel.
Cheers

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for alerting me to this problem. It was just a bad link I posted. I have fixed it.

Here are both scopes linked separately:-

Starblast 6 for $379

Starblast 6i with Intelliscope Computer for $579

Both telescopes are still available in Australia.

Cheers,
John B

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Whatever you get, don't just give it and walk away.

The fun with this hobby is the sharing. When you are out at night in your backyard by yourself as 12yo, the fun wears off after about 30mins.

If you are sitting out there with him, enjoying it, (or appearing to enjoy it) he will get so much more pleasure.

My father gave my son (7yo at the time) an ETX125. We had great times outside together, learning how it works, and viewing objects.

[Logieberra (Logan)]

I love my little Meade ETX90. I have the original RA model. It was my first 'serious' scope, purchased used from a quaint optics store in Durango, Colorado in 1998. Ultra portable, very sharp views of the moon and planets and an attractive unit. It stores away easily and will take up minimal room. After 15yrs, it's still with me. It is also a great terrestrial scope for daytime use. If the young fella loses interest in the hobby, a dob will be quite a nuisance to store. Call the knowledgeable guys at Bintel - Syd or Melb - they will look after you