Looking for a Telescope

I am looking to trade for a telescope. I am willing to do a combo of trading, trading with some payment, and possibly just buy it depending on what sort of price I would be looking it, I would however prefer to trade. I have many lasers to trade (even a few quality laser projectors) but what I would trade depends on what telescope you are willing to part with. Let me know if anyone has anything and is interested or if you know of anyone.
:thanks:

I don't have a telescope to trade, but it might help if you provided some information about what you are looking for...

for example, are you looking for something to do visual astronomy or astrophotography? are you interested in solar system objects (moon, planets, etc) or deep space objects (nebula, galaxies, etc)? The answers to these sort of questions not only help identify what type of telescope you might need, but also scope a general price range that the scope would fall into so you know more or less what you're looking at from a trade/buy standpoint.

I'm new to that hobby, so this kinda of stuff is fresh on my mind since I had to go through it recently.

Good luck in your search!

cheers,
c

I am interested in astrophotography of deep space objects as well as objects in our solar system; but mostly deep space objects.

Read: CHOOSING A TELESCOPE

You can get them all over eBay and Amazon.
Their actually not too expensive until you get into the high end units.
I have a thing for Meade.

You actually don't need a very powerful telescope (or one at all) for many deep space objects. a lot of them are really large in the night sky. We just don't see them because the light is relatively dim. For example, our nearest galaxy - Andromeda - is about 5 times wider across from our point of view than a full moon. You just need some special imaging techniques to pull those photos together in a picture.

If you are interested in astrophotography, your most vital piece of equipment (assuming you have something to capture a picture with) is the mount. Most visual astronomy telescopes use what is called an alt-azimuth style mount which accounts for up and down tracking, but over long exposures will experience what is called field rotation. We're spinning and the stars will start to form trails around what you are looking at... in order to counteract for field rotation, you need what is called a German equatorial mount. Equatorial mounts, rather than "up/down and right/left" controls, have declination and right ascension axis so they can spin to counter field rotation as the earth rotates through your exposure as well as track your DSO through the night sky.

Planetary imaging usually doesn't require as much of this sort of thing since the planets illumination are reflected sunlight and exposures are usually shorter. The trade-off is that you need a lot more magnification to image them well... ie. a better telescope/lens combo.

I hope that doesn't make things clear as mud.

TL;DR - Astrophotography is a lot more involved that owning a telescope and like it or not, has a relatively high entry cost to effectively image.

Hey zoidberg, i like your Q, which one is better for the moon?

Man. OP's question is so vague.

There's literally 30 different types of telescopes.

Most of the refracting entry scopes that are $280-450 can see Jupiter at about what you can see a full moon on a clear night with the naked eye.

zoeid said:

Hey zoidberg, i like your Q, which one is better for the moon?

Click to expand...

Most, $250-450, of them will be relatively the same until you start getting into $1000+ telescopes