Research Needed To Buy First Telescope

When it comes time to give in to your interest in the sky or surrounding countryside, buying your first telescope can be an exciting experience, or a disappointing one. With all the different styles and types available, mixed with all the hype by some cheap telescope manufacturers, it is easy to get some bad information about buying your first telescope.

One of the first things to remember when choosing your first telescope is that the pictures on the box were taken by a professional astrophotographer and nothing you will see through your telescope will resemble them. It is like buying a fast food sandwich and expecting it to look like the one in the picture on the menu. Low cost telescopes available at many department stores will have weak mounts, causing the image to be unstable. For a good quality first telescope expect to pay up to $200 for the least expensive.

The main items to look at when buying a telescope are the two numbers that will tell you how well it is expected to work. For a good first telescope, a listing of 20x50 is about average. This means the magnification will equal 20 times what you see with your eyes and the 50 is the width of the objective (how wide the front of the 'scope is) which is what determines how much light is gathered. The more light the better the image will be visible in the dark and for astronomy. All star gazing is typically done after dark.

Do Not Be Fooled By Fancy Gadgets

The ability to input a star's location and have the telescope automatically position itself to point in that direction may seem like a nice idea, but you will be paying for a feature for which you may have little use. Computerized systems that use global positioning systems to locate your telescope with you entering the location of stars enables them to find the one you want. Additional costs will be expended to find the location of the stars and it's something that may not use with your first telescope. However, if properly set up, computerized telescopes do man eit very easy to locate objects in the night sky.

One thing to beware of in having a computer point your telescope is that you will miss many views you might catch if you have to manually find the star of your choice. Many times when people buy their first telescope they forget that they might want to use them during the day and have made a purchase based on box information, with no idea how to calibrate the scope for its first use, or how to recalibrate it for daylight use.

It usually does not take long before frustration puts the first telescope back in its box awaiting a return trip to the store. A quality telescope cannot be taken from the box, pointed at the sky and bring everything into sharp view. It pays to read the directions completely before attempting to use the first telescope the first time.

First Telescope News