How To Choose A Beginner Telescope

hi everyone I'm Ken and in this video we're gonna be talking about how to choose your first telescope it can be kind of a daunting task because there was a lot to choose from obviously but if you ask yourself a couple of questions at the outset you can kind of narrow it down and maybe pick the best one for your needs there's three things to think about at the beginning the price the the diameter or the aperture of the telescope and then also the size just how physically big it is in terms of price if you're just getting into the Hobby and you don't know if you're gonna want to stick with it it you may not want to break the bank and spend a lot of money so telescope is actually started about $50 for a basic one and go up to maybe a couple hundred dollars here and you can see see surprisingly a lot of detail for not that much money aperture the bigger the diameter the more light less in the more lighted let's in the more things you can see the fainter the object you can see so a small telescope is great for the big bright objects the moon and planets a very large telescope here can get into really faint nebulae and galaxies and then finally the size of the thing it's got to be manageable for you if the telescope is too big for you to carry outside then what good is it it's just gonna sit inside and not get any use so make sure you get one that's sized for your needs and you can put in the car or take out them to the backyard so let's talk about a couple of individual designs and get more familiar with with each design so like I said there's three main types of telescopes and this is the first one the refractor it's probably the oldest design and a fairly simple system the light enters through the front hits the lens and travels straight down the tube to the back and usually there's an elbow like this to bring it up to your eye at a comfortable angle so you're not going to strain your neck refractors start with a little 16 millimeter telescope like this it's about $99 and they'll go up to this is a this is a three and a half inch telescope or ninety millimeters they can get a little larger than this but you don't seem really big telescopes this design the several advantages to a refractor it's a very clean image he's French compared to other telescope designs it's nice and sharp nice and bright there's no alignment necessary with these lenses that's always fixed so maintenance is actually very low and then if you ever wanted to point this off out into the distant views out this way you can look at the hikers on the mountain the books on the bay it's not just dedicated to astronomy like some telescopes so very versatile instrument of the refracting all right this is the reflector design of telescopes which uses two mirrors instead of lenses which the refractors use in this case the light travels down the front of the telescope it's the primary mirror in the back troubles back up to the secondary mirror which is up front and it's angle at a 45 degree angle and it sends the light off the side of a telescope to your eyepiece here it's a very simple system a little different than the refractors it does need to be aligned or collimated whereas you don't have to worry about that with a refractor if you travel around with it you put in a car you drive around on bumpy roads the mirrors will probably get out of alignment so it's it is a design that needs to be collimated so maintenance needs to be kept up with it one other trade-off you can't use this for daytime viewing the image is upside down and there's no way to correct it like in a refractor so not so great for looking at books on the bay but great for astronomy because mirrors are very cheap to make larger mirrors mean better views so you get more bang for your buck out of the reflector design than than any other design of telescope all right well this is the third type of telescope the Cassegrain design now it's it's kind of like a reflector the light comes down through the front it's the primary mirror on the back bounces up to the secondary which is up front again but instead of coming off the side the light goes all the way back down again through a hole in the primary mirror and out the back until your eyepiece again within the elbow in it the primary advantage of a camera like this is it's very small the the focal length of this thing is actually longer than that first refractor I showed you it's about 1200 millimeter focal length but it's folded up into a very small size so that makes this thing great for taking on an airline traveling around when you're camping and you don't have a lot of room for four telescope equipment so you can get a very compact telescope with good aperture in the Kasserine design you can use this for daytime viewing as well as the night sky so it is a little different than the reflector in that regard it does need collimation from time to time but these mirrors are held fairly rigidly so usually you don't see the need to call me to cast on so a little bit less maintenance one thing you do want to watch out for there is a lens right up front so fingerprints just find a way of getting on that lens so make sure you have cloth handy to clean it off well one more criteria that you might want to consider before your purchase is the way that the telescope is mounted that can affect how easy it is to use the telescope and the tracking as well the most basic type is a little alpha for altitude and azimuth system which basically just means left and right up and down very simply wipe it down outside and you're ready to go but if you want to follow something through the sky as the Earth turns you've got to move this manually left and right up and down to follow the object to counteract that this refractor is on an equatorial now there's a little more setup involved with this you have two polar line them out which means getting this axis here pointing at Polaris and then the scope doesn't move the way you think it's gonna move it doesn't move in left and right up and down motions of moves in these arcs east and west north and south so once you've found something you lock it down and use these slow motion knobs to follow along so as long as you're probably aligned one twist of this knob will follow the object as it goes through this guy a variation on the alphas mount are the Dobsonian Mouse these are great for very big telescopes because you don't need a very big expensive equatorial mount it's very simple to use it's got very smooth tracking just by pushing along by hand so a real popular way to do big reflectors is on this Dobsonian or alphas Mouse well this is the Astro view 90 millimeter equatorial refractor I just wanted to talk a little bit about what it can do it's on an equatorial mount so you can track along the sky just by twisting the knob here you can have a motor drive later if you want to follow something that you found it's 90 millimeter diameter which means it's a medium sized refractor which can see all sorts of stuff wooden planets you'd be able to see the rings around Saturn cloud band or two around Jupiter as well as it was around ether and then it's getting big enough to see some of the fainter objects so some of the star clusters brighter nebulae like the Orion Nebula the Andromeda galaxies are definitely within the reach of a moderate moderately priced telescope like the attribute idea here well this is the star blast 4.5 I really like this telescope alar it's got a lot of bang for the buck because it's a reflective design it's starting to get fairly large aperture here we sell it a couple of different ways here it's on an equatorial tripod mount we also have a tabletop mounted here if you don't have a lot of room you want to pack something away and not worry about a large tripod but the telescope itself is the same either way for knife in chisel will allow you to see all sorts of faint objects the Messier objects that's a collection of about 110 of the best deep sky objects up there well they're pretty much all in the range of a telescope of this size the moon look like your orbit around the moon planets the rings of Saturn Club built on Jupiter you can see the phase of Venus with a telescope like this so I think you can have a lot of fun with a very moderately twice telescope like the star blast 4.5 Connor this is the Orion eight-inch sky quest Dobsonian it's a reflector we have models in this line starting at four and a half inch if you want something very small and lightweight all the way up to very large ones 10-inch twelve fourteen inch if you want to go crazy those get fairly heavy I like this one a lot because it's still pretty manageable like it's gonna lift it carry it around yes it is a little bigger than the last couple look for telescopes that I showed you but it makes up because the aperture is so large you can pull in so much more detail the moon planets great detail even more so than the but the main advantage to a reflector of this size is the deep sky objects very very high resolution lots of light coming through so you see not only just the Messier the 110 of the best and brightest but you can get into thousands of fainter ones as well or the telescope of the size this is probably the best bang for the buck of any of the telescope designs that we've got and it's definitely my favorite well this is the Orion star seeker 130 millimeter reflector what I'm gonna talk about this guy because it's a little different than the other telescopes in this video in that it has a computer system on it right here so this can be a lot of fun with the other telescopes you find the objects yourself you have a star chart some of the constellations learn how to track them down and find them which could be half of the fun to hunt but if you don't want to spend a lot of time looking for the object I want to spend more time looking at the object this is totally the answer you punch in what you want to see in the computer here you hit enter and the telescope will slew automatically over to the object center it and then continue to track as the object moves through the sky it just needs a very basic initial alignment procedure you put in your zip code the time of night and point it to a couple of stars you don't even need to name the names of the stars either it's smart enough to figure out what you're looking at so a very fun telescope and you won't have any problem finding any of the objects you want to see in the sky with the Orion star secret 130 Oh Ryan also offers a full line of tabletop telescopes as well these guys are very affordable and very portable it starts off at 49.95 for the basic little fun scope here and goes to 199 95 for the four and a half inch star blast on the end now these are great grab and go telescopes they're like is a very portable lightweight you can throw them in the back of the car go off camping take him to the back yard put them on the your table a backyard so they're great for the beginner or also for somebody who already has a large telescope and doesn't feel like bringing out the large 10 inch Dobsonian was something quick and easy well a tabletop is definitely the answer so let's talk about each one individually and see what the benefits are this is the Flex cope it's a 76 millimeter reflector on a tabletop mount it's great for the first-time buyer who's not really sure if they want to get into the hobby and doesn't spend a lot of money it's 4895 very affordable and it will allow you to see bright objects the moon in very good detail plan to be able to see Saturn's rings the cloud band on Jupiter the four brightest moons around Jupiter and if you get into a little darker sky sight away from city lights you can even see some of the brighter star clusters and a nebula or two something like the Orion Nebula or the Andromeda galaxy all right here we have to tabletop models that are both priced 99.95 so still very affordable and very portable on the right is the ghost Cove 80 millimeter and on the left is the sky scanner 100 the the advantage of the 80 on the right you can also use it for some daytime viewing - it's a refractor design so if you wanted to go hiking and look at the climbers on the mountain or the boat sailing by refractors the way to do it the one on the left the hundred millimeter the views upside down so it's really only for the night sky but it's all but bigger out with you 100 millimetres versus 80 so it pulls it a little bit more light it allows you to see slightly fainter objects both of these are now big enough to not only see the moon and planets but to start getting into some better deep sky objects the Messier objects all perfect for scopes of this size here we have the next level in the tabletop models the on the left the star blast 4.5 inch reflector tabletop and on the right the Star Max 90 millimeter tabletop they're both 199 95 they're both there for different use the star blast is a large aperture larger aperture reflector so it's great for the fainter objects be manipulated the galaxies and it does a very good job with that it will also allow you to see the moon of planets but if you want the really nice detailed view of the planets the star max here on the right has very long focal length is great for planetary detail very high contrast very sharp images so if you're looking for a telescope that's great for the craters on the moon and specifically detail on planetary services you can't beat the little star Max 90 plus it's so small and compact it's a very simple system to carry all of you wherever you go one feature I haven't mentioned yet about these tabletop telescopes with the exception of the 4.5 which is a little too big for this the smaller four telescopes can actually be used on a tripod and don't need to be tabletop mounted the smaller four have a 420 threaded hole on the bottom and that will attach to any standard photo tripod here I've got a photo tripod without the head attached but even with a head it will still work so if you're going to be going somewhere and you're worried that they may not have a table available well bring your tripod up and away you go all right well there we have it we've got a lot of choices from a very small tabletop model all the way up to large Dobsonian telescopes it's a daunting choice I mean there's a lot of things to choose from but like I said at the beginning if you just answer a couple of those questions how much you want to carry around how big it is what you want to see and then how much do you want to spend you can quickly narrow down your choices and find the the right telescope for you if you had any questions about all of this you can reach us a couple different ways on our website we've got our email address you can call our customer service line our customer service agents are happy to help we have live chat on the web also there's a Learning Center on the website and you can get a lot of questions answered so enjoy your telescope when you get it and clear skies

Channel: Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

Views: 1,128,180

Rating: 4.9025836 out of 5

Keywords: telescope, stars, planets, moon, reflector, refractor, dobsonian, newtonian, beginner, astronomy, amateur, telescopes, orion, binoculars, science, astronomical

Id: ZFJP1RguLXI

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2010