Thread 2838210

Got a complete Tasco 1959 7TE 60mm Refractor in original box with all accessories along with a whole bunch of books with some other stuff for $20.

Did i do good?

Yeah, it's pretty good. It's not a free Takahashi but it's good.
https://www.scopereviews.com/Tasco1.html

>watch an astronomy programme when I was young
>ask for a telescope for my Birthday
>get it
>stars still look like tiny specks
The moon looked good but apart from that I didn't get it.

>fluorite Takahashi 76mm
>point at stars
>stars are perfect points and sometimes different colours
>and sometimes made up of multiple sometimes different colour stars
>space is beatiful but also horrifying
>heh

>>2838213
.... What were you expecting to see?

>buy myself a 5" mak reflector and wifi/goto az mount
>2 different stores fuck me around, have to pay for it twice and get a refund from the 2nd place
>Jupiter goes out of view for the next 6 months
>saturns rings move into same plane as earth, won't be visible again for years
>can't see mars for shit with this 23mm eyepiece that came with it
>4th optics store takes my money and doesn't ship the 10mm eyepiece for 3 months
>now mars is out of view for months
>nothing but stars right now, since I can't stay up all night during work week
>cloudy for the last 9 weeks

I'm just tired man, why do optics stores all have to be such cunts

>>2838372
Can't you just buy eyepieces from amazon to get you by? I regularly buy cheap telescopes from yard sales that are missing them and get them working for $15-20, they aren't great eye pieces but they work and usually come in sets.

So how do i attach a camera to this?

>>2838390
If you want to photograph anything darker than the moon you need an auto-tracking rig specifically made for astrophotography so you can take long exposures as the Earth rotates. It's very expensive and complicated unfortunately.

>>2838402
Actually i don't, it's for long range terrestrial photography. There are several lakes where i am (Northern Maine) where Cougars have allegedly been spotted in the winter eating scraps out on the ice but no one has gotten a good shot of them.

>>2838410
Oh, I assumed astrophotography for some reason. That's a lot simpler then, you can get mounts for DSLR cameras that hook up where the eyepeice goes. They're usually called T-Rings. You can /diy/ one also since it's just a tube basically.

>>2838412
Neighbors kid got paralyzed from the chest down. He loves the outdoors so we are thinking of something cool he could do. We are thinking of setting him up in a heated ice shack and putting out bait a mile or so out onto the ice. He can work the fine adjustments so he could scan the whole lake, especially it it had a digital camera with a screen.

We have the idea to put a row of 2, 4 and 6 foot range poles behind the sites so we can prove the size and that it isn't a big bobcat but really is a mountain lion.

One of the ideas was to put a IR monocle between the camera and telescope so we could take night shots. We would put angled reflective plates on top of the range poles with IR glowsticks on them, the idea is it would back light the bait spots without directly being in line of sight of the camera.

>>2838372
>cloudy for the last 9 weeks
>can't see Mars for shit
welcome to astronomy lol

>>2838373
I don't buy anything from Amazon, no exceptions. also Ausfail

>>2838420
Hope you have a son of your own some day

>>2838598
Eh, i'm already 50 and i would be a shitty dad.

Thinking of getting pic related

I'd like to get a nice telescope someday but this one was free and I have an adapter to put my camera on it. Works well enough for now. It's a fixed 900MM lens.

>>2838689
It takes nice moon shots. I still need to get out of town and use it to take some actual good pictures. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

>>2838681
These are great

>>2838707
I'm torn between getting an 8 or a 10 because it seems almost everyone ends up upgrading to a 10" or more anyway.

>>2838709
Scratch that, found a Saxon on sale for $120 cheaper, so tempting to get one now and be broke for a while.

>>2838690
It's amazing what you can do just aiming a smart phone camer down the eyepiece.
Here's one I got of the moon

>>2838712
I didn't have a moon filter so this actually so bright it hurt to look at with the naked eye

And here's one of the sun with a sun filter, this was cool to look at

>>2838712
Mine is an actual camera connected to the telescope. Unfortunately it's kinda hard to get the focus just right with the tiny camera screen plus I suck at photography.
>>2838713
I've only done the sun with heavy filters that are darker than a welding mask. Not through the telescope though.

>>2838712
Not bad, this is from an old cheap Fuji digital camera with telescopic zoom

>>2838210 (OP)
I saw the rings of Saturn for the first time via one like it. A couple years later I bought, secondhand, a 6" F8 Newtonian with a heavy equatorial mount. I suppose my favorite sight in it was M11.

>>2838971
It was also pretty nice for projecting detailed images of the sun, and came with a screen that mounted conveniently to it.