Telescopes work hard year-round
Throughout the year, especially around this time, I receive many emails about purchasing a telescope, either for oneself or that special someone. Every year I try to provide a telescope buying guide for the Christmas shopping season. I certainly don't consider myself a great expert, but I've had lots of experience purchasing telescopes. I also have a very understanding spouse who lets me indulge my passion! There are so many telescopes out there and trying to choose the right one can make your head spin faster than a pulsar!
My strongest recommendation is to avoid telescopes at retail stores and general shopping websites. I don't have anything against them personally, but I've seen many cheap telescopes out there. In my opinion, many of them are just glorified toys. If you're buying a scope for a young person with the hope of turning them on to the hobby of amateur astronomy, a cheap telescope on a flimsy mount could really backfire on you. It's best to stick with major telescope brands. I think the best brands are Orion, Celestron and Meade. You can purchase scopes from their websites, but it's even better to buy one of these brands from a specialized telescope dealer who can help you make the right decision.
Before I get to specific recommendations, the best advice I can give you is not to go overboard and buy too big and complicated of a telescope that takes a lot of time to set up with every use. You want to get the most user-friendly scope you can, especially for a young person. What good is a large scope if it's not used much?
An essential aspect of any scope is its ability to gather light. The more light that enters a telescope the clearer the image is going to be. That's determined by the aperture or width of the scope. Magnification, or “power,” is determined by what eyepiece you're using. Magnification is important but definitely takes a back seat to light gathering. You can jack up the magnification all you want with different eyepieces, but if the scope doesn't have enough light coming into it, everything will appear fuzzy, and what good is that? Most telescopes come with two or three eyepieces. I find 100 to 200 power magnification is just fine for the moon, planets, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters. You'll especially use the higher magnification eyepieces on planets and the moon, but you certainly don't need 400 or 500 power!
There are three basic types of telescopes — reflectors, refractors, and Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes.Refractor telescopes gather light with the objective lens, the one where light enters the scope. The wider that lens is, the more light gathering power you'll have. The minimum you'd want to have is a 60mm refractor, which means it has a 60mm diameter objective lens where the light from your target enters the scope.Reflector telescopes gather light with a concave parabolic objective mirror at the back end of an open tube. Light is collected by that mirror and sent back to another smaller mirror at the front of the scope. That smaller mirror then bounces the image outside the tube to an eyepiece. The minimum diameter on reflector scopes should be at least six inches, but I suggest eight inches for only a bit more money. Reflectors are excellent scopes that generally give a good bang for your buck. Isaac Newton did a nice job when he invented this type of telescope in the late 17th century. I also recommend that you get a reflector telescope with a Dobsonian mount. These kinds of scopes are known as Dobsonian reflectors and are very friendly! One disadvantage with reflector telescopes is that they're bigger and bulkier but still manageable.Schmitt Cassegrain scopes are an optical hybrid of reflector and refractor scopes. They are definitely a little more expensive, but the trade off is that they're more portable. Along with that, if you ever want to do serious celestial photography, you need this kind of scope.All three types of telescopes use various mounting systems, and the more expensive ones have a motor drive system that will keep up with the Earth's rotation. What's great about that is whatever celestial target you get into the field of your scope stays there. For a little more money you can even get a “go-to” mounting system that will automatically direct the telescope at whatever you desire and then track it across the sky and keep it in view. “Go-to” systems are so nice because they can save you so much time trying to find faint celestial targets. They're especially nice if you're observing in areas of light to moderate light pollution. If you can afford, it, I highly recommend a go-to system.Here are my four recommended scopes for this holiday season. All of these are under $1000. In all honesty I have to warn you that there's a chance you won't get your telescope in time for Christmas. As it is with many other products there's a chance your telescope may have to be put on backorder. You might want to wrap a photo of the telescope to put under the Christmas tree.No matter what kind of telescope you get or give, read the instructions thoroughly. One more thing – always use your telescope outside and make sure you let it sit outside for at least a good half-hour to acclimate to the temperature. If you don't let the components of your scope cool off, you might get some real funky fuzzy images.If you're interested in celestial photography, it's possible to get some images but you'll be limited to brighter celestial objects. If you're interested in serious deep space astrophotography, check out the Hyperstar lens available through Starizona in Tucson, Arizona. Hyperstar can be fitted onto most Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes. I have one that I use with my Celestron NexStar 6SE scope as and the images are stunning. Check out www.starizona.com to find out more and get in contact with those folks. I think Starizona is the best telescope dealer in the world with the best scopes and the best people. I have more information about purchasing telescopes for all ages on my website, www.lynchandthestars.com.Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.
