help me to choose the correct telescope

[vlnikolic]

hello everybody,



i would like to use a telescope for observation of landscape and observation of celestial objects. i have several scopes on my mind and i would like to have your opinion - because i would like to have one telescope for all my needs (i am not so demanding user, so i think it is possible).

i was thinking about these two refractors:

1) BRESSER Taurus 90/900 NG

https://www.bresser.de/en/Astronomy/Tel ... apter.html

i like this scope, because it is all-in-one package, the only downside i found is that objective is 9 cm.

2) Meade Infinity 102mm AZ Refractor

https://www.meade.com/infinitytm-102mm- ... scope.html

this one i found interesting because of it's objective lens (10cm), and its length - allowing me larger field of view for landscape observations

i was thinking about this reflector as well:

3) BRESSER Telescope Spica 130/650 EQ3

https://www.bresser.de/en/Astronomy/Tel ... apter.html

i am aware that this one is on eq mount, and that it's not for landscape observations - but i could buy eyepiece that will modify the image for landscape use, and this eq mount could be very useful for gazing into the sky. for this one i would by collimator, and this eyepiece, and i would have the complete amateur package, and for any of the refractors i could by maybe some better 6mm eyepiece, and solar / moon filter.



thanks for your time and interest, any suggestion is welcome

: )

vlad

[Butterfly Maiden]

Hello Vlad and welcome to the Forum.

There are a lot of knowledgeable members on here who will be able to give you great advice on choosing the telescope that is best for your requirements.

Good luck.

[OleCuss]

I've not used any of those and that makes it a bit problematic to give great advice.

The mount/tripods look pretty wimpy in all three. That can be a bother in a lot of ways for as long as you have the instrument.

None of them really tell you about just what kind of eyepiece you will be getting. That's usually a warning about the general quality of the system you will be getting. You do at least get the focal length of the eyepieces with the 130mm reflector, but nothing about the optical design - and you would likely find the 4mm mostly unusable.

If I had to get one of the three I'd probably get the 90mm refractor with the 900mm focal length. Those "slow" optics make the problems with today's achromats much less of a bother - and most eyepieces could be expected to be somewhat acceptable.

Another concern? They give you unrealistic expectations for magnification and that is another sign of someone trying to sell you based on poor data with the assumption that you won't know how bad the thing is and you therefore won't try to return it before it is too late.

You should assume that the best magnification you will get is the same as the diameter of the objective in millimeters. So the 90mm might give you a usable 90x, the 102mm may give you 102x of usable magnification, etc. But most of the time you probably aren't going to be pushing the magnification all that high anyway.

Since you want to do terrestrial work you might want to look at what I call spotting scopes. Typically used for birding and other terrestrial pursuits. But since they are marketing to a much larger demographics than are astronomical companies, they have to be pretty competitive in giving you good optics for your money. Also, you can often find them locally and at least try them out a little and get a feel for their build quality.

For terrestrial use I find an Altitude-Azimuth mount to be far preferable. An equatorial mount does not make me happy for that use although others seem not to mind so much.

FWIW

[vlnikolic]

thank you OleCuss for your fast reply!

hm, yes aberration is an issue with the short refractor for sure.. and magnifications stated from bresser are exaggerated totally..
i thought that for my purpose of having telescope, and my price range maybe meade is the best from these.
if you have idea of another cheap scope -please post
: )

[Ylem]

Welcome to TSS Vlad, thanks for joining us.

Have you considered a Mak? They are great for both terrestrial and the heavens, I love the two that I have, easy to transport, very durable and very crisp.

Here's an example, this one doesn't come with a mount, but could be mounted on a photo tripod. If you search a bit many do come with a mount of course.

https://www.highpointscientific.com/sky ... ota-s11500

[vlnikolic]

hello jeff, and thanks for reply.

mac is interesting, but i have no need for compact size. i am sorry i am not into the telescopes much, thus i see no mac advantages over the classical refractor other than size.

model you auggested is nice. price is ok, and focal length is very nice
: )

[OleCuss]

thank you OleCuss for your fast reply!

hm, yes aberration is an issue with the short refractor for sure.. and magnifications stated from bresser are exaggerated totally..
i thought that for my purpose of having telescope, and my price range maybe meade is the best from these.
if you have idea of another cheap scope -please post
: )

To do our best we'd need to know what your budget is and what vendors will work best for you.

Best value for astronomy is usually a 6-8" Dobsonian telescope. I don't find them to be all that great for terrestrial use.

After I got it I found that my most-used scope for astronomy as well as for terrestrial purposes was a good 100mm spotting scope. The 45 degree angle of the eyepiece was very important for astronomical use.

It's not cheap, but Celestron's Regal M2 100ED will do good work for terrestrial and for astronomical purposes. And do note that you will have an erect image as well as the 45 degree eyepiece arrangement.

You can go on birding sites and find plenty of others that will give you excellent views. Mine is a Swarovski and was affordable because I got it used.

I know I keep going back to the spotting scope and there's reason for that. A whole lot of astronomical telescope have mounting, delicate construction, or optics which do not give you properly oriented images (we don't normally care in astronomy).

The fast optics you find in the Infinity you linked. Let me tell a bit of a story which might illustrate.

I did a fair bit of public viewing events. At one I had brought my 10" SCT and was set up near a guy who'd brought a beautiful 5" achromatic refractor with fast optics. The light pollution is horrible in that location so we mostly did planets and I think we were all aimed at Saturn that night.

I had a couple who came from that beautiful refractor to my 10" SCT. They were puzzled that my SCT couldn't show the purplish ring around Saturn! I was stuck having to explain to them that the beautiful refractor's optics were showing them a pretty bad aberration.

Yeah, fast achromatic optics give you pretty lousy views on some targets. I find it quite disturbing for terrestrial targets in general although for most dim deep-sky targets I find them quite unobjectionable.

Even when you get a spotting scope which is not at all top end, they have been using their market power to get good value glass and very good optical designers to give you a surprisingly good view at a competitive price. They have to do this because otherwise they won't compete successfully.

For terrestrial use I find the scope more likely to get banged around or to get wet. My astronomical scopes were not designed but the spotting scopes could handle that kind of thing very nicely.

Also note that for terrestrial use you usually just can't use a lot of magnification due to all the heat differences and aiming through haze and such. So going big just doesn't work all that well.

A great triplet or ED-Doublet astronomical telescope has wonderful optics for both terrestrial and for astronomical viewing. But you have to get an erecting device and I've gotten the impression that many of those aren't all that great whereas the good spotting scope will have that designed in very well. Handle them with care. . .

[vlnikolic]

hello and thank you all once again for your time and energy.

i would like to have something up to 500 eur

i have idea to use it on a balcony of my house - and i have view on the hills and a factory in the front.

since i am in a town, light pollution i would categorize as medium (side lights / street lights i have to deal with as well)

i have no particular intention of moving the thing to better watching spots (at least i think like that for now). i've used to watch the land and the sky from the same balcony using the monocular 8x42 for a long time.

i would not categorize myself as a star/sky gazer, rather somebody who would like to enjoy the place he lives by observation.

vlad

[notFritzArgelander]

I've read details of the items you are interested in and all the replies. For your purposes I would not get any of the items in your OP. The reflector is completely unacceptable as you will never achieve good orientation of the image.

If you try to repurpose an astronomical scope as a spotting scope (for terrestrial observation) disappointment is likely. It is less disappointing to repurpose a spotting scope for star gazing. So OleCuss's suggestion is excellent but is twice as pricey as your budget permits. A fast refractor needs ED glass to avoid chromatic aberration. CA may put a purple haze around planets but it also washes out color in terrestrial viewing.

Ylem's suggestion is in budget and doesn't suffer from the optical problems of fast refractors. For daylight observing and for doing the entire Messier list of DSOs I've used https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/vix ... ota/p,4934 which is a modification of the Maksutov design Ylem recommended. In fact his recommendation is probably better for you since it is less finicky about collimation than mine.

[Bigzmey]

Hi Vlad, welcome to TSS!
Since you would like the telescope for both terrestrial and astronomy, I would rule out choice #3. This is reflector on EQ mount, which is not suitable for terrestrial viewing.

The other two are refractors on AltAz mounts so either should work. I had good experience with the Meade model, so my vote is for it.

[Lady Fraktor]

Hello and welcome Vlad, the Bresser are decent starting refractors just the mount is poor.
Short tube refractors are like using binoculars, wide field viewing but not really good for planets.
For terrestrial viewing a reflector is useless, they are just not designed for it. A refractor or maksutov would be a much better choice for doing both.

The specifications are right but they are the extremes of capability so seldom reached in the real world though every retailer lists these numbers.
Bresser is not doing something everyone else is not.

Have you considered a binocular instead of a telescope to start?
They work well and many prefer binoculars to telescopes at times.

[mikemarotta]

Hello Vlad and welcome to the Forum. There are a lot of knowledgeable members on here who will be able to give you great advice on choosing the telescope that is best for your requirements. Good luck.

You are one of those experts. You have a terrestrial spotting scope that you use for astronomy. Is that not correct?

Mike M.

[Butterfly Maiden]

Hello Vlad and welcome to the Forum. There are a lot of knowledgeable members on here who will be able to give you great advice on choosing the telescope that is best for your requirements. Good luck.

You are one of those experts. You have a terrestrial spotting scope that you use for astronomy. Is that not correct?

Mike M.

Thank you Mike, but I don't really regard myself as an expert.

That is why I stepped back to allow more experienced telescope users to jump in with suggestions.

A spotting scope would be great for Vlad for terrestrial use (and I would wholeheartedly recommend one as such), but I am not as confident suggesting it for searching for sky objects. I try to do that with mine but I am still learning myself to do it successfully

[JayTee]

I’m a fan of the Meade Infinity, I own one and it is on an Alt-Az mount, which I also recommend as it is your best bet for terrestrial viewing. That scope coupled with a correct image diagonal and you’re all set. Later, you can worry about an astronomical diagonal and better quality eyepieces. With these future upgrades your scope will give you years of enjoyable astronomical viewing.

Cheers

[vlnikolic]

i was thinking about yet another possibility:

SkyWatcher Startravel 120T AZ3

why?

* it's 120

* short focal length means that even less potent is for planets however, but i do presume that is somewhat in the class of meade102inf

* it has 45* amici prism, and in conjunction with az3 land observations should be very pleasant

* as far as i understand it supports 2" eyepieces, thus in perspective i could acquire 90* diagonal, barlow, and some good eyepieces for nice skygazing

0: )

[Bigzmey]

i was thinking about yet another possibility:

SkyWatcher Startravel 120T AZ3

why?

* it's 120

* short focal length means that even less potent is for planets however, but i do presume that is somewhat in the class of meade102inf

* it has 45* amici prism, and in conjunction with az3 land observations should be very pleasant

* as far as i understand it supports 2" eyepieces, thus in perspective i could acquire 90* diagonal, barlow, and some good eyepieces for nice skygazing

0: )

I had this scope and mount at one point. The scope is great for night time observing. You can stop it down to achieve better performance on planets. The mount is basic but quite usable. The scope does support 2" EPs, I have upgraded diagonal to 2" 90deg at one point. You can certainly use it for daytime viewing. The scope shows CA on bright targets at night and branches etc. during the day, but you will get it with any fast achro scope. Overall, I feel it will suite your requirements quite well.