Looking for a quality telescope & camera attachment for under $250.?

Question

I am looking to purchase a good quality telescope for planet, star and deep space viewing. I have a Casio Exlim 7.2MP camera that I love and takes great pictures. I want to also purchase an attachment to take photograhs. I'm new at this so I'm overwhelmed with the different reflector, refractor and there are just so many telescopes. Someone that has experience with these please help me make my decision. I don't want to spend more than $250 total. I was looking at the Celestron PowerSeeker 127 EQ Telescope as a possibility (that, with the attachment for the camera totals around $200). Thank you in advance for your help!!

Answer 1

Sorry to say this but the budget you give US$250 total is inadequate for any astrophotography. You will need a budget of about 1,000 for an adequate telescope (I suggest an apo refractor not an achromatic) of say 80mm with a short focal length of say 400-500mm giving an f5-f6 focal length.

You will need much more for a decent equatorial mount about US$2,000-3,000 is the cheapest half-decent mount.

Then you need an auto-guider, a guide telescope, all the gizmos which go with it, the software, power supplies and of course a laptop to use in the field. That adds another US$3000 to the bill. That's about US$7,000 just for starters.

Finally you will need a very pristine dark sky to work with.

The equipment you propose to use is not for astrophotograpy, but the telescope would be ok for visual work, but in that case (visual work) would suggest you increase the aperture to at least 200mm if you want to view planets and deep sky objects as the 127mm Power Seeker is a beginners scope with a capital B.

You have a lot of reading to do. Get a book on the subject of astrophotography before jumping in because the camera and telescope you propose are not up to it at all.

Answer 2

You can buy a good visual telescope for around $250, but attaching a camera to it is going to be both difficult and expensive.

Here are a few web pages with good information on beginner's telescopes:

http://www.gaherty.ca/tme/TME0702_Buying...

http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html

http://observers.org/beginner/j.r.f.begi...

For more advanced information, read Phil Harrington's Star Ware, 4th edition (Wiley).

You'll get the greatest value for your money with a Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount, such as these:

http://www.telescope.com/control/categor...

http://www.skywatchertelescope.net/swtin...

Buy from a store which specializes in telescopes and astronomy, either locally or online; don't buy from department stores, discount stores or eBay as mostly what they sell is junk. Find your local astronomy club and try out different telescopes at one of their star parties:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community...

While adapters are available to attach a camera to such a telescope, they are of very limited use, mainly snapshots of the Moon and bright planets. Longer exposures will require an equatorial mount, which will cost more than your entire $250 budget. The PowerSeeker 127 EQ telescope is unsuitable for photography because of its flimsy shaky mount.

Answer 3

sorry, but your budget is unrealistic for anything other than lunar photography. it doesn't matter what kind of telesscope you buy or how you mount it.

there are decent telesscopes in your price range, but not for astrophotography. since you're new at this, you do not want to attempt astrophotography anyway.

i have some gear for taking nice pictures. the telesscope i take pictures with cost as much as a nice used car.

Answer 4

The powerseeker 127 eq is the wrong scope for you.  To begin with, this scope is based on a highly flawed design that incorporates an internal barlow lens on the secondary to achieve a higher focal length.  Not only does this hamper your ability to achieve low power views, it also makes it hard to achieve a good sharp image, and it makes the scope hard to properly collimate.  

If that is not bad enough, the scope seems to be grossly undermounted on an eq1 mount.  This is a mount that is much better suited to something the size of a 60mm refractor.  Placing a scope this large on it would cause alot of instability. The thing would wobble with the slightest breeze or touch.

You may want to start with something like an Orion Short tube 80mm.  These are very popular small scopes that can be mounted on a standard tripod and used almost like a camera lens.  

It is available as an optical tube kit (no mount) http://www.telescope.com/control/product...

or as a bare OTA, that you can accessorize yourself.

http://www.telescope.com/control/product...