The Flying Astronomer's Guide to Choosing your First Telescope.
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Buying your first telescope is an important step
There are plenty of rubbish telescopes to be found in catalogue and high street stores. But if you buy one of those, your enthusiasm as a beginner will soon fade as you find it delivers appalling images, if you can see anything at all.
The result? A disappointed user that will probably decide astronomy isn’t for them. That’s a great shame, and at Flying Astronomer, we sell only those telescopes that will at the very least nurture an early interest in astronomy, even if they are not quite the Hubble space telescope!
Flying Astronomer wants you to have a good first telescope, because we want more people to take an active interest in astronomy.
Price and Performance
Like most things in life, telescopes fall very firmly into the old saying ‘you get what you pay for’. Recently, the price of many telescopes has fallen because of high quality manufacturing in China. These are the telescopes we specialize in, and the telescopes we ourselves use as enthusiastic amateur astronomers of may years' experience. Today, it’s perfectly possible to get a decently performing telescope for about £90 that will give excellent images of the Moon, brighter planets (Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars), the Sun with a suitable filter (never use anything else), and brighter galaxies and nebulae.
But don't I need a big telescope?
Yes, it’s true: a big telescope collects more light, and so what you see when you peer down the eyepiece will be brighter. This is not important for big, bright objects like the Moon, Sun (remember to use a proper filter), and planets. But for seeing faint galaxies millions of light years away, you will need a bigger telescope. It’s all down to physics, and there's no way around that, sadly.
But big telescopes are a little more expensive. So if you don't want to spend a lot on a first telescope, you can choose from our specially-selected 'beginner' telescopes, knowing that each will give good performance for the size and price. Unlike high-volume internet stores or high-street shops, we have actually tested every telescope we sell to see whether the performance is acceptable. If it didn't come up to scratch in that test, we simply don't sell it!
Telescopes for Astronomy
If you mainly want to look at the night sky, then you need a telescope designed specifically for astronomy. This offers better value for money and better performance than a terrestrial telescope. This is because terrestrial telescopes, which look at things under bright daylight, have extra optical surfaces that cause the loss of some of that dim light when looking at the night sky. Because you want to gather as much light as possible, astronomical telescopes do away with some of the optical surfaces that give a 'right-way-up' image.
Telescopes for Terrestial Use.
If you mainly want to use your 'scope for for bird-watching or spying ships, then you need a field 'scope. These can also be used for astronomy, but are not so well-suited to the task.
The most important aspects of a telescope for astronomy are its ability to gather light (the size of mirror or lens), the quality of its optical surfaces, and the quality and stability of the mounting. An often overlooked aspect is the overall weight of a telescope, especially if you intend to cart it outside or to the car each time you use it. Sir Patrick Moore always said, and I agree, that the best telescope is not the biggest, but the one that is used the most; this often means a simpler, smaller and cheaper telescope.
With only a few exceptions, all night sky objects are very faint, so it's vital the telescope gathers as much light as possible. That's why astronomical telescopes are usually larger than 'scopes used for bird-spotting.
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