I’m planning to go to a rural spot that has a Bortle class 3 night sky around Southern California. Can anyone recommend a beginner friendly telescope with decent magnification for around $200? I’m not interested in using an accompanying smart phone app to go with it either. I’d like to see nebulae and galaxies the most. Thank you.
This deserves its own post because I nearly forgot but it’s kinda important:
If you end up buying a reflector telescope from a garage sale, DO NOT CLEAN THE MIRRORS. Unless you can’t see your reflection in them at all, just don’t touch them. You’ll be shocked at how little the dust actually impacts your view, but these mirrors are super crazy easy to permanently mess up. If you must clean them, DO NOT use a rag, DO NOT use compressed air! Use a gentle stream of distilled water to rinse it clean. The big danger here is that you could end up dragging sharp/hard debris across the mirror and cutting some serious gouges into it. This is also true of the eyepieces. Don’t use re-usable rags to clean them. I use lintless cotton eyeglass patches to clean my pieces after fogging them up with my breath (that’s cheap and readily accessible distilled water) once I’m satisfied that they’re free of any large debris. I wipe in one direction, flip it, wipe in another direction, and dispose of it. That’s it. The eyepieces being a little dirty will mess up your view, but a dirty mirror probably won’t. Only clean it if you’re 300% convinced that you must.
Also good advice: try using the telescope at least twice before you go to the event. The moon is probably the easiest, brightest target, and it’s a good place to start with making sure your focus is close to perfect. Once you’ve got the moon, move on to a few slightly more challenging but still easy targets that you should be able to see, even in an urban area, to make sure you understand how to use the scope and put it through some actual use. A pretty easy target would be the first star out from the cup on the handle of the big dipper. Tell me what you see when you find it in the scope. Jupiter is also a pretty easy, rewarding target. The sword of Orion is another bright, easy one. Lastly, Venus is a really easy target and has a little surprise for you when you find it. But two uses is enough to get familiar with your equipment, get familiar with its use, and identify any problems before you actually get out there.
Thanks a lot for all your advice! I looked around Craigslist and ended up finding an astronomy enthusiast who was upgrading his gear and gave me a great deal. I purchased a Sky Watcher Heritage 130 Tabletop Dobsonian, SVBONY SV225 Alt-Azimuth Mount, and a SLIK PRO 700 DX AMT tripod for about $208. The MSRP with tax is easily triple that! The equipment was in great in shape and I could easily see some of the brighter stars in a Bortle 8/9 sky relatively easily. I plan to purchase a couple of light filtering eyepieces for seeing the sun and moon to complete the setup.
Hey, that’s awesome! Great job! It’s going to be real easy to drop a LOT of cash on eyepieces. Don’t. Start on the cheaper side and only move up if you find that the eyepieces are limiting your viewing experience. A lot of people really like the 8-24 mm click-stop zoom pieces for starter eyepieces, though I don’t have any experience with them. If you really want to splurge, buy a wide field of view piece. The full moon will be a deadly laser but doable without a filter. The sun will literally set your eyepiece on fire. I’ve seen it happen. An eyepiece filter will not be enough to protect you or your equipment from the sun. There are filters that will fit over the aperture (the end of the tube) that are basically the same material as solar eclipse glasses, and that’s what you need. They aren’t expensive, last I looked, though, again, I have no experience with them. For a list of possible targets to get some practice, see astroleague’s urban observing program here: https://www.astroleague.org/urban-observing-program/ Not that there’s a separate list of multi-star systems you should be able to split (see at least two distinct stars) in a scope of your size. I’d also recommend using Stellarium; it’s a free app that’s actually free, and it’s absolutely dead useful for learning the night sky and planning/aiding viewing sessions. I use it to help me plan my outreach outings, and I really can’t recommend it enough. Best of luck, I’m really happy for you, and please let me know how it goes!