Telescope buying 2012

I must con­fess that I view the upcom­ing hol­i­day sea­son with a mix­ture of joy and dread. On one hand, I know that more tele­scopes get bought in Decem­ber than all other months com­bined. Unfor­tu­nately, most of the “astro­nom­i­cal” tele­scopes pur­chased are, frankly, high-priced junk — unsuit­able for look­ing at the stars and planets.

So how can you avoid mak­ing that $500 mis­take? Arm your­self with knowl­edge, incip­i­ent astronerds. Buy­ing a tele­scope is at least as com­pli­cated as buy­ing a car, except that tele­scopes don’t wear out. An intel­li­gent tele­scope pur­chase will fill your children’s and their children’s children’s eyes with the glo­ries of the night.

A bad tele­scope will fill them (and you) will spirit-crunching frus­tra­tion. Assume that you are buy­ing a hol­i­day gift for the ages. Here are some sug­ges­tions to get you started:

1. Get an early start. By that, I mean now. Arm your­self with knowl­edge. I can’t tell you every­thing you need to know in 600 words. You’ll find some fine buy­ing guides on the Inter­net, notably the one at telescope.com, the web­site of Orion Tele­scopes and Binoculars.

2. The learn­ing curve is steep. You’ve just opted into a life­time endeavor. You’ll need help. Join your local astron­omy club, the Colum­bus Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety (CAS) and visit us fre­quently at Perkins. Go to their observ­ing ses­sions, look through their tele­scopes and ask a lot of ques­tions. You’ll find that even they dis­agree about what tele­scope is best, but the com­bined advice fil­tered through your own intel­li­gence will tell you what tele­scope is right for you. For more infor­ma­tion about the CAS, go to the-CAS.org or call Perkins Obser­va­tory at 740–363-1257 and we’ll mail you some infor­ma­tion about the club. Also con­sider com­ing to some of our pub­lic pro­grams at Perkins Obser­va­tory, where on clear nights you can get a chance to look through some of the tele­scopes you see at the tele­scope stores (same phone num­ber, same deal as above).

3. Plan to spend at least $450. Sorry. A decent tele­scope is worth thou­sands of nights of observ­ing plea­sure. Buy­ing a cheap tele­scope is like flush­ing $100 down the drain.

4. Buy a reflect­ing tele­scope, which uses a mir­ror to gather the light. The other kind, called a refrac­tor, uses a light-gathering lens. Such ’scopes are either poorly con­structed or they are pro­hib­i­tively expen­sive for the beginner.

5. The mir­ror that gath­ers the light must be at least six inches in diam­e­ter to give good views. Smaller mir­rors limit you to a few plan­ets and the moon. If you’re going to spend $450, you’ll prob­a­bly want a ’scope that can see the thou­sands of star clus­ters, galax­ies and beau­ti­ful gas clouds that pop­u­late the universe.

6. Get a tele­scope on a Dob­son­ian mount. It doesn’t have any of the fancy do-dads like motors that fol­low the astro­nom­i­cal objects across the sky, so you’re pay­ing only for the impor­tant part — the sys­tem that gath­ers the light. The mount is sta­ble (It won’t wob­ble like those cheap department-store refrac­tors). And it’s so easy to use that within min­utes (okay, maybe hours), you’ll be uncon­sciously nudg­ing the ’scope to keep Jupiter within the field of view.

7. The tele­scope should come equipped with a “finder,” a small tele­scope at least 30 mil­lime­ters in diam­e­ter that mounts on the side of the main ’scope. It acts like a rifle sight and allows you to find astro­nom­i­cal objects much more eas­ily. Also, don’t for­get to buy star charts, which map out the sky and show you what to look for and where to find it.

8. Don’t buy locally. Sorry, but there isn’t a rep­utable tele­scope dealer in cen­tral Ohio. You¹ll have to buy on the web, which makes the research and deci­sions men­tioned above all the more important.

If your tele­scope doesn’t arrive by Christ­mas, so be it. Wrap a set of star charts and put them under the tree. It’s bet­ter to wait and get some­thing decent than to suf­fer months of frus­tra­tion try­ing to use a bad tele­scope bought in haste.

Tom Burns is the direc­tor of Perkins Obser­va­tory. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Nov 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.