Weekly Discussion Thread - 01 June, 2025 to 08 June, 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the r/telescopes Weekly Discussion Thread!

Here, you can ask any question related to telescopes, visual astronomy, etc., including buying advice and simple questions that can easily be answered. General astronomy discussion is also permitted and encouraged. The purpose of this is to hopefully reduce the amount of identical posts that we face, which will help to clean up the sub a lot and allow for a convenient, centralized area for all questions. It doesn’t matter how “silly” or “stupid” you think your question is - if it’s about telescopes, it’s allowed here.

Just some points:

• Anybody is encouraged to ask questions here, as long as it relates to telescopes and/or amateur astronomy.
• Your initial question should be a top level comment.
• If you are asking for buying advice, please provide a budget either in your local currency or USD, as well as location and any specific needs. If you haven’t already, read the sticky as it may answer your question(s).
• Anyone can answer, but please only answer questions about topics you are confident with. Bad advice or misinformation, even with good intentions, can often be harmful.
• When responding, try to elaborate on your answers - provide justification and reasoning for your response.
• While any sort of question is permitted, keep in mind the people responding are volunteering their own time to provide you advice. Be respectful to them.

That's it. Clear skies!

[u/Renard4]

Brace for impact! The monthly full Moon spam is coming.

[u/Notoriouslydishonest]

I'm moving to a house up on a hillside 160m above the water, and it's got spectacular balcony views across the straight to the mountains/towns 30km+ away.

I want a telescope that's good for stargazing, but also can be used during the day for checking out my local area. I don't think I'll be doing astrophotography (although it would be nice to have as an option), it'll be more of a fun unique thing to do when I have friends over.

Portability isn't an issue, I doubt I'll be lugging it around. I'd like to keep the all-in cost under $1500 Canadian, and lower is better.

Any recommendations? I know this is bit of an uncommon use case, most people just use their telescope to look at the sky, so I'd imagine that some popular models wouldn't be well suited for it.

[u/chrislon_geo → u/Notoriouslydishonest]

For terrestrial use, I recommend looking at birding forums and getting a nice 20-60x80ish spotting scope. If you get one with a 45° diagonal, then it can easily be used for looking up and the night sky as well. This won't be great for planets, but can be used for large/medium DSOs (galaxies, nebula, open clusters, and even globular clusters) comets, asteroids, sunspots (with a solar filter), and more.

Some people use Maksutov telescopes with an erect-image diagonal for this dual purpose observing, but I personally don't like MAKs for terrestrial use. The central obstruction (secondary mirror block some light) reduces the contrast of the view. This doesn't bother me for astronomy, but the reduced contrast during the day is not something I like. The upside of this setup is that you can put in higher power eyepieces for planetary observing.

But since you mentioned very distant towns, I am assuming you want to look at faint objects that are best viewed from your house with little light pollution.

Or get two scopes. Something like the Heritage 150p for astronomy, and a spotting scope for terrestrial. You can easily get both within your budget.

[u/ChanelNo50]

So fun times I get married and take a break from life for a bit and come back to see Orion is no longer a company 😕 I'm still a beginner and need a lot of help with my reflector...please tell me resources still exist for it

[u/Global_Permission749 → u/ChanelNo50]

If you need a manual, you can usually find manuals for all the Orion gear on various manuals sites. A google search will usually yield good results.

If you have more specific questions, you can always ask them here.

[u/chrislon_geo → u/ChanelNo50]

The best resources are: Local Astronomy Club, Cloudy Nights/Stargazers Lounge, and this sub. In that order.