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Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

Family, children, advice, schooling, finance for children, all things kids.
vrdiver
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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#451077

Postby vrdiver » October 18th, 2021, 6:55 pm

Just reading through this thread, the best advice given was (imho) to join a local astronomy club.

It will give both of you the chance to talk with people in your area and to have local astronomers guide you through the sky, demo starting different bits of kit. You don't need to buy anything to begin with, and the local club can help you with loan kit and recommended sources and decent 2nd hand kit as well

Astronomy is like many other subjects, a big topic with lots of specialist and niche areas within it. Depending on your daughter's interests, different kit will be recommended. They will also have meetups at good "dark sky" sights, so help you get the best viewing for miles around, rather than maybe suffer light pollution every night.

A few questions to consider:
Does she like the challenge of hunting and finding stuff, or will she lose interest/get frustrated if she can't see her target quite quickly? That may dictate whether manual or automated "go to" mounts are a better choice.

Does she want to learn star lore and to be able to navigate her way around the sky, or does she want to investigate specific stars? Does she want to take photos, or is she happy to do visual astronomy and use the internet for any images?

Does her GCSE in astronomy recommend anything, or does the syllabus have any segments where specific kit would be more useful?

Re kit itself, as others have said, a wobbly mount is bad news for viewing, and a disaster for photography. You were looking at the Celestron SLT and SE ranges. Check the maximum weight of kit for the tripod, and remember that eyepieces can weigh several hundred grammes, as well as adding a spotter scope or camera back, and you don't want to get anywhere close to the maximum weight, as that is only feasible in perfect conditions, not on a breezy Yorkshire evening!

Seeking of Yorkshire evenings, will she put up with cold nights (you can buy heated jackets etc.) or will it be better to do "remote" astronomy from the PC?

I'd recommend reading skyatnightmagazine.com, including kit reviews to get a feel for the choices and compromises that different kit configurations offer. Forum websites like cloudynights.com are also pretty good for getting more experienced astronomers' viewpoints.

Not sure how far away they are from you, but Rothervalleyoptics.co.uk have a good reputation for customer service.

Hope it goes well. It's a great hobby.

VRD

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#486883

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » March 16th, 2022, 11:16 am

My daughter received a Celestron NextStar 5SE telescope for Christmas. It came with a 25mm eyepiece.

I think she needs more eyepieces of differing sizes.

Should I buy separate's or a zoom eyepiece and what size's please?

Thank you

AiY(D)

servodude
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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#486888

Postby servodude » March 16th, 2022, 11:46 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:My daughter received a Celestron NextStar 5SE telescope for Christmas. It came with a 25mm eyepiece.

I think she needs more eyepieces of differing sizes.

Should I buy separate's or a zoom eyepiece and what size's please?

Thank you

AiY(D)


Have you got a camera adaptor?
There's no real reason a good zoom wouldn't be useful
- might get a bit dim below 10mm if the system is optimised for 25, but it would certainly give you a good degree of options

Sounds like a lot of fun
-sd

Lootman
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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#486906

Postby Lootman » March 16th, 2022, 12:55 pm

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:My daughter received a Celestron NextStar 5SE telescope for Christmas. It came with a 25mm eyepiece.

I think she needs more eyepieces of differing sizes.

Should I buy separate's or a zoom eyepiece and what size's please?

My preference is for separate eyepieces rather than a zoom. The latter is more complicated and I would fear that would effect light transmission.

I have four eyepieces and find that to be sufficient. The lower power eyepieces, i.e. the ones with a longer focal length, are more usable in most situations, I find. Magnification is over-rated because it leads to a less bright image, more shakiness and a narrower field of view.

vrdiver
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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#486953

Postby vrdiver » March 16th, 2022, 2:53 pm

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:My daughter received a Celestron NextStar 5SE telescope for Christmas. It came with a 25mm eyepiece.

I think she needs more eyepieces of differing sizes.

Should I buy separate's or a zoom eyepiece and what size's please?

This may help you (and your daughter) understand the choices available: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/eyepieces-the-basics/

and a bit more detail can be gleaned from http://www.swindonstargazers.com/beginners/eyepieces.htm

If the observer will be wearing glasses, then do read the bits about eye relief!

To work out which eyepieces will give what magnification for your specific telescope, this is helpful: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/43171-eyepieces-the-very-least-you-need/

For the telescope itself, this is quite useful: https://www.nexstarsite.com/index.html

Personally, I would start with a zoom lens (I have a Baader Hyperion Mark IV 8 - 24mm lens) as that allows the observer to find an object, then zoom in on it after seeing it in a wider context. More useful for star hopping and manual locating than when using a Go-To, but still useful for minimising the number of eyepieces being carried or changed in the dark!

For specific eyepieces, with a telescopic focal length of 1250mm and being f/10, the following table shows the magnification of various eyepieces:

To read the table, the eyepiece is the left hand column, and three sets of magnification are shown: no Barlow, with 1.3x Barlow and with a 2.25 Barlow. E.g. a 4.0mm eyepiece will give a magnification of 313x, 406x and 914x respectively for the three different configurations.

As a rule of thumb, more than twice the lelescope's aperture, in mm, is the upper maximum for usable magnification. So a 5SE with 5" aperture, or 126mm, will have a useful magnification of 250x. Above this and things will start to get blurry; sometimes even this maximum can't be achieved if the atmosphere is shoving lots of different temperature air masses between you and the stars...



The magnification is one thing, but the apparent field of view will make a huge difference to how wide the diameter of the magnified sky appears. Bigger is better (for me, at least). This will be specific to individual eyepieces. E.g. Baader Planetariums have 76mm AFOV, whereas standard Plossl's might come with 52mm, which is a less satisfying viewing experience.

To get a feel for the difference an eyepiece makes, this can be fun: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astronomy-field-view-calculator/. Just be aware that the images are probably a bit better than you will see, as they're photo's, built up with multiple or long exposures, vs the eye's processing ability.

This is also handy for understanding what a particular eyepiece might give you on your telescope: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/telescope-calculator/#:~:text=As%20a%20rule%20of%20thumb,wider%20the%20field%20of%20view.

Hopefully the above will give you enough information to work out which eyepieces will work for you and your daughter, and why, which can be half the fun!

VRD

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Re: Astronomy - Telescope for Teenager

#486967

Postby Lootman » March 16th, 2022, 4:08 pm

vrdiver wrote:As a rule of thumb, more than twice the lelescope's aperture, in mm, is the upper maximum for usable magnification. So a 5SE with 5" aperture, or 126mm, will have a useful magnification of 250x. Above this and things will start to get blurry; sometimes even this maximum can't be achieved if the atmosphere is shoving lots of different temperature air masses between you and the stars...

In my experience the usuable magnification is less than that rule of thumb, at least unless you have very clean air, clear skies and no light pollution.

So whilst in theory my 6 inch refractor could give me magnification of 300, I can seldom use more than half of that.

My 8 inch Catadioptric is a lot happier at 200X than 400X

Of course when looking at stars the magnification is irrelevant since they always appear as a point of light anyway.


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