Thinking about buying my first telescope this week.
Doing a little bit of research, but feel's like im right at the deep end at the moment.
Would anyone recommend using a 'Astronomical Refractor'? or a 'Newtonian Reflector'?
And anything to be bout to view the sun with a special lens?
Thanks
Refractors and reflectors are two different types of scopes. No scope will do it all.
Refractors = tube with glass lenses in (no mirrors). Use the refraction of the glass to bend the light.
Reflectors = tube with mirror to bend the light, sometimes they will have corrector plates etc made of glass.
Firstly, don't expect the pictures you see from astrophotography through the eyepiece. I have a refractor - with an eyepiece, I'll see grey blobs for some galaxies.. it's only with AP you'll get colours etc.
For visual, get a "fast" scope and with a larger aperture to provide as much light to your eye as possible. A "dob" (Dobsonian) is a good scope that basically is reflector on a basic simple base you move manually. it's the fastest to setup and start viewing. The simple base means you may be able to photo the moon with a webcam but not DSOs.
A Newtonian (ie a reflector) is usually the same thing but on an EQ mount, the two are usually interchangeable.
Refractors are less hassle as they don't need mirror alignment but large apertures get expensive and there's really two grades - Acro and APO-cromatic. This is how well the different colours are brought to focus at the right spot. Acrochromatic have some blue or red edges to the view, APOs have more glass and bring red,green and blue to focus at the same point and thus give a better view - but are much more expensive.
Planets require focal length
Astrophotography is obscenely expensive. (I'll let that ring..)
Solar.. you can use "solar film" on the end of your scope to reduce the light to give you "white light" views of sunspots. You can image with a camera too.
If you want proms etc on the edges - you will need a Hydrogen Alpha scope - these have a filter that's very very narrow band to distinguish the differences in light. A simple AP Ha filter will not do this (neither 30 or 7nm Ha).
Again you will see Ha proms an sunspots but you will need an EQ mount to really make images.
Both refractors and reflectors have focal length and focal ratio.
It's this you will need to understand.
Focal length - how zoomed in..
Focal ratio - zoom vs aperture. Slow being 8+, fast being ~4-5, super fast being 2-3. as f-ration = fl/aperture
Note that the more you zoom in, the less light you will get.. and dim things in the sky get dimmer the more you zoom.
I think the best thing todo is to read up first.. Plenty of astro mags have a beginner's section. There's a considerable amount of info, options and gadgets. Sometimes it's a good idea to start with something simple - a dob will do visual DSO (where possible), planets and solar (given solar film). The money will give you aperture (note the scope gets large quickly) and will give you exceptional views of the moon etc.
Bundled eyepieces aren't great.. and an aftermarket EP will be better and allow more light through.
