Beginner's Luck - Advice for Getting Started

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few."
Shunryu Suzuki

Carolyn Collins Petersen offers Top Ten Reasons Why Stargazing is Cool in another podcast from 356 Days of Astronomy.

Buying Your First Telescope

Every experienced astronomer has an opinion about how to pick your first telescope. Here's a sampling of some prominent ones:

In my opinion, Jay Reynolds Freeman offers the most honest and complete advice on his website.

Jeff Setzer offers Telescope Tips in this podcast from 365 Days of Astronomy the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy.

In addition to the above, here are my humble opinions:

1. Explore the night sky with your naked eyes and binoculars. Get outside and enjoy. Learn the constellations. This will test your enthusiasm for the hobby and give you a good introduction.  If you still want a telescope after a couple of months, then go ahead.
2. Find out what you will be able to see in a telescope.  The color photographs in astronomy books and magazine and found all over the Internet are produced using long exposures and large observatory telescopes or the Hubble Space Telescope.  Views through an amateur telescope are very different.  Check out the sketches at Sky Rover. They are more representative of what you will actually see.
3. Don't buy a department store telescope. They are junk.  If you've received one as a gift and cannot return it, Joe Roberts explains how to correct their problems.  Save your money until you can afford a quality scope.
4. Size counts.  Buy the biggest aperture that you can afford.
5. Buy a sturdy, stable mount.
6. Consider portability.  If you have to transport your scope, a smaller, lighter scope may be more appropriate because it will get used more. Also, available storage space may be a constraint.  Dobsonian mounted reflectors are often recommended as first scopes; however, they are bulky and heavy.   I elected to buy my Meade ETX-90 instead because I did not have the storage space for a Dob.
7. Include accessories in your budget because you are going to want eyepieces, filters, a finder, a cover, a dew shield, carrying cases, etc.  that usually do not come with the scope.
8. Consider buying used equipment.  Often good used equipment can be bought economically from someone who has upgraded to a better scope and no longer needs their first scope.  Look for someone locally so you can see what you are buying.  Shipping scopes is expensive and risky because of potential damage.
9. Go to a star party and try out some scopes.  Most astronomers will let you look through their scope and discuss their "baby." 

GOTO mounts (a.k.a computer controllers) deserve a special mention because they are controversial.  Some feel that reliance on GOTO mounts prevents users from truly learning the night sky.  They prefer that observers star hop to objects and thereby learn the layout of the sky. Others feel that the convenience of GOTO mounts allows users to enjoy the night sky faster and avoid frustration finding faint objects.  I have a Autostar for my ETX-90, but more often I use the scope without it. The Autostar requires an alignment each time it is set up, which can be tricky to get accurate enough to confidently find objects.  I do not need the Autostar if I am looking at a bright object, like a planet, that I can find with the red dot finder and finder scope.  On the other hand, it is useful to find objects when sky conditions are poor in my suburban location and dim stars are swamped by sky glow.  If I did astrophotography, the tracking ability would be indispensable.  Should you pay extra for the convenience of the GOTO, or should you spend the money on more aperture?  Consider your own priorities, goals and needs.

So you bought a scope, but you're have trouble finding things in the sky.  Top Ten Telescope Mistakes for Beginners pocast from the IYA 365 Days of Astronomy will help. In less than 15 minutes, this podcast will save you months of trial-and-error figuring out what you're doing wrong.

The Astronomy Connection and Cloudy Nights have a variety of articles for beginners about observing, equipment, clothing, charts, etc.

See the Hardware page for more information on telescopes, homemade accessory projects, vendors and building your own telescope.

See the Bookshelf page for recommended books for beginners.