On Tuesday, 15 March 2016 16:27:09 UTC-4, LdB wrote:
On 3/15/2016 7:41 AM, wrote:
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 12:00:57 PM UTC-4, RichA wrote:
On Sunday, 13 March 2016 11:02:57 UTC-4, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 06:55:30 -0700 (PDT), wsnell01 wrote:

They provide a cheap and accessible way for a newbie to gauge his or her interest in amateur astronomy!

Or, alternatively, they turn people off of astronomy completely.

Most of the people I know who got into astronomy and stayed there
started with either Dobs or goto SCTs. Most of the people I know who
explored astronomy starting with a department store telescope now have
a department store telescope in their closet (or have given it to
Goodwill) and don't observe.

I'd be the exception to that and I believe anyone truly interested (as
opposed to those who saw a Hubble Jupiter shot and wanted a quick thrill) will keep at it. Having said that, I think parents who spend thousands a year on their cellphones and who balk at spending few hundred on a scope for a truly interested kid either don't have the money or are too cheap to spend it wisely.

I would suggest that the other poster's sample is decidedly biased, not representative of reality.

Let's say that two million telescopes are sold each year in the US. Most of those would be small, basic scopes well under $100. Using the dogma that a "decent scope should cost at least $400," if everyone spent that much then the amount of extra money spent would be 2x10^6 * ~$350 = ~$700 million per year. That doesn't seem like much but that would be money diverted from other purposes.

If two million scopes are sold per year then perhaps we would have two million newbies asking questions of existing amateur astronomers. Assuming that
there might be only about 50,000 active astronomy club members in the US, each such member would be called upon to attend to the needs of forty or so newbies each year! That might triple the clubs' meeting attendance each month. Where are all of those newbies going to park?

After all of that, how many newbies will even stick with the hobby despite the hand-holding?

Admittedly, the above is a sort of "worst-case" scenario, but still.



It's not the cheap telescope that discourages the newbie. It's the
cheapskate advanced observer that uses the minimum of equipment but
tries to convince himself and others into believing his skills allow him
to see more than what is really there. He goes on and on about the
spectacular views he has of an almost invisible smudge of light. One
exaggeration after another. Think about it, the only way to spoil a good
story is to tell the truth.
time in the world to quibble with each other on the Internet.

You'd be dead-wrong here. It was the seasoned observers who tried to temper the expectations of novices by warning them that what was printed on the cheap telescope box is likely not what you would see. If after knowing that a new observer was still interested, perfect. Some may claim to be able to ferret-out tough galaxies that a novice would simply pass-over, but that is hardly a boast or unrealistic.

I'll bet I've spent more hours observing since my last visit here than
the total done by all the s.a.a expert obsnivelers.

LdB

So in one breath you attack seasoned observers, in the next you now claim to be one?