"Michael Keating" wrote in
:

Hi all, im new to astronomy I owned one of those cheap dinky
department store telescopes before... long time ago- and enjoyed
looking mainly at the moon. I had a few questions to ask well- anyone
that will answer them. first off- with all UNDER 10,000 dollar
telescopes just see stars as dots of light? I guess this might be a
stupid question- but personally I was underwehlmed looking through
telescopes at our local photography stores Mars Night last week. Maybe
the telescopes didnt have much power- but stars were just dots of
light. Dont get me wrong- i find it amazing thinking about how long
ago the light reaching my eye was sent out- but im curious if thats
all of stars you see with non- observatory power scopes.

Stars are at vast distances. As the other poster said some of the near by
giant stars like Betelguese can and have been resolved as a disk, by large
Telescopes. Ground based ones have to use special techniques to overcome
air turbulence to obtain the necessary resolution, whereas the Hubble Space
Telescope can do it directly.

The theoretical resolution of a telescope is related only to the diameter
of the aperture. See:

http://www.licha.de/AstroWeb/article...php3?iHowTo=16



2. I love looking at the moon. Its just my favorite object Ive seen
thus far through a scope- the detail amazes me. Ive seen it through
expensive scopes ( went to an observatory in hawaii when i was there
for vacation- up in the mountains- saw all sorts of objects through
all of these telescopes- simply amazing detail)
My goal is to get a scope that gives me the best detail of the moon
for the
price- and have it be able to take photos I own a 35mm pentax SLR
so Ive got the camera aspect covered- but scope wise i dont know what
id need. I enjoyed looking at mars too- and still do- but we've had
bad weather lately.

With the above in mind- can anyone recommend a good telescope- and
does anyone have any pictures that might show me the detail i would
see in stars- mars- and of the moon through that recommended scope?

I personally drool over these:

http://www.globaldialog.com/~obsessiontscp/OBHP.html

and

http://www.starmastertelescopes.com/

They can been adapted to photography by throwing them on an equatorial
platform.

Another option would be a Meade or Celestron Schmidt Cassegrain with all
the electronic gee gaws and a wedge to change them to equatorial mode


i look online and see all sorts of pictures - great detail- beautiful
colors- etc of stars and of the moon and such but I have no idea if it
was a huge obsevetory that took them- or just a backyard astronomer-
so id like to get a feel for the detail im getting.

Photography can and does show much more than you can see visually through a
Telescope. Amateurs often take astrophoto's that rival what you see from
professionals. If you get a copy of "Sky & Telescope" you will see that
each month they have a section where they publish amateur astrophoto's.
They also give details of the scope and camera used etc. For wide field
photography, the apochromatic refractors are hard to beat but they are a
lot of buck for the bang so to speak.

Rgds Llanzlan.



Yes I know the number one rule is try before you buy- and im trying to
contact some astronomy clubs in my area to do just that but i
thought a second opinion never hurts-- right?


thanks in advance