I’m starting my journey into astronomy and looking for a beginner telescope to start. I’ve found a few on telescopescanada.ca that fit my budget between $350 and $400 CAD but noticed a lot have “smartphone app-enabled” as a feature.
Over the last few years I’ve found that smart connected tech just complicates things and have been reverting my tech back, often to the point of wired over wireless. What’s the consensus when it comes to telescopes?
Is app-connection a feature you use? I’m looking at the Celestron StarSense Explorer LT 114AZ but wondering if I’ll be paying for smart features that aren’t necessary.
Not your target audience, but… Bright binoculars (10x50) have kept me happy for nearly a decade for half the price of those telescope options. I do want a telescope, but based on a small sample pool at astro parties, it’ll take notably more money to make it worth it to me.
Bino pros: cheaper, brighter, more portable, very little setup, two-eye comfort, terrestrial use, more durable, wider apparent field of view (bigger image), wider image field of view (more stars, easier navigation), prism optic to keep image upright
Bino cons: much less zoom/magnification capability for portable/affordable sizes, hard to see ~half of the messier catalog at all, and I frequently skip the tripod because ei can totally stand there for an hour with my arms holding 2lbs over my head steadily (hubris strikes again), and the combination of reduced zoom/smaller objects makes it harder to enjoy the viewss in Bortle class 5 light pollution or worse.
Pro to smart telescope: even if it’s aligned a little poorly, the tracking should keep targets in view for a several minutes. Untracked, they might only be there for a minute. Based on my experience with a ~80mm lens, ~1m long telescope. For me already being familiar and taking a dozen attempts to acclimate to the flipped image, I was able to keep it on target fairly well initially and continue to find new targets with a slight miss of the auto alignment.
I built a parallelogram mount. It’s rare for me to take it out on dark sky trips due to bulk of the mount and recliner chair, but when it’s out, the stability makes for a beautiful image. A regular tripod setup is tough to get views overhead, though a ball mount and counterweight on a 1m beam is an easy compromise
I do appreciate the one time I saw the Orion nebula from an Observatory through a ~24" dobsonian scope, but that’s a lightyear beyond my budget.
Counter-point to many here (although they are very valid positions)…
Lots of people find the views from telescopes underwhelming and frustrating, especially on the cheaper end. Cheap bird optics and mounts on Newtonians and learning to collimate properly is a hassle. Dobsonians are pretty approachable but are a huge hassle at the sizes they tend to come in. Moderate SCTs are decent but at a pretty steep entry level price for a curious hobbyist.
There’s no replacing the feeling of raw photons hitting your retina, but it’s easy and cheap to get a camera sensor and capture far more detail than your retinas ever could.
Dwarflabs and Seestar have options for a few hundred bucks, they are extremely portable, they do require an app, but they’re dead simple to use to start exploring within 10 minutes of unboxing. You’ll get images you’ll want to share with friends, and with a little practice you can have print-ready deep sky nebulas. The telescope that’s easy to use is the one that gets used, and these are nearly unbeatable for helping keep the interest and motivation going.
Find a local astronomy club, look at their telescopes and enjoy the view, but it won’t be close to what you see on the web.
I started with cameras for this reason. Then I found eyeball success with 10x50 binoculars. Now, I bring both because I’m an addict, though I leave the camera tracking mount home and stick to nightscaping.
So the answer to which route is “yes”
Seriously, just get a pair of binoculars.
You don’t need a telescope to see a lot of cool shit. Just a dark sky and time.
Telescopes, especially ones you look into without a camera, generally only add a handful of targets to look at.
Download the Stellarium app, grab a pair of binoculars, and go sit out and look at stuff.
If you really like that, upgrade to a used Dobsonian 6" manual telescope.
If you really like that, get a seestar smart scope to get cool pictures you can share with people.
If you really like that, then start building a high end camera getup that uses open ASCOM apis that you can control from a laptop.
There’s baby steps to the process, and no real benefits from skipping steps.
Not the answer your want. Start with a dumb telescope and learn to navigate the stars. You’ll get better optics if you aren’t paying for all that other stuff.
Generally I would avoid any smart features if possible, just not sure if they’re actually a benefit for telescopes. I’m definitely leaning dumb
I’m not a telescope expert by any means but I do have a little one which I use occasionally. As with any other device that works perfectly well without them, “smart” features involving an app are something I would go well out of my way to avoid.
Yeah that’s where I’m leaning. It’s a situation where I can’t see how smart features would be a benefit, and could just be something extra to break. That said, I don’t know much about telescopes yet so I wanted to get some real-world opinions.
imminent_nebula@lemmy.ca I would personally avoid anything that is app reliant. Companies in general have been absolute dogshit about supporting their companion apps over the years. If you’re looking for a telescope with a go-to system, find one that isn’t app based.
Also, I would start looking at the second hand market before looking at a new scope. There is a surprising number of people out there who buy a scope, use it once, and then box it up and eventually sell. You can get really good deals on good-as-new second hand equipment.
The thing you really want to look for is a telescope with a motorized mount. The sky moves fast under motorization. In the span of a minute, whatever you’re looking at can move out of view. Go-to systems are convenient and all, and are motorized, but if you ever want to learn to use celestial coordinate systems, a computerized auto-slew system will get in the way (source: MSc in astronomy, have been an operator at multiple public observatories across Canada; I have no internalized concept of right ascension or declination, because these have all been computerized systems. But if you don’t care about learning coordinate systems, a used go-to scope with no app is the best bang for your buck.
Yeah I’m already looking for similarly priced telescopes without smart connection features. I didn’t even think of second hand, I’ll check out my area!
Will most new telescopes will be able to connect to a laptop though? Looks like Stellarium has an option to display directly from a scope and I see most scopes make mention of software so I’m guessing they all pretty much have a connection option?
imminent_nebula@lemmy.ca Most go-to telescopes should connect to a computer. Older ones might use a serial cable instead of USB, but anything made within the last 10 year likely uses USB cables.
And you can get a USB -> serial cable if something attractive appears.
Awesome that’s what I thought, thanks. I’m gonna start with something basic to learn the ropes but your mention of celestial coordinate systems has already piqued my interest so I expect that’ll be something in my near future lol.
There’s not much in my area for used but I did find a once-used Celestron NexStar 90SLT which retails around $830 CAD. Not sure I want to drop $600-700 on my first telescope tho lol. Might just check to see what he wants for it first just in case tho.
My first scope was a 10” Dobsonian with no special features. I feel like it was a great way to really get a feel for the hobby and teach myself the fundamentals. I felt very connected to what I was doing since it was all star maps and manual control.
Edit to fix typos.
I’m very much a tactile person so I’m thinking of going this route.
Seriously, don’t get a 10" dob. They’re FUCKING HUGE. You’ll never drag it out to use it.
Binoculars, or a 6" Dobsonian are plenty to learn on, and since they’re so small, you’ll get them out all the time.
The bigger it is, the more hassle it takes to get out, and there’s really not a huge difference in what you can see.
You don’t get better magnification, you just get a slightly brighter view.
Keep us updated on how it goes! Another option might be a nice pair of astronomical binoculars to see if you want to invest more in the hobby. Also will help you get a feel for the sky.
Will do! I’ll be taking my time on this to research and save up, there’s so much info and technical specs with telescopes!
The only “smart” feature that I find useful is an equatorial gear/mechanism. It turns your telescope with the rotation of the earth (or fancier ones can be set to turn with the earth plus another movement so you can track objects like the moon). Just look for that.
Camera mounts, specific lens, and filters can be great additions. None of those things are “smart.” Here’s a photo I got of the lunar eclipse the other night. I didn’t use an equatorial mount or filters because I was rushing and didn’t want to set it all up, just a camera mount, so I apologize for the quality.
