How To Buy A Good Telescope

Although it is possible to have many hours of pleasure observing the night sky using the naked eye or binoculars, at some point in every amateur astronomer’s career the decision is made to buy a telescope.

With the huge number of telescopes (and types of telescope) available, deciding which is the right one to buy can be a tough decision. So it pays to do a little research to find a telescope that suits your individual needs.

Some things to think about when you’re buying a telescope:

Portability

Smaller telescopes are easier to carry and move around and are better suited to being set up quickly, taken to sites away from home or better suited to people who have back problems (the last thing you want to do is put your back out, lugging heavy equipment in the dark!)

Aperture

How well a telescope performs is determined by its aperture – the diameter of the telescope’s main mirror or lens. The more light a telescope can gather, the fainter the objects you can see with it. A bigger telescope will also have greater resolution, which allows you to see finer details on planets and deep-sky objects and enables you to split double stars better.

Your Local Conditions

Neon-glow skies are part of the modern world, drowning out all but the brightest stars and planets. Telescopes see deeper into the night sky than the naked eye but they, too, are subject to the effects of light pollution. Filters are one of the most frequently purchased telescope accessories and when used with a telescope can cut the effects of light pollution, but to get the best views of the night sky, you need to travel to a dark sky site. Large telescopes can be difficult to move in such cases, so a portable telescope is the best option when traveling. Big telescopes are more suited to a backyard observatory and a permanent or semi-permanent setup.

Telescope Prices

It’s fair to say that a decent telescope will cost of the order of a few hundred dollars, minimum, for something like a 6-inch Dobsonian reflector.

No telescope is perfect. Low-end refractors can suffer from chromatic abberation (color fringes around bright objects like the Moon). Reflectors may need to be collimated frequently (especially Newtonian telescopes) – collimation means getting the primary and secondary mirrors parallel so the entire field of view is in focus. But if you can live with such minor issues or they just don’t bother you, then you will get many years of enjoyment from your telescope.

Telescope Accessories

In previous years, Digital Setting Circles where sold as extras for telescopes. These allowed a telescope to be very accurately pointed at particular co-ordinates in the sky. These have now been surpassed by GoTo mounts. Such mounts include a computer which contains a database of all the objects in the sky and can point the telescope to any of those objects at the click of a couple of buttons. Getting your telescope aligned beforehand is crucial to how accurate a GoTo mount is in pointing. GoTo mounts also contain information on each object, will track the sky automatically (so the object of interest won’t drift out of the field of view) and most also contain tours that will take you on a journey to the more interesting objects in the sky.

Conclusion

Your lifestyle will dictate the best type of telescope for you. There’s no use buying an 8-inch reflector if you live in an apartment and have to haul it up to the roof to use it. A small refractor would be a better choice.

Buying from a dedicated telescope store is the best course of action. They’ll be able to advise you on your individual needs.

The more money you spend, the better the telescope you can buy so spend as much as you can without overspending. Check the resale value of the used telescope you’re interested in (on eBay for example) in case you want to sell it at a later date (and buy a better telescope).

Don’t buy a 60mm refractor or a 4 inch reflector – they’re too small and restrict what you can see in the night sky. Go for a 6-inch reflector (a Dobsonian) or an 80mm refractor instead.

Remember, above all, you’re buying a telescope to appreciate the wonders of the night sky, not to give you back trouble or frustration because it’s too awkward to move! Buy a telescope that you will actually use, not one you think would be great but that will never actually get used in practice.

Buy a meteorite at our used telescope store. They make great gifts!