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Entry-Level Astronomy?
brobak writes "I'm getting ready to move into a new home on a couple of acres of rural property a significant distance from any large source of light pollution. I've always been interested in astronomy in general, and I would like to put my dark skies to use by picking up decent telescope and learning a bit about the skies over my head. The overall budget for this project is going to be around $1,000. I am particularly interested in astrophotography, but I understand that that may carry me outside the scope of the initial budget. I've already signed up for my local astronomy club's next monthly meeting. I have been doing Web research, but I thought that the Slashdot community would be the perfect place to get opinions on entry-level equipment, websites, and books."
I'm a moderately experienced amateur astronomer, and a professional astrophysicist. I have a nice TMB 105 apochromatic refractor, and I would never recommend one to a beginner. Good apo refractors have impeccable quality, but they are not cost-effective, unlike a halfway decent 10" Newtonian (which will cost 1/4 as much, yet give far superior views).
Aperture is king. Aperture wins. You can never get enough aperture
My advice is to forget about astrophotography for the moment. Do not get a DSLR camera -- you will want a dedicated astro-camera with a cooled CCD sensor. You will also want a good equatorial mount (Losmandy, Astro-physics, or similar) which will cost at least ~$2000. Deep-sky astrophotography is expensive and for the moment, you're better served with a good visual instrument to get you started. (If you just want to take images of the moon and planets, you can get by with a webcam and a lower cost equatorial mount.)
With a $1k budget, you won't be able to do deep-sky astrophotography. Given your budget, the economics of astro-imaging, and the difficulty of putting a large telescope on a quality equatorial mount, your best bet is to forego imaging until you can save a substantially larger amount of money. In the meantime, get yourself a 10" or larger Dobsonian-mounted Newtonian. They may look cheap, but you will appreciate the aperture when viewing deep-sky objects.
Oh, and join a local astronomy club if you can.
The best advice I got (now in retrospective) when starting out was to buy an telescope that was easy to take out and setup, the best scope is the scope you use often.
I SECOND THIS. I can not say it strong enough. This is THE most important advice for someone just getting in to astronomy. So many people as they are buying their first telescope take the wrong road.
There are 3 roads to take here.
Road 1: It's only $129 and it magnifies 8000 TIMES. - The trap is that the optics are junk in it.
Road 2: I will see more deep sky stuff with a 10 inch dob, or a 12 inch SC. - The trap is that it sits in the basement, unused. It is too much of a pain to just get out on a wonderful night, so it sits. This is the advice the poster above was giving you.
Road 3: A nice middle of the road scope that fits your budget and you use all the time to learn the sky and see things that are amazing.
As others have said, the astrophotography aspect of it is really going to be above your budget. Sure, you can get the "webcam converted to a starscope", but it is junk. Stay within your budget, and get a nice scope for yourself. One that you can get outside at the drop of a hat. Not something that becomes an anchor.
Let me quote him again:
The best advice I got (now in retrospective) when starting out was to buy an telescope that was easy to take out and setup, the best scope is the scope you use often.
That was the best advice I got as well. The best one is the one you will use. I guess that means smaller is better in this case.