How is it useful

From Scope F70076

After a little time of using it with the light polluted skies, I found that this telescope has the following values for me:

• It is good to get to know and learn to use a reflector telescope.
• It can show you the stars even with the light polluted skies, seeing the stars itself is a kind of nice experience. Stars are also not located randomly, there are many double and multiple stars, but I also have seen many straight lines of stars and another quite regular patterns.
• It has a mount which at least enables to see the objects standing absolutely still, any wobbling image is by far not as impressive.
• It is small, carrying and setting it up doesn't take no time at all.
• It is decorative, a telescope symbolizes some great things, and is even better in the corner of the living room than a crystal ball, star globe or such.

As a conclusion, I would say that I'm satisfied with that telescope. And I'm sure that once, when the skies are clearer, it would show me some nice deep sky objects as well :) When you have not much money to waste, get yourself a cheap telescope, it's worth of it. But when you have more money to waste, then you should think about buying some bigger one, though not too big, my favorite would be the SkyWatcher 8 inch dobsonian, which is also white, I think white telescopes are the most beautiful :), and it is also a pure Newton reflector.

But what concerns the cheaper ones, one may consider buying one of these 300mm focal length dobsonian telescopes instead, with the same size 76mm mirror, like Skywatcher N 76/300. One can get such for less than 80 euros with shipping, and it has a much sturdier mount, so it shouldn't wobble at all, this is very important. It has no tripod, but it's always possible to put it on something, a table or a chair. This telescope shows how real reflector telescopes are made. Consider though that due to a shorter focal length, they have issues, such as greater spherical aberration and also a greater chromatic aberration when the eyepieces are huygens. These issues are though not too significant when one wants a smaller or more stable telescope, or the price is a very important issue.

What I describe in this wiki, is my odyssey with my telescope. I didn't clearly see any deep sky objects, I'm sure that I can see them better once the skies are very clear, then the light pollution also shouldn't be very intense. The most important is perhaps, that when I have a telescope, then I still have a chance to see these things, this is much more than a zero chance when you have no telescope. But the most important I think is whether you want to mess around with the telescope and astronomy, or not. Who wants to do that, has some joy also using this telescope, but who doesn't, would not find an 8 inch telescope much useful either. The biggest joy in all that is always finding the objects, as the objects themselves are not so very spectacular even in much more expensive telescopes. What concerns the nice pictures, one can look at the Hubble images, telescope is not necessary for this. Also perhaps, who only wants to do some astrophotography, may better buy a good digital camera with a 4.5 inch aperture, though this would likely cost three times more than this telescope. Telescope is for looking at the night sky objects directly, so that the light of the distant objects would go directly into your eyes, and it can only be useful for people who can appreciate and enjoy that.

But I feel that for me, the main value of this telescope is knowing that I can look at the night sky with a telescope, whenever I want. Sometimes I certainly do, but I don't think that I would do that too often in the future, this is not at all because my telescope is bad, but simply because there are many other things which I would like to do, and I don't want to spend so much time for astronomy. I described here my experience of starting to use a telescope, in a hope that it would give you some idea of what it is about. I haven't seen some objects yet, but you can find out some more about what you can do with this telescope, especially when your visual magnitude limit is more than 3.5 (see whether you can see all stars in Big Dipper), which is very probable, you may well see much more than I can see.

I also found that the star hopping needs some practice. At first, you should very exactly identify the places what you see through the finder scope, later there would be more skill, so that moving somewhere finder scope's three fields of view away, would not be a trouble at all, and so one can find many objects almost instantly.

One more thing to say, when you have seen the planets and all that this telescope enables to see more than binoculars, which is not much, then you may well not be interested in using that telescope any more, and use only binoculars instead. This is the reason why these telescopes mostly end up as decorative items, they had served their purpose. Yet once some of your friends may want to see the planets through a telescope, and it serves its purpose again. Also that may be enough for you, you may not want to see more celestial objects, as there is not that much more to see even with a much bigger telescope. But then again you may want to see more, it depends on your interests. But who say, you have only this small rubbish telescope, it's a toy, and no Nagel eyepieces. This is not right at all, you may have exactly what you ever need, this is, i don't know, promoting a consumerism and making you to buy more than you need.