Which type of telescope is best?
There is no one “best” telescope…that’s why I own ten of them and 15 others in the past: http://www.gaherty.ca/telescopes.htm For your first (or only) telescope, I’d recommend an 6″ to 10″ Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount. This will show you most of what’s in the sky for a very reasonable price. Only after you’ve got everything out of this scope (if ever) should you consider a different scope. Here are a few web pages with good information on beginner’s telescopes: http://www.gaherty.ca/tme/TME0702_Buying… http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html http://observers.org/beginner/j.r.f.begi… For more advanced information, read Phil Harrington’s Star Ware, 4th edition (Wiley).
Wrong, wrong, wrong. There certainly are “best” telescopes. The way to look at this is that even the government only had 13 billion dollars to spend. It wasn’t infinite money. And all they could get was a 2.5 meter telescope in space. Best in the world at the time? Certainly best for certain tasks. For example, it has the best resolution for a visible light scope, especially for 25th magnitude objects. The HST is the only instrument that has measured side to side wobble in a star due to the influence of an orbiting planet. Nothing else can do it. For $500, there’s certainly a best scope. It’s a Newtonian reflector, because for that you get a 90 mm refractor or a 250 mm reflector. With a 250 mm reflector, you can cut a cheap offset mask out of cardboard and you’ve got a the equivalent of a 90 mm APO refractor. It’s not an SCT, because for $500 you get what, 120 mm? Hands down. For under $1000, it’s a Newtonian reflector. So then you need a mount. The Dob mount is something like $50.
There are three main types of telescopes commonly available to amateur astronomers: refractors, reflectors, and Schmidt-Cassegrains. Of the three there is no single “best choice”. It all depends on your interests and needs. If portability is an important factor for you, (and it should be if you live in a bright urban area) then a small refractor or a Schmidt-Cassegrain has a lot of advantages. If you are interested in faint diffuse objects like galaxies and nebulae then a reflector might be your best choice. If you are interested in planets then a long focal length refractor, or Schmidt-Cassegrain might be your best bet. Any telescope will work reasonably well on any type of object. It just so happens that some telescopes are better suited for certain types of objects than others. There is no telescope on the market that is the best choice for every type of observing. Picking a telescope is a series of trade-offs.
