"Choosing Your First Telescope" with J. Kelly Beatty

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1. what kind of telescope do i need to see aliens
2. So why exactly is it not a good idea to get one with an equatorial mount? That one he has in the video is the exact model I'm gonna be getting. I don't have kids either....feedback please?
3. Why does the take the refractor out of the way saying he wouldn't recommend it for a first timer and then never explains why that is? How rude.
4. Hi..What telescope would you recommend to me .to see stars,planets,solar system....I'm a beginner suggest me a telescope between 180-130 us dollars... as good as possible.....
5. so who won the telescope?
6. Interesting statement, when was the last time you got layed?
7. what brand and type of telescope in the $300 range would you recommend for mounting a SLR camera on?
8. I am in my 3rd year of doing astrophotography. I started doing simple wide field and now do deep sky. I want to pass on mistakes I made that cost me hundreds of dollars. Like what is said at the start, what are your plans. Do you plan on getting detailed photos? Do you want to take cell phone shots threw a scope. Do you want to photo planets and the moon. Do you want to phto some deeper sky objects like the orion nebula. If you are doing anything above observing then don't buy a scope to start. That may sound odd but here is why. First, if you really want to see great detail in the night sky buy a good set of binoculars. The reason if your eyes can see more detail using both eyes. Your brains is made to use both eyes and can take dim objects seen in each eye and put the objects together with more detail than you can see in a mid size scope. There are ways to mount binoculars to tripods to made them steady. Children find them easy to use also and you not stuck with a device only good for night use.
   If your wanting to take photos using a cell phone you are better off buying a goto altez mount like seen in the video. These are made by nearly all telescope companies and start with small beginner scopes like the ioptron. Meade make a 70, 80, and 90mm scope that are also tabletop. Many of these small altez scopes can be bought for under 500 dollars. Unlike what is said you will still need some skill setting up. Most scope now have GPS but to set them up you have to do a 2 or 3 star alignment. If you don;t know where the stars are it can be frustrating. You can download for free stellarium which is a real time night sky chart that can be used ona smart phone and laptop. You can do it old school and buy a star chart graff wheel. Using that teaches kids and yourself the sky and where things are at different times of the year. Once the scope is set up and aligned all you have to do is enter what you want to see in that night sky and the scope goes to it. Focus you eyepiece and your set. many just hold their phone to the eyepiece buy you can buy a camera phone holder on ebay.
   If you wanting to do real detailed night sky and any deep sky forget about the scope to start. Instead think about the mount and what your plans are long term. The more I did astrophotography the more expensive i found it. First, you will never get shots like hubble so don't even try. But you can get real detail shots using a dslr camera. You can even get more detail using CCD cameras. CCD camera start simple with little pixels, to thousands of dollars for cooled sensors that are very large and can take super detailed shots. Like Hubble, the super CCD camera shoot in monochrome which is black and white. You pick which wavelength of light you want to photograph and stack multiple different shots together assigning them color to make a photo. Did you honestly think those colors in the hubble shots were real? hate to tell you they are not. most of the wavelengths of light captured can't be seen with the naked eyes. But the most important investment is the mount. Equatorial mounts track the movement of the sky accounting for the earths tilt. If you point a small altex mount at an object just after sunset and track it across the sky you will notice the object will slowly flip over by morning. So altex mounts do track one plane of movement but don;t compensate for the earths tilt. Some of the large altez mounts hove tilt plates allowing you to set the scope in polar alignment. They sell rotators for the eyepiece mount so if you mount a camera to a non polar aligned scope the rotator will compensate allowing for long exposures. The absolute best way to photograph the sky is using a goto german equatorial mount. This is where the expense just jumped. Again you need to keep in mind what size scope you want to use, and all the things mounted with the scope. All this adds weight. Example is my set up.i use 2 primary scopes. I have a 6 inch reflector known as a newtonian. My is called an astrograph meaning it is designed to have a dslr camera directly mount to the focuser.If i want to use eyepieces or barlows them I must add spacers to my focuser. I also own a AR102 doublet refractor. Both of these scope weigh about 12 lbs. Both are too big for an EQ1 mount which is shown in the video. The eq1 isn't a goto mount anyway. Iotronn makes smaller goto EQ mounts for small scopes. But many of those can't handle a 6 inch scope either. Each mount is rated for weight capacity. So you add how much your scope weighs, add in you camera and anything else used such as spacers, then add in counter weights used on the mount to balance all this. For me total weight was 16 pounds per scope. The smallest mount I could use would be the CG4. The CG4 is not a goto mount either but you can buy tracking motors to do manual set ups. But tracking motors can't lock on a star so after 15 to 20 seconds exposing your camera you will start to see steaks in your shots. There are other entry level mounts but to get goto they start around 800 dollars. You will need to learn to polar align. Once you learn how it becomes very easy. The larger the mount the more you can add to it. Many who have been in astrophotography use the EQ5 and EQ6 goto mounts. The EQ5 can handle 29 pounds easy and the EQ6 near 40 pounds. So if i bought a larger 8 inch scope I would want the most sturdy mount I could get. The more you magnify the more the slightest bump or gust of wind can cause a blurry image. Buying a good mount is the key. With a good mount you can mount anything small like just you camera for great wide field milkyway shots. A good mount allow you to mount different scopes. Little solar scopes to great big deep sky scopes. i did it backward watching videos like this and joining facebook groups. All said buy this cope or that. I spent way too much on the scopes only to find my mount would not do what i wanted it to do. That left me with scopes only good for visual. No body told me a doublet achromatic refractor was only good for visual. i thought a saved some money and in turn had a scope that took all the stars in my shot and turned them into blue balls. Apochromatic scopes known as triplets fix this issue. So instead of buying a refractor most astronomy people will say start with a simple newtonian reflector made for photography. Example the omni 150xl sold by Celestron is a very popular scope for first times. They work great is you use a USB connected eyepiece camera or CCD camera. But you will have a hard time focusing a regular camera unless you use eyepiece projection. There are 2 ways a telescope focuses. First is called prime focus. This is where all the points of light are gathered first. The second point is called eyepiece focus. The eyepiece gathers the light just past prime as it starts to spread back out. The lenses in the eyepieces take this light and magnify it and refocus it to fit your eye. So to use the omni 150 you would have to move the focuser all the way in in order to get you camera to focus directly mounted. In some scopes you can't got that far is and many end up trying to move the main mirror in on the main tube. it gets very complicated but for most scopes prime focus is 73mm in from eyepiece focus or near 4 niches. So in the end, save for the mount first. Then pick the scope for the types of shots you want to do. Just be prepared for the cost to jump for each step you take.
9. Does anyone know anything about a venture rx5 or Orion space probe 3? I'm a beginner & don't know what one to buy!
10. I'm saving for an Orion XT8 plus :D
11. After 3 hours looking for information about the topic, this is the most useful I found. Thanks for uploading it.
12. Thank you so much for your easy guidance! 😁
13. Excellent vid. Nice n clear explanations.
14. Only problem is not cracking the glass.
15. oh just read some comments!lol
16. anyone else worrying about that foot being off the end of the table? lol
17. Another instead Amazon, a page reliable to buy?
18. Can anyone recommend a telescope that's good for "inland" use, for example a 20/30 mile range or higher. I would appreciate it, thanks.
19. 2:38
    I hate it when people put the bottom of their shoes on a chair that others will later sit on...
20. Where can I get one of those I mean where to buy