First telescope

[mikemarotta]

Budget: Up to $1K
Environment: I live in rural Oregon east of the cascades. Big, dark sky.
Objective: Check out planets and relatively near earth sights
Hope: I can use app to find things easily (i know it's a cheat)
Other: No need for transport. Easy to set up.

Welcome to the website and the forum. You got a few good answers and you generated an interesting discussion. Allow me to suggest that recommendations are generally useless, however much good information they may provide and no matter how heartfelt are the opinions. Telescopes are like cars or anything else: there's a lot of tradeoffs. An SUV is not a pickup truck or a sedan or a sportscar.

Larger apertures gather more light for deep space objects, and that speaks to reflector systems. But longer focal lengths deliver more magnification and that suggests refractors. Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov-Cassegrain are another set of options: wide apertures, long focal lengths, but they weigh so much more that they can be inconvenient, or so I felt with mine before I donated it to the Goodwill.(I could lift it and carry it and not well but setting it down under control and guidance was always scary. Try it with 65 lbs.)

Anyway, then, there's eyepieces... As far as I know, no seller packages the oculars you need: 32 mm, 25 (or 20) mm, and 10mm with 2X Barlow. Just to say, last night, I was looking at the center of Cygnus, the Northern Cross. It is a rich field of stars. Technically, my 8mm ocular gave the same magnificatian as my 40mm ocular with a 5X focal extender (40/5 = 8). However, the 8mm eyepiece is a much smaller viewing area, like looking at Grand Canyon through a soda straw. It's OK for small diameter objects like Mars or binary stars. But for a wide view like the Pleiades, for example, you need a bigger ocular with less magnification. No telescope that I know of comes with a wider view eyepiece, like 32mm or larger.

And, really, if you ask again directly, the MOUNT is as important as the telescope. When you buy a package you buy trade-offs. Usually the mount is under capacity. An equatorial mount makes it easy to track the stars as the Earth spins. But it can be hard to slew the telescope around for true North to view objects near the Pole Star, Bears, etc. On the other hand, an Alt-Azimuth mount (usually) does not track the sky automatically very well. And that opens the discussion to whether you want a computerized "go-to" mount and drive or not. I do not have one. I star-hop. However, I often hear the voice of an old guy here who said that he was happy with his "go-to" so that he could spend his time looking at objects instead of seeking them.

So, all, in all, before you buy -- and you already got a link to the "Hobby Killer" article -- ask again, to be sure.

Whatever you buy, keep us posted. Write up your observations.

Best Regards,
Mike M.

[mikemarotta]

... and the bulk of user reviews appear to be written by people trying to justify a purchase or by 'bots rented by the seller to boost sales.

I don't know about about 'bots, but I do know that cognitive dissonance drives a lot of discussion: Buy this because it is what I did and I am happy with it.
Cognitive dissonance is the feeling we get from a bad decision that cannot be easily changed. So, in response, we justify the choice.

I would like to ask @markgross about his library. How is he going to know what to look for and look at? I mean, mine was paltry for several years. When I bought my most recent telescopes, I also began buying books, and borrwing them from the library. That is as opposed to reading websites. I don't mean discusion boards, but, to be honest places like NASA Night Sky and Your Favorite Skies and I Like Outer Space. They are just vehicles for cheap advertising and the writing cannot surpass most of the discussion boards that I know of. Ever see the horor comedy Lake Placid: "It's the kind of knowledge they hide in books."

But if you know of good websites, please cite them! Myself, I rely heavily on the Sky & Telescope pages for Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, as well as their general "Sky Tonight." It tells me what I need to know. (And, yes, I have Stellarium. I first used in 2010: overkill. What I did like was being able to run the clock back to 150 CE or 483 BCE. Via numismatics, I do a bit with ancient history.)

Best Regards,
Mike M.

[Bigzmey]

I read that Maks can have a hard time keeping up with changing temperatures. Would not want the OP to buy a Mak and every time He/she looks through it nothing but mush. The Mak is a great recommendation, but what are the falling temperatures like at his/her location? Left click the images.

This applies to any closed tube design (refractors and SCTs) not just Maks. The more/thicker glass you have the slower it takes to equilibrate. SCT however has an advantage of thin corrector plate so they do equilibrate faster than Maks. In any case I don't believe this is a big issue for smaller scopes like 127mm Mak.

[GCoyote]

... and the bulk of user reviews appear to be written by people trying to justify a purchase or by 'bots rented by the seller to boost sales.

I don't know about about 'bots, but I do know that cognitive dissonance drives a lot of discussion: Buy this because it is what I did and I am happy with it.
Cognitive dissonance is the feeling we get from a bad decision that cannot be easily changed. So, in response, we justify the choice.

I would like to ask @markgross about his library. How is he going to know what to look for and look at? I mean, mine was paltry for several years. When I bought my most recent telescopes, I also began buying books, and borrwing them from the library. That is as opposed to reading websites. I don't mean discusion boards, but, to be honest places like NASA Night Sky and Your Favorite Skies and I Like Outer Space. They are just vehicles for cheap advertising and the writing cannot surpass most of the discussion boards that I know of. Ever see the horor comedy Lake Placid: "It's the kind of knowledge they hide in books."

But if you know of good websites, please cite them! Myself, I rely heavily on the Sky & Telescope pages for Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, as well as their general "Sky Tonight." It tells me what I need to know. (And, yes, I have Stellarium. I first used in 2010: overkill. What I did like was being able to run the clock back to 150 CE or 483 BCE. Via numismatics, I do a bit with ancient history.)

Best Regards,
Mike M.

Fake reviews and bogus "likes" are actually a profitable business. You just have to negotiate a price. With universal spell check it's usually the incorrect syntax that I notice.

I agree about Sky & Telescope. It seems to be the most focused on the inquisitive amateur. I began reading general physics and astronomy titles in the `70s. I didn't need to get specialized books until I started getting better scopes. ATM I only get a more advanced book when I'm ready to try for a new class of object.

To that end, specialized websites tend to be more useful than general ones. Last night I was looking for a histogram that turned up on https://www.imo.net/

YMMV

[markgross]

Hi and again, thank for your time and thoughts. In reading these posts I guess the bottom line is that there is no one best solution, so, as Mike Marotta puts it, it's all about tradeoffs, and now I think I better understand some of those and can start looking around. I'll also read the Hobby Killer article and the others referenced here.

A couple of other things
-Re ambient temp and Maks, we get large swings here, though I doubt we get as cold as Sweden. If I did go that way seems like you'd want to bring the scope outside for a while before using to get the temp right.
-Re GoTo, I guess I am that old guy Mike M references. Given that I'm starting with curiosity and no knowledge, I'd spend forever trying to find things rather than enjoying looking at them. So the GoTo is the way to go.
-Seems like based on Mike's comments, sounds like it makes sense to get a set of different sized oculars. love the analogy of looking at the grand canyon thru a straw.

Thanks again and I'll post again to this thread as I move through this process.

Mark

[ARock]

A word of caution regarding GoTos. We are used these days to push button computer actions which always seem to work correctly and save us a lot of trouble. Unfortunately Goto Mounts are far from that. You have to

1. Power them. Without power, a lot of GoTo mounts wont move.
2. Upgrade them with the current firmware. Invariably you will have the wrong firmware and the upgrade process will not work. Some of them need you to enter location/time data everytime.
3. Align them to known stars accurately, and even then often times the GoTo will not work correctly for inexplicable reasons. If you have a large FOV, it might be easier to still navigate, on a smaller FOV, it is much more difficult to navigate from a failed goto, than to not use GoTo at all.

In the end you are spending a lot of time trying to get the GoTo to work which is computer and electronics often in cold weather, which could have been used to watch the skies. My first scope was a Mak on a GoTo mount (not a good one), and that made me star hopping fan, up until the point when I built my own GoTo mount.

As for my recommendation, it is my second scope after the GoTo Mak, an 8" manual Dob, with a RACI and Telrad to make star hopping easier.

[markgross]

So I've been researching and was feeling discouraged as it seemed like quality goto mounts and a good scope was going to blow through my piddly $1K budget. I decided to bottom feed and searched Craigs List for used scopes. Found a Celestron c9.25" SCT Telescope / GEM GOTO Mount for $1100. On B&H, looks like this rig is around $3300 new. I'm guessing there are perils to buying used equipment, and am concerned about the quality of this gear since this brand didn't come up in any of the posts. Calling again on the wisdom of the astrocrowd...!

[Refractordude]

So I've been researching and was feeling discouraged as it seemed like quality goto mounts and a good scope was going to blow through my piddly $1K budget. I decided to bottom feed and searched Craigs List for used scopes. Found a Celestron c9.25" SCT Telescope / GEM GOTO Mount for $1100. On B&H, looks like this rig is around $3300 new. I'm guessing there are perils to buying used equipment, and am concerned about the quality of this gear since this brand didn't come up in any of the posts. Calling again on the wisdom of the astrocrowd...!

Only if you can examine it with someone that has experience with that kind of scope.

[Bigzmey]

So I've been researching and was feeling discouraged as it seemed like quality goto mounts and a good scope was going to blow through my piddly $1K budget. I decided to bottom feed and searched Craigs List for used scopes. Found a Celestron c9.25" SCT Telescope / GEM GOTO Mount for $1100. On B&H, looks like this rig is around $3300 new. I'm guessing there are perils to buying used equipment, and am concerned about the quality of this gear since this brand didn't come up in any of the posts. Calling again on the wisdom of the astrocrowd...!

Celestron makes good quality scopes, which if not abused last a long time. Not abused is the key.

[Lady Fraktor]

Can you try out the mount and telescope before buying?

The 9.25" is a good SC so look for scratches on the corrector plate and the mirror moves easily while focusing. You can look down the tube while rotating the focuser.
Look at the condition of the primary mirror as well, cleanliness, is it sitting correctly and not off to one side.
The mount being a EQ will likely be either a ASGT if it is a older one or a AVX which is the newer version.
Both are based on the CG-5 mount which is a good one.

If you can set it up to use make sure the LCD screen is showing the information by going through the menu.
Try rotating it 180° in RA and Dec while listening to the motors. It should sound like a coffee grinder.
Listen for sounds of binding or slippage.
If it looks good, clean and not beat up with no dust in the deeper crevices (no signs of a quick cleanup)
and the motors sound good it will likely be a safe purchase.
At this price I would suspect it is a older ASGT version.

If the hand controller just says Nexstar on it, it is a original. If nexstar+ and the bottom of the HC has a 4 pin plug it is a middle child. If it has a mini USB in the bottom then it is a newer version.

Look at images online to see the difference between the ASGT and AVX as well.