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To aspiring amateur astronomers: you don't even need an expensive telescope or clear skies to explore the night. iTelescope [1] lets you rent time on telescope

by typpo 12y ago

To aspiring amateur astronomers: you don't even need an expensive telescope or clear skies to explore the night. iTelescope [1] lets you rent time on telescopes around the world and is surprisingly easy to use after learning the interface. I've used it to take pictures of galaxies and other objects of interest. You can even write scripts that point the telescope and have images delivered to your email. In fact, asteroid discovery is well within the purview of amateur astronomers [2]. Lots of interesting astronomical phenomena are observable by amateurs these days. (I'm not affiliated with iTelescope, I just like it) [1] http://itelescope.net/ http://itelescope.net/ [2] http://www.itelescope.net/astro-science/2012/12/4/discovering-asteroids-whats-the-story.html http://www.itelescope.net/astro-science/2012/12/4/discoverin...

aortega 12y ago
Yeah but kind of expensive... I believe the best combination would be a small telescope to learn the basics of the sky and then if you want to go deep, rent the iTelescope service.
- mapt 12y ago
  A small telescope is actually not the first choice for amateur astronomy. Pick up a pair of relatively cheap 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars (sizable but not enormous), and a good blanket. Do not try to hold the binoculars in your hand - lie on your back with your head firmly against the ground and rest them on your eye sockets (binocular hand-shake is the main reason people dislike them). These are more portable, more user-friendly, more comfortable than any telescope. They're much better put together than the sparse selection of cheap telescopes at this price level. $50-$100 After this, I would consider an 8" dobsonian manual telescope, or a motorized alt-az goto scope with mount in the 4.5-6" range. $500-1000 A serious (but still amateur-level) 8" astrophotography setup (mount, sensor, telescope, filters) that will take the kind of nebula pictures people see coming from the HST, iTelescope, or Slooh, is going to run $5000-$10000.

by typpo 12y ago

aortega 12y ago

Yeah but kind of expensive... I believe the best combination would be a small telescope to learn the basics of the sky and then if you want to go deep, rent the iTelescope service.

mapt 12y ago
A small telescope is actually not the first choice for amateur astronomy. Pick up a pair of relatively cheap 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars (sizable but not enormous), and a good blanket. Do not try to hold the binoculars in your hand - lie on your back with your head firmly against the ground and rest them on your eye sockets (binocular hand-shake is the main reason people dislike them). These are more portable, more user-friendly, more comfortable than any telescope. They're much better put together than the sparse selection of cheap telescopes at this price level. $50-$100 After this, I would consider an 8" dobsonian manual telescope, or a motorized alt-az goto scope with mount in the 4.5-6" range. $500-1000 A serious (but still amateur-level) 8" astrophotography setup (mount, sensor, telescope, filters) that will take the kind of nebula pictures people see coming from the HST, iTelescope, or Slooh, is going to run $5000-$10000.