What type of telescope should you buy?

[Music] hello welcome to my video for today which is what kind of telescope should I buy if you are asking this question you are probably already been online and even possibly gotten some print catalogs from companies like celestron and Orion and you're curious why you would get one telescope over another and what you need to do to figure out which one's going to work best for you now in this video I'm going to assume that you are basically just starting out and you are more interested in generic visual astronomy and the reason I'm making these assumptions is every type of telescope has pros and cons and we're going to go over some of those but when you start jumping to things like Astro photography and doing things like splitting double stars and you know tasks that the typical amateur astronomer is not going to perform then certain telescopes are going to work better than certain other telescopes so what I'm covering today is some very basics of what kind of telescope the beginner is going to be interested in and why one is better than the other so we're ignoring for the most part Astro photography that's not to say you can't take pictures with your phone or whatever through some of these and I'll mention some of that as we go along but for the most part we're going to ignore serious Astro photography planetary videos splitting heavy duty stars and that kind of stuff and we're going to concentrate on the basics so let's start out with this is a very basic generic somewhere between sixty and eighty dollar refractor that you can get online this I've got another review for it this particular one is a celestron powerseeker 70 a Z for its price and what it does it's an excellent starter scope but this is for very basic very generic I typically recommend this for kids or people who have never looked through a telescope and you know want to look at a couple of things here they're yawn but aren't really serious so well this is an excellent scope for starting out it is not really what we we want to go to and even lower than this you've got the department to store telescopes and they are a massive waste of money I've got another video I'll put a link to it about why you should not purchase department store telescopes because it's that's just ridiculous so let's take a second and I'll swap this out for my all-time favorite beginner telescopes and we'll take a look at it I'm back this is my all-time favorite beginner telescope this is an Orion 90 millimeter sky view telescope on a sky view deluxe EQ mount this originally was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about $300 and today they make one that's reasonably equivalent that's about $300 I'll link to that down below too but it is an Orion 90 millimeter eq and the new ones they have white telescope tube and the mount looks a little bit different it's not quite as heavy duty as this now a few things about this one as you're looking this one's heavily modified because as you grow in astronomy you will want to move to something new or something better or something different well the objective in this thing is pretty good the lens that goes up here so I really like it it's it's a nice kind of grab-and-go scope I can throw this in the car without a whole lot of muss and fuss and set it up and start viewing stuff pretty quickly but some of the changes that I've made are this is actually a different focus or this is a two inch focus or off but on here dual speed cry furred I've replaced the little finder scope which is like a small telescope that set right here with this red dot finder which is really nice and I can put any kind of finder I want to on it because it the new this just slides right on to the new gso focus so fill I put in here so I can replace it with pretty much anything made today the other thing is this right here where the scope ring attaches to here has been replaced with a generic set up and I can unlock this slide this down and the telescope tube comes off very easily and since it's being held on but what's called a vixen dovetail which is this bar right here I can put any kind of telescope on this that I want now this also has a telescope basically that goes right through here this is called a polar alignment scope it's got built into the mount which is really nice the mount and everything is all metal I like that there's no plastic on here except for like this little ring right here that's got the numbers on it stuff that's plastic and there's one up here and these are coated in plastic have little plastic handles but the the mount itself is mostly metal now it's a cheaper kind of pop metal but it's still metal that gives it a little bit of heft and a lot of stability I'm very personal to refractors because refractors tend to give more contrasting sharper views than a reflector does which is everything fits into two categories basically reflector refractor refractor simply means there's an element up here last element called the objective and the light passes straight through and goes to usually a diagonal in the back which is nothing more than a mirror that reflects it up into your eyepiece so you have two pieces of glass and the one little diagnol mirror that means that there's no obstructions on our reflector there usually is a obstruction now you may be thinking well you just said there's a mirror here so it's reflecting yes but we'll get into what exactly makes a reflector a reflector here in a minute now of all the beginner telescopes and I have way more than I want to talk about this is the one that I go to this is the one I grab and take out it in the field and look at when I want something quick and easy and I just want to go do something I don't want to spend a lot of time setting up letting something cool down I just want to look this is him and at $300 it's a good deal this particular model you'll notice like I said earlier it's different colors and a slightly different amount and different ring types and you know it's an older model that is probably from the 80s or 90s but that ought to tell you something right there that I'm hanging on to something that's that old because it's that good and the newer models of it I'm not going to say aren't as good but I like the older model peddle better but this ought to tell you right here that since I keep going back to this and hang on to it the 90 millimeter reflector is a is a workhorse of a telescope that you will really enjoy alright so let's take a look at a different this is a celestron reflector it's a hundred and fourteen millimeters across the aperture whereas the reflector refractor who he just looked at was 90 so this technically let's in more light this is actually the first telescope I ever bought that it sold the interesting thing is the difference between this and the brand-new version of it is very minor the scope here is slightly different the sticker of course is different and the tripod is not made out of wood like this one is but other than that the telescope remains almost identical which tells you that it's lasted quite a while and done really well so this one is what's called a reflector and the reason it's called a reflector is because light enters here comes down to a mirror that's in the very back bounces back up and hits a deal right here in the front which is about right right here which is another mirror which then bounces it back up into here much like the diagonal did on the refractor this little mirror does here now the reason this in my opinion is not as good as the refractor is because this has a central obstruction and the central obstruction is the mirror that bounces the light back up here is in the way of the light so as light comes in here it has to go around the mirror that bounces light back up into the eyepiece to this and then back up reflect off of that into here that tends to make the image not quite as sharp and not quite as contrasting so what you wind up with is this actually lets you see less light than the 90 millimeter refractor even though the refractor is smaller if that if you can wrap your head around that now reflectors also require more time to cool down because they've got two mirrors and them those mirrors need to equalize with the temperature outside so when you carry this guy outside the mirrors are you know 75 degrees or whatever it is in your house and you carry it outside and let's say it's 50 degrees outside well the mirror needs to equalize to the outside temperature because if it doesn't what you get is very blurry images and the greater the difference in temperature of the blurring and their image and since you have two mirrors and everything goes through the mirrors it gets worse now a refractor does have that same problem but it is greatly reduced it cools down faster since there's only one piece of glass and since your light is passing through the glass instead of reflecting off of it it tends to be less of a dramatic noticeable issue now there are people out there who will say well technically according to my infirmity or whatever some scientific instrument they use to measure the wavelength of light coming through and how it's yeah they'll tell you that it's the same but what I'm telling you is that when I take both of the the two instruments outside point them both at the moon and look at both of them I get more aberrations and more visual issues with the reflector than I do the refractor so regardless of what the scientific instruments say the refractor is a better instrument at taking outside for quick reviews now this guy costs a little bit less than the refractor I think this one was around well okay when I originally bought this this was $350 or something but that was a long time ago now you can get the equivalent of this which I'll put a link to below for around $200 I think and it's a pretty good deal it collects a reasonably good amount of light it folds up and stores pretty well I don't particularly like this type of finderscope but you can get an adapter to put a finder scope on it red dot or whatever you want and you can't really upgrade the focuser so this is not as upgradable and not as future-proof as the refractor we were looking at earlier but it is still an excellent telescope if you get one now they make shorter versions of this that have the same specifications basically what they do is they build a barlow in here which is a magnification device that's usually a bad idea and you're trading off light gathering capability and sharpness of the image for a smaller tube now if the smaller tube is something that's important to you then by all means go for it but as a general rule up or for the longer tube it will give you a higher quality image and you can always stick a Barlow in it if you need that capability all right so now we've covered refractors and generic reflectors so now let's take a look at what most people consider is the ultimate in beginner telescopes be right back welcome back this is what's called a Dobsonian now the Dobsonian is pretty much a larger version of the last telescope we just looked at the reflector that particular type of reflector is called a Newtonian and this is also a Newtonian reflector the reason it's called a Dobsonian instead of a Newtonian or just a generic reflector is because of the base and basically instead of being on a tripod mount like the last two that we we looked at this has a floor mount and I'll see if I can put a picture of it right about here that base is a very generic base that's very simple very easy to operate and allows you to tilt the telescope to pretty much anywhere you want to in the night sky now you look in here just like on the Newtonian yeah good sized notice that's a whole lot bigger than the last reflector we looked at but the design is exactly the same the light enters here it goes around a central obstruction which is the secondary mirror here bounces off the primary mirror at the bottom comes back up bounces off this secondary mirror and comes out here now a few things you'll notice a much larger much larger means that it collects a whole lot more light which means with this you can see a whole lot more stuff nebulas galaxies that kind of stuff then you can with the smaller one that we just did you'll also notice this has a much bigger focus on it and much heavier duty it also has a much bigger finder scope the finder scope is on a standard dovetail mount so that you can put all kinds of nifty finder scopes on it this will accept two inch and inch and a quarter eyepieces see but pretty much any eyepiece in it you want it is a dual speed Cray furred which is much better than the focusers that are going to come on any of the two either of the two telescopes that we just talked about now Dobsonian Dobsonian is our excellent starter telescopes but let's cover the good in the bad the good is that because this has an eight this particular one has an 8 inch aperture and that's what I'm going to recommend you look at you can see a lot more objects and see a lot more detail in the objects then you can with either of the two telescopes that we've already looked at so you may ask well why in the heck would you even mention the other two if this one is the best well best is a relative term this is a whole lot heavier and more bulky and all that kind of stuff to get out to the dark side or take outside whatever you want also this is what's called an alt as which means it moves up down left right the other two we looked at were EQ mounts and what that means is they actually track our excuse me they actually move the same way across the sky as the objects do meaning that you can typically put a motor on them and let them track automatically these you typically cannot now I want to be very clear I said typically cannot there are going to be people who say oh yes you can get an EQ platform yada yada yada yada sure you can but the previous two telescopes that I was pointing to you both have EQ mounts the motor forum is less than hundred bucks you bolted on Titan two Spurs stick the batteries and turn it on boom you're done this not so much an equatorial mount for Dobsonian is notoriously difficult to set up for beginner it is also much larger much more complex and generally much more expensive can it be done sure you can technically build your own Hubble telescope but I don't have the billions of dollars that would require nor do I have the permits or launch site to get it up into orbit but it is possible so without going over the top this is going to provide you with better views but it's going to be a bigger pain to set up a bigger pain to to move around and track and this one is going to take a lot longer to cool down than either of the other two as an example my little reflector that I take out it never takes more than 30 minutes to cool down I don't care what the temperature difference is but it's it's it's ready to go this can take a couple hours now to facilitate that a lot of these will have fans on the bottom of them that are powered by you the battery or AC and those fans have helped bring air across the mirror because this is a really large mirror and that does help but it can still take a couple hours if the temperature difference is enough and you don't have the fans or the fans don't work that well so there are downsides to the Dobsonian and those downsides are typically enough for me to go with the refractor over this now obviously if this was too bad I wouldn't actually own one so it's not a bad telescope at all and it provides excellent views now one of the things that's really nice about these is they are very durable very easy to maneuver around for anyone so these are great for taking out to events where you want to let people look through your telescope and stuff stick your chief eyepiece in it and you let the kids play with it and there's not a whole lot they can do to really hurt it so they're great for outreach events and things of that nature they're also good for for hunting very hard to see objects whereas the refractor will give you more contrast it really doesn't have enough light Gavin listening a Florida refractor this big which most of us can't so those are the three basic types now I'm going to cover one more type of telescope just so we cover all the bases because you're likely to see them but at this stage of the game this is probably the most popular for newcomers to the Hobby you can find them used and stuff and the last thing I want to talk about is getting one of these when you do what I would recommend is I'll put some links below they make inexpensive ones like let's take a ryan for example orion has several different models of this their basic one is basic and it's inexpensive and it works and it will last a long time and it's it's pretty bulletproof but it lacks some of the niceties so it is worth it to upgrade to their next model up now I'm not talking about getting the electronics for the intelliscore getting a trust tube or any of that kind of mess I'm talking about if you look at their eight inch Dobsonian they've got a like a basic model and then an upper range deluxe one they cost I don't know maybe $100 more but with that you get nicer eyepieces you get a nicer focus or you a nicer finder scope and you get a much nicer base which has really nice tensioners in it which you can adjust to make it easier or harder to move this around which you'll find is very important when you get out there moving this telescope around because if it's too easy to move every time you put your eye up to the eyepiece it moves if it's too hard to move when you when you're trying to follow the object across the sky it's like and and then it makes it really difficult so being able to adjust the tension on this makes it really nice and a whole lot easier to use so let's take a look at one more type of telescope and then we'll give some closing thoughts okay this is a type of reflector which we've already talked about too but this is a little different you will see these under two names SCT and MCT and I'm probably fixing the slaughter both of their names so you'll have to forgive me the SCT is a Schmitt Cassegrain whereas the NCT as a Matt sukhov Cassegrain I think Kenny would say it but this is an MC t they are slightly different in that they have a series of potentially lenses and mirrors in them and generally provide higher magnification now let me tell you earlier that magnification wasn't the end all be tall and that's true there are cases where you need more magnification and these provide remember that the downside is that the more magnification you have the less light gathering capability you have so even though it's it's the same diameter one at lower magnification will gather more light and the more light you gather the dimmer objects you can view nebulas galaxies that kind of stuff however sometimes that trade-off is necessary this particular one is one of the biggest MCTS you can get and it is a 180 millimeter diameter objective and 2700 millimeter focal length now to put that into perspective you know most of you refractors are going to be like ninety to a hundred diameter instead of the hundred and eighty that this provides and the focal length is going to be anywhere from 500 to 900 maybe a thousand millimeter whereas this is 2700 the reflector the first reflector that we had the Newtonian that guy was 114 millimeter diameter and 180th this one and had a focal length of about 900 millimeters as opposed to this one's 2700 so this does have some pretty good light gathering capability but it has really high magnification now the reasons for this or splitting stars which I talked about a little bit in the beginning is you know something we really weren't going to delve onto this will do it in spades and planetary so if you want the best possible views of Mars for example this is the kind of guy that would give it to you this one I actually purchased for doing extreme close-ups of the moon and it will do that in spades the downside to these are they're relatively expensive you know thousand dollars plus for something like this they are not typically what I would suggest newcomers to the Hobby come into however there are smaller versions of this that some newcomers are interested in for example you can get MCTS down in the 90 millimeter range about the same diameter as the refractor and they will be much smaller so you're talking about a 90 millimeter you know about yay peg probably about yay long up to 120 127 or so aperture and those are really good if what you're interested in is primarily planetary and the bank if you won't close-ups of the moon and you want planetary stuff and you really could care less about galaxies and and nebulas and and that kind of stuff then an SCT or an MC T might be a good choice the SCT is going to be a more generic more well-rounded scope whereas the MCT is going to be magnification magnification magnification so that being said typically you're going to be hard-pressed to get adapters and attachments and all kinds of nifty stuff for an MC T whereas an SCT you can get adapters and attachments and new backs and all kinds of stuff very easily but the MCT is going to give you magnification magnification magnification now the SCT is shorter focal length than this for the same size but not not so much that it's like a refractor or standard reflector you'll get like 2,000 millimeter instead of 2700 but the smaller ones will give you less magnification less aperture and all that but a much more portable package so when you're looking at the Orion web site the celestron website the media website if you find an M CT or an SCT you like in the 6-inch range or maybe even the 8 inch range if you can splurge for that kind of it's a good telescope it's a fairly generic telescope but it's going to be more expensive than say a base-model reflector or refractor so you may be spending you know six $800 on a six inch and thousand twelve hundred dollars on an eight inch s CT as opposed to like the last telescope we looked at the Dobsonian where you're looking at three or four hundred dollars for a nice one or the first one that we are the first reflector we looked at the little Newtonian on the on the EQ mount where you may be looking at $200 or the very first telescope we looked at the refractor my personal favorite for generic work and you know you may be looking at $300 for it so these are more expensive for what you can do but they're also a little more portable a little nicer now we talked about portable and all that kind of good stuff but it's the same trade-off as with the Newtonian z' the cooldown time is dramatically increased this is the single longest cooldown tell I have and this is one of those that I take out into the field I leave out in a field while I'm using another telescope for at least a couple hours with the covers off and everything and then it will probably cool down enough that I can start using it this will show aberrations and blurriness and all that kind of good stuff way more than any of the other telescopes I have with the same temperature drop so if this thing is 20 degrees off of him yet temperature outside it looks way worse than even the Dobsonian I was talking about earlier and it's not even in the same universe as the refractor I take the refractor out I set it up just a few minutes later I'm for you and lift fuse are good this thing yeah it's going down for a long time but I wanted to throw that in the mix because you're gonna see s ctmc T's when you look at the catalogs or the look at websites and you're gonna wonder well why would I want that I know a lot of astronomers who graduate I guess is a good term to a SCT or an M C T as their primary visual telescope after they've used other telescopes down the line and they know what they want and they they understand the trade-offs and they're good with that and it's not a bad telescope I'm very persnickety with what I do I'm still a refractor kind of guy but this for ultra-high magnification of the moon cannot be beat but other than that you know if I'm going to go view Orion or the Andromeda galaxy or anything like that now I'll go back to my refractor so we've covered the basic types of telescopes and with telescopes the the one thing I want to mention is do not go from the cheapest you don't need to spend thousands of dollars to get something that's a lot of fun that you were used for years but you don't want a department store telescope you don't want the bottom of the line out of this group that I have shown you so far my personal number one favorite would be the first one I started with the refractor 90 millimeter refractor that's just a bang-up telescope my second choice would probably be the Dobsonian because it has more capabilities then the refractor does even though it takes longer to cool down and even though I don't believe the images are quite as good-looking it's still an extremely capable telescope and either one of those two should last you years and years and years and years and years if not a lifetime especially the refractor should last your entire life there's just not anything that can really go wrong so I hope you liked the video please subscribe down below leave comments if you like like the video and if you have any questions just leave them in the comment section and I'll try and get back to you I try real hard to be good about that and whichever telescope you get I hope you enjoy it and I wish you clear skies you [Music]

Channel: Allan Hall

Views: 39,603

Rating: 4.8991594 out of 5

Keywords: beginner telescope, first telescope, which telescope to buy, what type of telescope, best type of telescope

Id: pdMigQVx7uU

Length: 33min 7sec (1987 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2018