Top 3 Beginner's Telescopes!

hello and welcome back to the channel we're here today to answer one of the most popular questions i get ed what is the best first telescope that i should buy now i've been answering this question for quite some time and i've noticed in compiling this list that i've been recommending the same telescope models for 10 15 20 years so we're going to go through this in reverse order and actually any one of these three could in fact be the right one for you depending on your circumstances if you've been following me for a while or following other telescope recommendations you can probably guess what number one is going to be but we'll get there in short order let's get started so at the low end of the cost spectrum i wanted to give you some options here if you're really strapped for cash or you just don't know if you want to get into the hobby you do have some things that you can do for example the easiest thing you can do is get a pair of binoculars many of us have a pair of binoculars lying around gathering dust on a shelf somewhere if you do have one of those take it down off the shelf next clear night go outside with it and look around you might be surprised just how much fun it is to do this and in fact many astronomers got their start doing this and even though they wind up getting bigger telescopes down the line a pair of binoculars is still a good thing to have around for scanning the night sky well these things do have some disadvantages number one you can't share the views and the second thing is as you get looking up towards the zenith up towards straight up it gets a little hard in your neck to use these things but still try this out next time and see what you think so if you're looking for a pair of binoculars there are two numbers that define what the binoculars are these are a pair of seven by fifties the first number is the magnification and the second number is the aperture how wide the lenses are all other things being equal you would like to get a pair of binoculars with the largest possible aperture and somewhat counter-intuitively you want the lowest possible magnification because the difference between 7 power and say 8 power or 10 power it's not going to bring you that much closer but it is going to make the binoculars a lot harder to hold now if you just get one of these things it's a planosphere it shows you what's up in the sky you kind of dial in the time and the date for the pair of binoculars you know it takes the earth a year to go around the sun you could in theory spend a year doing nothing but just learning the night sky and learning the constellation so let's say you're ready to graduate to a real telescope well i've given you a couple of budget favorites right here the first one is this orion short tube 80 is an 80 millimeter f5 refractor it's available in many different configurations and you know i did a two-part video talking about this telescope and just as soon as i did that orion for the first time in close to 25 years took it out of their catalog i don't know if this is permanent or not maybe it's coming back i don't know but there are plenty of used ones out there for you to look at and they've replaced it with a newer version and i haven't seen it yet but i have gotten reports from certain people that it's not quite as well made as one of these older versions so hang tight until i get a copy of one of those i'll let you know what i think now one disadvantage of the short tube 80 is most of them do not come with a mount you can consult my other video about options that you can use to put this on one of them is a photographic tripod if you have a good sized one and there are other mount options as well another option for you is this orion star blast now both the short tube 80 and the star blast are well on their way to becoming modern classics they have made so many of these things and you see them both everywhere so unlike the short two baby which has a lens in the front and you look into the back here the star blast is a reflector it gathers light in the back here and you actually look into the side of the front now the major disadvantage you're going to find with the star blast is although it is complete this is a mount it goes left and right and up and down as you can see it is rather low to the ground you're going to have to find something to put it on and the best solution that i've come up with so far is to get one of those big plastic tubs you set it on the plastic tub and maybe you have a short chair where you can use it and you can store the telescope inside the tub when you're not using it now again if you're really on a budget check your local library because there's a program that's sort of going across the country right now and our club the new hampshire astronomical society actually kicked this thing off several years ago we put these inside libraries and you can check them out like a book they circulate for two weeks and it comes with a contact name for a local mentor i am the local mentor for my local libraries telescope and we've so far put over a hundred and fifty of these models in libraries in new hampshire and you may find in your area that this is true as well so check your local library if you don't have a program where you live consider starting one with your local astronomy club so these cost somewhere around two hundred dollars they're occasionally discounted now the one that you get from orion will look a little bit different from this one because this is a model that we modify for use in libraries we replace the stock eyepiece with the zoom eyepiece we put a battery pack on the finder because one of the most common things that happens is that people leave the finder on for weeks on end and the battery dies and we got sick of replacing the battery there's a moon map we put an extra sun warning label on there so there's two sun warning labels there's cat keepers on here and there's a little bag what can i say we're all geeks so again as i say these things are everywhere 150 of them alone in libraries in new hampshire and you know some of you may know that i am an enthusiastic hiker i have summited all 48 4 000 foot peaks in new hampshire several years ago i was hiking on top of mount lafayette it's one of the tallest peaks in the white mountains and they have this hut just below the summit where you can stay and it's pretty primitive but they have some solar power they bring up water that you can use and you can stop in and have you know just check in look in the picture in the lower right hand corner you can see that tiny little hut there that's the one near the summit of mount lafayette now i went inside there and i heard the staff talking about how they had a telescope and i asked them could i see it i can see this telescope and i assumed it was going to be some department store grade telescope and they brought it out and what is it a star blast i mean these things are everywhere and here we are with the telescopes mounted the short tube 80 i've chosen to put on this photo tripod and the star blast well it's it's on its tub now i do want to point out if you see it's a little bit low what i've discussed before the star blast is available as an equatorial version i had one once and i probably should never have sold that thing it was really useful now in the orion catalog their product offering is so vast sometimes it feels like one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing sometimes you'll see the equatorial version selling for the same price as the table top version or sometimes even less so if you're just starting out you're looking for something to look at try the moon first the moon is a great first target and you'll never forget your first look at the moon through a good telescope yeah i know you've seen pictures and videos and things just trust me on this the moon it's terrific you never get tired of looking at it if you're going to go further than the moon and the planets you can get yourself one of these it's a planosphere or a star atlas there are also apps you can get for your phone you point them up at the sky and it'll tell you what you're looking at now be patient astronomy is a patient hobby you're probably not going to find things the first time and i have beginners say things like well i was in this atlas and i saw something and it's really big in here but i can't see it well there could be some factors here it's easy when you see it on the chart reality can be a different matter entirely you know are you near city lights did you get out to a dark location you could in fact be looking right at it but not realizing you're looking right at it and at number two this should be no surprise it's a c6 schmidt casagrain on a computerized equatorial mount so the only real debate here is do you get the six inch or the eight inch and really either of them would work now i did an article online a few years ago where i posed this question if you could only keep one which one would you keep and at the time my conclusion was that i would probably take the eight these days i might change my mind a little bit and here's what did it for me i had both this set up here and the eight inch in the garage next to each other at the same time i was doing some testing on commit cassegrain so they were both together you know getting them outside was not a big deal they would both go the same distance and i found if i just wanted to go observing by myself for fun that i'd wind up taking the six inch so with this telescope you really can do everything you can do planets you can do double stars the six inch apertures are nothing you can start doing deep sky work and it's got a computer that will move the telescope to any number of objects it has more objects in this database than you'll ever want to look at so if imaging astrophotography is in your future this will also accommodate that i've had a lot of fun with this and if you look at the people who do really really serious master images of the moon and the planets you'd be surprised how many of them use stock off-the-shelf schmidt casser grains now most of them use larger ones at least the nine and a quarter and the 11s and the 14s but you don't often see the six inch mentioned as a good imaging telescope for planets but there's no reason why you can't do it i've done this a lot and i have a lot of fun doing it and you can do the moon you can do jupiter you can do saturn you can do you know sequences i've done these uh quite a bit you can show shadow transit sequences on jupiter in late september of 2020 there are three prominent planets in the sky east to west they are mars saturn and jupiter and mars is actually near opposition so when you look at it it's actually bigger than saturn right now i went out and did all three of those and put them side by side sort of a fun thing to look at now i had friends tell me that you know when you did that the moon was also up what does it look like at that scale with the moon up and i had to confess i didn't know the answer so i went out and took a picture of the moon i put them together and that's what it actually looks like so again this is a really versatile choice and in fact if you catch me on the right day i might even swap the number two for the number one position but i think i'm going to stick with my number one choice now as to whether you're gonna get the six inch or the eight inch version i would lean you again towards the six because and i have to confess this i had not checked prices in quite some time it used to be that you could buy one of these for about a thousand dollars or so that's the whole telescope i checked recently and boy have the prices gone up i'm looking at thirteen hundred fourteen hundred dollars it's getting up there the eight inch is even more it's seventeen to eighteen hundred dollars i don't know why these prices have gone up but if this is your first telescope even if you have the money it's getting into that territory where you might wanna think twice the second thing i wanna caution you on is the technology now you do have to spend some time initializing this thing and getting the computers up and running and i have had some people who are you know intelligent people and they have you know they're in technical type positions and i'm not going to name names because there's a couple of them in our club and they have for whatever reason never been able to get this thing up and running i don't know why i'm sure that's not you but in case it's you know your brother or your sister you do want to be aware that there is some you know initialization with the computers that you have to do every time you use this telescope but if you're willing to deal with the technical issues if you have the money yeah go ahead go for it and at number one i mean come on was there ever really any decision on this it's the orion xt8 eight-inch dobsonian and i'll expand this to include any of the clone models of the eight-inch dobsonians that are out there if you want to save some weight and some money you can downgrade to the six-inch it's fine if you're ambitious you can go for the 10-inch i think for most people the 8-inch is the sweet spot now there really isn't much to say i mean it's a simple device it's just a rocker base and a tube and you move it around by yourself it's observing at its purest it's an 8-inch mirror you and the sky now there are other versions that have electronics on them that will help you move them like we call it a push to telescope and there have even been some go-to models but if you want to get those that's fine for me i just like the simple ones and one good thing about this is compared to the c6 number one this telescope weighs less than the number two scope that i mentioned even despite having a larger mirror and number two you can get these things for less than four hundred dollars that's really a big deciding factor when you think about it it's a thousand dollars less now i do have people mentioning to me you know ed i saw this model but it's has a different name played on it it's from a different seller it's got different eyepieces different binder and there are actually so many of those out there now i'm having trouble keeping track of them all and my the question i get asked is do i recommend them and the short answer is yes they're all recommended keep in mind these resellers get their main the same basic product from the same i don't know two or three suppliers overseas and they dress them up and accessorize them as they see fit so if you're a shopper look around and see what you can get a deal on with eyepieces and finders accessories some of them have sales they're all good this particular orion xt8 and i have been through a lot of adventures together perhaps at some point in the future i'll do a piece on it here's an impromptu star party i did with my friends a few years ago look at the joy of seeing saturn's rings for the first time i've said this before but i'll repeat it here an 8 inch dobsonian reflector is simple cheap and it will teach you a lot it will keep you busy for a long time possibly forever it's rare in any hobby that you can get a serious even potentially permanent piece of equipment for under four hundred dollars we're fortunate enough to be astronomers living today or such a thing as possible whatever you choose as your first telescope i wish you the best of luck and much fun as you discover our universe let me know how you're doing thanks for watching and i'll see you soon

Channel: Ed Ting

Views: 121,148

Rating: 4.9368567 out of 5

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Id: BQ-g2eWj0Fs

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020