Telescopes for Home Use?

PDubNYC asks: "Just thought this was a good place to ask about telescopes. My father is turning 70 shortly, and I thought a telescope would be a good gift as he was an air force navigator back in the day, and loves viewing nature's beauty (bird watching, safaris etc...). So, any ideas what to look for in a home telescope, from $500-$1000 (split by 6 kids) that would enable him to punch in coordinates and have the motor turn, give a great view of nearby celestial bodies (maybe Saturn's rings), and it'd be great to hook up to a laptop (a Mac would be even better, but far from necessary). Any advice would be great." PDubNYC is also on a budget, so please refrain from suggesting the ultra expensive $1500 scopes.

Comments

Lessons learned from my $1000 telscope...

[Repran]

(1) If you want a point and click telescope for 1000 bucks you will end up spending 3/4 of the money on point and click hardware and 1/4 on apperture. I went for apperture.

(2) There are 7 objects that take little to no effort to find with your telescope manualy:

Sun (ALWAYS use a filter here!!!)

Moon

Venus

Jupiter

Saturn

Mars

Mercury

With my 135 mm opening telescope I can see sunspots, Moon craters, the phases of Venus, the cloud bands of Jupiter and his 4 biggest moons, and the rings of Saturn. Mars will be back later this year and I have not seen it through my telescope yet.

(3) To find anything with your telescope that you can not see with your naked eye you will need 3 things:

Dark sky (The light of 1/4 Moon is enough to make observation pointless, zero ambient light, and transparent sky)

Star charts

patience, patience, patience

I own my telescope for 6 months now and have been out a couple of times, the only thing I managed to spot that I could not see with my naked eye was the Orion nebular and the Andromeda Galaxy. Trust me - this is a perfect time sink. Prepare to be disappointed.

(4) Prepare to be amazed and exited. This is a wonderfull hobby.

Please do not forget that with age, sight deminishes. This basically rules out deep sky (galaxies, nebular) observation. This means you will want moderate aperature and more focal length instead because this will be better for observing the objects that your father can enjoy: the planets, the moon and the sun. And since you wont need a computer to locate these you can dump more money on the telescope and mounting and less in computer stuff.

I own a Vixen - GP E R135S and love it. Next I will probably go for the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS.

PS: The link to the pictures in an earlier post are wonderfull but do not expect to see this with your telescope and your naked eye. Under excellent conditions Jupiter will be more like a small white ball with very faint beige bands.