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I've had several small telescopes, but my favorite turned out to be my first: a 4.5 inch newtonian reflector on an (no motors) equitorial mount, with upgraded
by Roboprog 10y ago
I've had several small telescopes, but my favorite turned out to be my first: a 4.5 inch newtonian reflector on an (no motors) equitorial mount, with upgraded 35, 25 and 10 mm focal length plossel eyepieces.
A small refractor on a camera tripod is too frustrating, and a small cassegrain on a computerized mount often is too much fuss to align and set up.
- Roboprog 10y agoExplanation: an equitorial mount has an axis that points at the north star (Polaris, or more accurately, the celestial north pole). One you learn to set it up, it's pretty easy to just "eyeball sight" over the shaft-bearing at Polaris and call it good enough. When the planet or other object you are looking at drifts west, you turn a knob a little bit and it is re-centered. Plossel eyepieces have 4 lenses, vs the 3 in a "Kelner". Minimal "rainbows" (chromatic aberration), and you don't have to smash your eyeball (or worse, glasses) onto the lens to see (eye relief). There are better eyepieces. Be prepared to spend at least 4 times as much, though. The 35 mm focal length gives you the widest field of view in a standard 1 1/4" wide eyepiece, so you can actually find anything at all (and brightens dimmer objects), then, you can swap other eyepieces in the same series ("parfocal") without refocusing (much) to get higher magnification - 10 mm is the highest in my set.