Message posted by Chuck Clark on January 30, 2005 at 8:00:45 PST:
Purchasing the right telescope is a bit of a chore. First, you need to decide which use is most important to you, astronomy or terrestrial viewing. If you choose astronomy, then aperture (diameter) is the most important factor – Orion’s 6 inch Newtonian reflector (item #9827) offers the most bang for the buck, and is of decent quality for the price. This scope is not well suited for terrestrial use – images are not oriented the way they would be through a spotting scope or binoculars, and it is rather large and difficult to easily transport. For both terrestrial use and astronomy, I would recommend going to a Celestron C-5 Schmidt Cassegrain scope. A regular photo tripod will work for terrestrial use, but it would be necessary to get a German equatorial mount for astronomical use to properly track the stars. This is a good, compact and easily transported instrument that will give very good results. A number of the photos that appear on this website were taken through these scopes – Joerg and I both use them.
In Reply to: How do Orion Telescopes measure up posted by Apracticalguy on January 30, 2005 at 1:31:03 PST:
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