Telescopes
 

I'm considering purchasing a 6" to 8" reflecting telescope. Does anyone have any experience with reflector telescopes, and have any advice or recommendations?

I don't have one, but ground a mirror back in middle school and kind of keep up with amateur astronomy.

What do you want to look at?

You want to make sure the mirror surface is good, the main tube is straight without dents, the spider is solid and the eyepiece is comfortably accessible when the main tube is near vertical. Inverters, filters and camera mounts are a plus obviously. Spotter scope is a requirement at that size.

You can spend a bunch and get auto tracking and location by PC or handheld.

I'd be tempted to start with a craigslist hand me down until you decide what features you want.

My Dad's got at 6" reflector. I've used it to peep the rings of Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but it's a bitch to compensate for the rotation of the Earth at max resolution unless you've got the gimbals properly lined up for your location and have a decent tripod/gimbal setup. My Dad's was less than awesome and it meant accidentally swinging the field of view around the target as the mechanism bound and released.

Other than that, I don't really have any specific help to offer. My guess is with these things, you get what you pay for. Since telescopes aren't really mass produced, the cheap ones are probably the crappy ones.

Are you looking to do photography, use the fancy auto-tracking stuff, or just want a basic tube for fun? That will pretty determine the cost/size, as the base type will drive everything.

The best bang for your buck optics-wise is probably a Dobsonian type reflector. They are large (but light), and are manipulated by hand, but they do offer a very very good image for sub-$1000 scopes.

Just my opinion.

I'd like to view objects outside our solar system. The internet tells me a reflector would be best for that.

This I've discovered. Although I've seen some incredible antique brass telescopes for thousands of dollars.

I don't have a nice camera at the moment, but when I do get one I'd like to take photographs. The auto-tracking would be nice being a beginner.

I agree, this is the one I've had my eye on...
http://www.telescope.com/control/pro...oduct_id=27183

Here's my further take: the model you showed has an electronic navigation system, but it looks to me to be a little more than a pointer. Granted, it probably has a big database of objects, but my opinion was always that finding the objects was half the fun.

To me, the only point of having a motor-driven base is for time-exposure photography of objects. Since a motor that can do that is $$$$, I would say forget the whole electronic nav system and spend that money on getting another 2" of scope. It will make a pretty big difference. I used a 12" Dobsonian back in the day, it was killer.

I'm sure you've checked into amateur forums.....there have to be some good ones out there.

There are a bunch on CL from 4.5" to 10". If you start small and get into it, they will likely hold their used value fairly well, so moving up is incremental, not starting from scratch.