On Tuesday, September 3, 2002, at 02:18 PM, Russ Bessom wrote: > With a 3.5" aperture, you don't get enough light to be remotely > interesting. The four views that this scope is good for is 1. Saturn, > 2. Jupiter, 3. The moon, and 4. Birds. All else, put it away, and grab > your binoculars. I'd say that's a good rule of thumb for telescopes of this size. I was really into astronomy 20 years ago and was up on the details of the telescope market at the time, but not anymore. Some of the general issues don't change though, and that's one of them. For a scope of average quality, the 3 or 4 inch reflector is not going to be worthwhile. An 8 inch is pretty decent. Otherwise, grab your binocs, or invest in binocs with a large front apreture (and buy a gym membership so you can hold them up for an hour). The cassegrain variations are really great to move around and super on the planets, but that's about it. On the other hand, you're not going to be seeing any deep sky objects from a city back yard anyway. Like most technical things, the physics forces you into a trade-off of things like price, portability, and function. Once you know what to expect from the different options, its a matter of picking something that suits what you want to do. Steve ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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