How to Choose a Beginner Telescope - Orion Telescopes

hi I'm Ken with Orion telescopes of marketers and in this video we're going to be talking about how to choose a beginning telescope as you can see there's a wide variety to choose from I've got a representative sample of a bunch of different types of telescopes around me here and the choice can be pretty daunting there's three things you want to ask yourself when buying a telescope the first thing is cost how much do you want to spend if you are just getting into it and you're not sure if it's going to keep your interest well then you probably want to spend a lot of money but a simple small telescope like this it's very affordable can get you into the moon and planets you can see the craters on the moon so you don't have to spend a lot of money in order to see some nice things in the sky the second thing is the aperture or the diameter of the telescope here we have a 90 millimeter diameter and diameter is the most important thing the bigger the telescope is the more light it lets in and the more resolution you've got everything it's better with a bigger telescope except for the size and that's the third thing the physical size if you go out and buy the biggest thing you can and then realize this way too heavy for you to log in and out and it just sits inside well then what good is it as a telescope so definitely think of the physical size and how much you're going to be lifting and putting up setting up every night so ask yourself those three questions and then you can narrow it down to some a good choice for yourself let's go through some of the different designs and see what each one has in terms of advantages and disadvantages the first type of telescope is a refractor design and here we have two two refractors with a 70 millimeter and a 90 millimeter a larger diameter refractors use glass lenses up in front and the light travels down straight through the tube going one way once down to the elbow down here at the bottom this is the 93 star diagonal then it comes up to your eye so a very simple system it's probably the oldest type of telescope design out there and it has a very clean image a well-made refractor is nice and sharp got high contrast is very bright for its aperture these type of telescopes are usually on the smaller side because big refractors get pretty darn expensive so you usually see refractors in the sixty millimeter this is a 70 up to maybe 120 150 millimeter range like four to five inches anything bigger than that and moves to a different design a refractor is great for moon planets it's got a lot of like I said high contrast so the rings of Saturn Club belts and Jupiter excellent the moon it's going to look like you're in orbit around the moon and you'll see all sorts of craters and mountain ranges refractors also serve dual purpose you can use them for daytime viewing so if you have a window with a view out that way you want to see the boats on the bay or the hikers on the mountain or refractor does give you an upright image it may be reversed depending on what comes with it but you can always get a different prism to get a fully corrected image for daytime viewing and the last advantage of a refractor is that there's hardly any maintenance you don't have to align mirrors I'll talk about the mirrors of a reflector later you do have to align those these you don't so there's there's basically no tuneups necessary just keep the lenses clean and free of fingerprints and you're good to go you so here we have the reflector design this is a four and a half inch reflector this is an eight inch reflector now reflectors are great they probably give you the most bang for your buck in terms of price per size and aperture because mirrors are very cheap to make you can get them very large remember I said refractories you don't see them up above about 4 to 5 inches without getting crazy expensive old reflectors take over after that point so minimum usually you see a three or four and a half inch reflector and then it's very common to see eight ten twelve we have them up to sixteen inch sizes so they suck in a lot of light good for very faint deep sky objects the Orion Nebula that's a bright one you know Ryan nebula the Andromeda galaxy those are the showpiece objects that would look great in a large reflector and then there's thousands of fan of things that if you get away from the city lights are visible through some of the larger reflectors how it works the light comes down through the front opening goes to the very back there's a parabolic mirror back there it bounces it back up to the secondary mirror which is sitting at a 45-degree angle here then it comes out the side to your eye so a very simple system there's just two surfaces of the of a mirror system itself and like I said you can give very big apertures for lots of light grasp and lots of resolution I think I forgot to mention planets too big aperture not only can see the faint things but planets are very good very high resolution for Saturn's rings for cloud bands on Jupiter just an excellent all-around telescope the best bang for your buck the reflector design itself you well this is the third type of telescope design the Cassegrain now this one happens to be a Mac category and what differentiates this from the reflectors and the refractors is the internal design it's got a mirror like a reflector in the back here but it also has a lens up front and compared to a reflector where the light goes down back up and then out the side with this telescope the light goes down to the back mirror up to the secondary that's silvered onto the front of this glass here and then it goes directly back through a hole in the middle of the primary mirror to your elbow and to the eyepiece here so it looks small and short but it actually has a very long focal length this one happens to be 90 millimeter diameter but it's got a twelve hundred and fifty millimeter focal length so very long focal length folded up into a small size this actually is a longer focal telescope than that long refracted that you saw earlier so max and cast grains in general are great for being very compact obviously so when you travel you can take this on the airline with you it doesn't take up any room in the car when you go camping so a great portable design telescope these also happen to be since they're so small they're very good at being tabletop and this model happens to be a tabletop it sits on any flat surface that you've got the patio table in the backyard the bed of the truck if you just if you need something a little rock you know it will fit like I show it here on to any photo tripod so if you've got something for a camera just attach it on and now you've got a dual purpose telescope that's not only capable of fitting on a table but if you're on the middle of nowhere you don't have a table you can use it as well so overall a very great portable telescope this 90 millimeter mark is great for seeing the rings of Saturn moons of Jupiter it's a little small for the big the nebula because it doesn't suck in a lot of light but there are bigger versions of this max we have them up to seven inch diameter which can suck into light so a very good portable telescope you you also should decide on what type of amount you want to use with the telescope the telescope sits on top of the mount so obviously the mount is what moves it and follows things in the night sky there's two main types the simplest form is the Alta as that's altitude and azimuth altitude is up-and-down an azimuth is left/right so for short we call it an alt as mount it's very simple you just plop it down outside and you're ready to go there's no aligning necessary but to follow something in the sky the sky moves in these big arcs from east to west and in certain areas that can be a circle so to follow a planet with this one you've got to move it a little up below to the left a little up a little to the left you're kind of stair stepping or moving in diagonals to find things it's not difficult it's just you have to grab it and move it in both axes manually an equatorial mount here takes that and continued into consideration and moves with the Earth's rotation there's a little more setup involved however this is the equatorial head here this is the right ascension axis it has to point directly towards Polaris so you've got to locate Polaris which actually is not so difficult once you find it it's the only star in the sky that doesn't move so once you find it one night you know exactly we're going to be from night to night you align this axis with Polaris right here and then you can move the telescope on top of it in the north and south direction and the east and west direction now notice in certain areas it moves in an arc so you have to kind of get used to a different coordinate system it doesn't move straight up and down left and right if I wanted to move it down from here oh I can't actually do it I have to move it to the side and then down like this the advantage is once you've found something let's say I'm looking at Jupiter right here I'll lock it down I can use the slow motion knobs to fine-tune the positioning and then as long as it is polar lined all I have to do is twist this one knob here and you can follow the object as it moves through the night sky you so we've talked about the altas mounts the equatorial mounts there's one other thing you might want to consider when picking the telescope and that's if you want a computer system or not this telescope has a mount that is fully robotic you punch in what you want to see into the hand controller and it will go and find it for you it takes all the guesswork out of locating some of these hard-to-find objects and puts it right in the field of view and it will track it as I go through the sky so you have to initially point it to two stars and then from that point on it knows where everything is so let's say you wanted to see the Orion Nebula punch in m42 or if you don't know the name of it or the number for it you can look it up in a book the database has all sorts of different catalogs in them hit enter it will go to it it'll Center it and then it'll track it as it goes through the night sky so people ask me well isn't that better you know a computer would take all the guesswork out of it and make it easy to see things well that's true but there's two schools of thought on computer control first of all half the fun can be the hunt for the object so this will take that part of it but that part of the fun out of it but there's a half people don't want to spend the time looking for the object they'd rather spend the time looking at the object and in that case this makes it a breeze you don't have to spend the time hunting for it so the kids may not get bored you know before you found the object it's a very cool system that is very accurate and will find anything you want it to point out you this is the Orion observer 70-millimeter altas refractor it's a nice beginning model telescope for people that want to see if they are gonna hold an interest in the Hobby it's great for the kids if you want to get it for president just to see if they're gonna be interested or for the adults if you don't want to spend too much money and see the rings around Saturn moons of Jupiter no problem you can also use a refracting like this like I mentioned before for daytime viewing out of the box it's an upright image but it is reversed left and right all I need to do if you wanted to like read the names of the boats out there for instance is just get a different prism on the back and you have a fully corrected image so a very versatile telescope for daytime use and for some basic solar system astronomy this is the Orion XT eight classic Dobsonian telescope it's probably my favorite telescope out of all the beginning telescopes that I've talked about in this video it's an eight inch reflector on an altas member I talked about the up and down left and right method of moving it well this is called a Dobsonian telescope because it's on a Dobsonian mount which is just that simple swivel mount using nylon Teflon bearings to get a very smooth nice motion I talked about reflectors being the best bang for the buck or Dobsonian is in the reflectors the best of the best bang for the buck if you can say it's a very large aperture for a very good price you move it run manually which you think might be kind of difficult but with these smooth bearings it's actually easy even high power to move this along and to track even a planet and keep it in the field of view so eight inches sucks in so much light you can see all the meze objects that's a collection of 110 of the best deep sky objects moon and planets if you get away from the city lights there's thousands of more objects you can see as well so as long as you don't mind the size of this thing and yes it is a little bulky but as you can see it really doesn't weigh all that much in two pieces I just lift it in one piece it's about 40 pounds but in two pieces you're only lifting the tube which is about 20 pounds maybe a little slightly under the base is about the same so it's very manageable sits in the trunk of your car and it was very easy to travel with you when you go camping all right well that's the xt8 classic Dobsonian telescope one of my favourites for nighttime astronomy all right well there you have it hopefully this video has kind of narrowed down your choices to something that sounds like it would be the best fit for you I know like I said before there's a lot to choose from but different needs for different views of the sky and will affect what you're gonna pick whether it be something small something very large - sucking the light or something when you're gonna be going camping and traveling hopefully this video has helped you out thank you very much clear skies you

Channel: Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

Views: 142,965

Rating: 4.9424691 out of 5

Keywords: Orion, Telescopes, Binoculars, telescope, scope, space, astronomy, stars, stargazing, reflector, refractor, astro, astrophotography, moon, planets, saturn, jupiter, nebula, galaxy

Id: U-v8AZQwmm4

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018