© Reeth Informal Astronomy Group unless otherwise indicated
Reeth Informal
Astronomy Group
covering the Northern Yorkshire Dales
Now you will notice something when making visual observations with binoculars, which is that, except for the planets, objects look fuzzy and have no colour - completely different from magazine images. That is due to the limitation of the human eye - remember you are looking at objects that are very, very far away. What binoculars give you though is wide angle views of the night sky and an ability to see some things that are too faint for the unaided eye. So you have now taken another step onto the road of astronomy but you want see more right? Okay, okay telescopes.
So you want a telescope? Okay, there are many, many designs, functions and so forth and this complexity is also the first barrier you will come across if you want to keep doing this wonderful hobby.
When looking for your first telescope you will come across the term Starter Scopes or Telescopes for Beginners. But I will point out here that this is often a money trap! The Starter Scopes will provide you with better views of the night sky than binoculars will give you. But if you start on this dark road you will come up with frustration and misery. This is because the box that the telescope is in shows all these amazing images of the night sky objects usually in full colour and you will be under the misconception that if you buy this scope you will see this exact image. Remember what I said? Looking through optical equipment at objects and you will see a grey scale fuzzy object because of the limitations of the human eye. Also on these boxes or from the seller they will speak of 600 times magnification or something like it, again this is a trap! Admiral Ackbar, you are my only hope!
So what do you do? Well there are questions you need to ask yourself, what do you want to see in the night sky? Do you just have a general interest and want to see everything? Do you just want to see DSOs? Or do you want to keep things closer to home and keep it to just our solar system? The designs of telescopes all have their pros and cons. Each design has things they can do well and things they are not so good at. For example a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope is very good for viewing the planets but if has a very narrow field of view and so is limited in finding DSOs and can struggle to see all of the bigger ones. For example I have a 127mm Maksutov telescope and I struggle to get the whole of the Andromeda Galaxy into view unless I also use something called a focal reducer which is even more cost on the equipment.
There are two things you need to consider and the one I would call the most important is the mount or, in layman’s terms, the tripod and the bit on top which holds the telescope. The lesser consideration in my eye is the actual optics.