Telescopes & Drones

**PixieFairies** · 15 Oct 20, 01:15 PM

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all keeping well. Its Santa time.

Im looking for recommendations on a good astrophotography Telescope. The one i see mentioned alot is the Celestron Astromaster 130EQ. Can anyone recommend a good one that you can see stars, planets, solar system, clusters etc that you can also attach your DSLR cameras, connect to a laptop or connect phone to etc.

Also on the look out for a Drone. Something that takes good quality videos and images with a good air time battery.

My budget would be about 400-500 each for both.

Any night sky & drone hobbyists here that could help with this, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks x

wanye · 15 Oct 20, 01:44 PM

for that sort of budget, i'd go for the dji mavic mini with the fly more bundle (extra battery/spares) and the insurance thing (~�30 a year, but they replace it if it gets lost or gets trashed - seems like a small price to pay for peace of mind)

you can get it for around �400 on special offer, set up an alert on hotukdeals

cant say about telescopes though, but definitely get one you can attach a camera to. and if budget allows, one that is motorised so that it can track the stars for ultra long exposures

novocastrian · 15 Oct 20, 01:53 PM

dont know much about telescopes

but as above def go for a motor drive one tha tracks whatever you are looking at

we bought our daughter a celestron (can recall model) basic scope and whilst she had great fun with it was a pita to get it all setup & focused only for the eath to rotate..

Guest · 15 Oct 20, 01:58 PM

I have the Skywatcher 130p synscan AZ GOTO. It was recommended to me by somebody in an astronomy club I was connected to and has good reviews. Here is one.

It is excellent once it is set up, but as a beginner I found it quite hard to set up, I need to set it up each time I use it not as a one off. (But it is supposed to be good for beginners).

My problem was that it requires a triangulation, the first two objects were always fine as I could pick a couple of stars or a planet I am sure about, but then it would instruct me to find a particular third object which sometimes could be quite obscure and hard for me to identify.

I got a second telescope at one time for when I was feeling too lazy to set this one up. That was a Celestron, but a fairly basic �point and shoot� one.

Bozza · 15 Oct 20, 02:06 PM

Originally Posted by novocastrian

dont know much about telescopes

but as above def go for a motor drive one tha tracks whatever you are looking at

we bought our daughter a celestron (can recall model) basic scope and whilst she had great fun with it was a pita to get it all setup & focused only for the eath to rotate..

I hope you don't mind me saying that this made me chuckle imagining the below:

You: Right, there we go - all setup - take a look!
Daughter: Oh no.
You: What's wrong?
Daughter: It's the Earth - it's only gone and rotated.
You: Gggggrrrrrr!

novocastrian · 15 Oct 20, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by Bozza

I hope you don't mind me saying that this made me chuckle imagining the below:

You: Right, there we go - all setup - take a look!
Daughter: Oh no.
You: What's wrong?
Daughter: It's the Earth - it's only gone and rotated.
You: Gggggrrrrrr!

thats amazing , were you there...

**PixieFairies** · 15 Oct 20, 06:55 PM

Thanks everyone for your recommendations. Will be checking those out.

15 Oct 20, 01:53 PM	#3
	15 Oct 20, 01:53 PM novocastrian Imagineer
novocastrian Imagineer Join Date: Aug 14	dont know much about telescopes but as above def go for a motor drive one tha tracks whatever you are looking at we bought our daughter a celestron (can recall model) basic scope and whilst she had great fun with it was a pita to get it all setup & focused only for the eath to rotate..

15 Oct 20, 01:58 PM	#4
	15 Oct 20, 01:58 PM Guest Guest
Guest Guest	I have the Skywatcher 130p synscan AZ GOTO. It was recommended to me by somebody in an astronomy club I was connected to and has good reviews. Here is one. It is excellent once it is set up, but as a beginner I found it quite hard to set up, I need to set it up each time I use it not as a one off. (But it is supposed to be good for beginners). My problem was that it requires a triangulation, the first two objects were always fine as I could pick a couple of stars or a planet I am sure about, but then it would instruct me to find a particular third object which sometimes could be quite obscure and hard for me to identify. I got a second telescope at one time for when I was feeling too lazy to set this one up. That was a Celestron, but a fairly basic �point and shoot� one. Edited at 02:03 PM.