I’m planning to go to a rural spot that has a Bortle class 3 night sky around Southern California. Can anyone recommend a beginner friendly telescope with decent magnification for around $200? I’m not interested in using an accompanying smart phone app to go with it either. I’d like to see nebulae and galaxies the most. Thank you.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    6 days ago

    Yeah, that’s what I mean. I’m impressed! For me, Jupiter looked kinda smeary, like looking at it with an astigmatism, only it wasn’t an astigmatism, it was the moons. As for Venus, I guess you might just need higher magnification to cut through the glare and resolve the crescent. The minimum power I use in my dob is 50x and you can clearly see the crescent at that power.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 hours ago

      Alright, seeing the moons was harder than I remember with 10x50 Nikon AE. Handheld, about 80deg up. For a few moments, I could pick them out, but the shakes got too intense to see them again reliably. That’s with decent knowledge of what to expect. My memory is probably based on the one time I actually used my homebuilt parallelogram mount. Or maybe when jupiter was 30deg up and my elbows were on a railing

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 hours ago

        Hey, it’s cool that you followed up with this! It would make sense that the shaking is too intense for the fine details, especially at that high angle. I feel like I’ve heard of people using image-stabilized binos for stargazing, maybe that could make a difference?

        • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          4 hours ago

          Looking at the prices, my cheap ass would sacrifice some portability and opt for a tripod and a lightly fabricated aluminum or oak stick (read: drill 3 holes) to make a 24-36" offset mounting plank and carry a 5lb counterweight