Critical Questions
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After you have visually oriented yourself with the night sky, read some good books, and had a look through a few telescopes, you may feel confident that the time has come to make a decision on buying a telescope.
When you finally arrive at that point, ask yourself three basic questions.
How Much Are You Willing to Spend?
Is your budget fifty dollars? Two hundred dollars? Two thousand dollars? Set your upper-most boundary. If you decide that $500 is your limit, I bet there will be a package available out there for $550 that is just a little bit better, so it’s important to have an idea about what dollar amount represents too much to spend on your first telescope setup.
When deciding on that amount, don’t forget to consider all of the gear you’ll need: telescope, mount, eyepieces, and a few other key accessories. Things can add up fast, so take it easy at first. Astronomy doesn’t have to be a pricey undertaking that requires a spending spree to get started.
But while “more expensive” doesn’t always translate into “better,” remember that you generally get what you pay for. Since the astronomy gear market is a highly competitive one, the price you pay often determines the quality you’ll get. Set your expectations realistically.
Generally speaking, packages that cost less than around $150 tend to have numerous serious drawbacks. There are some notable exceptions, but if the total setup is on the low end of the price range, the manufacturer has probably cut so many corners that it is fatally flawed in some critical way: flimsy mount, inferior optics, appalling eyepieces, dreadful accessories, etc. At around $300, your options for quality gear increases markedly, at $400 all the more so, and so forth. Again, you get what you pay for.
What Do You Want to Observe?
Are you mainly interested in observing the moon and planets? What about dimmer galaxies and nebulae? Some star clusters look great in smaller scopes, but others need more aperture in order to have that “wow” effect at the eyepiece. Different types of scopes are better for particular types of observing than others.
Where Are You Going to Observe?
This question is somewhat related to the previous one. Do you plan on doing most of your observing in the city under light-polluted skies, in the country under dark skies, or a combination of both? Some objects, namely the Moon and the planets, look just as good in the city as they do in the country. Other objects really need dark skies in order to be even visible in the eyepiece.
Just as different telescope designs excel at different types of objects, so too do different designs function better under light-polluted conditions in urban settings. I discuss this in greater detail below.
If one’s intention is to make frequent trips to sites under darker skies, an important consideration is the portability of a setup and how easy it is to assemble and disassemble. Don’t forget that, unless you stay up until dawn, you’ll be doing the latter in the dark. Make sure what you get is manageable.