When I attended an open evening at the local astronomy group a few years ago I asked a long time member which telescope he thought I should buy. I gave him my budget and thoughts I’d had on the make and model. He said spend a year looking at the sky and learning its changing star patterns then buy a pair of standard binoculars and use them for a year. The conversation finished there but I imagine he’d have suggested I eventually buy a small telescope in about 7 years time. That was his experience over the years perhaps. However, one can buy a telescope with GPS and a camera that auto-aligns itself with your section of the sky from its position in the universe and at the click of a hand control button will slew to the object of your choosing (providing it’s up that night). The auto alignment takes about 3 minutes with dark skies. You can spend time observing your chosen o celestial object instead of hours spent trying to find it.

 

Better advice from the astronomy chap would have been to have asked me if my garden had many trees and what my sight line of the southern sky was like, He could have gone on and told me the best viewings are in Feb – April and often around 12 midnight or later when it’s often freezing cold. He could have told me that so often so much of the night sky is obscured by clouds. If he’d know he might have told me that auto-alignment without the camera attachment (using three stars you centre yourself) is very difficult and with a camera only better if the sky isn’t light polluted as so much of it is in England nowadays. With so much light pollution and so few stars the camera’s database can’t decide where it is so the alignment fails. They would have been valuable tips that may well have saved me a packet although I have to accept I was already mentally far down the purchase road by then.

 

Alignment failure happened regularly with the three star alignment. I’d be in the garden for 2 hours and not achieve alignment so I’d pack up and go indoors. Particularly un-rewarding and very frustrating. With the alignment camera attached in theory it should be much simpler and I believe it is under dark skies.

 

Funny thing, night sky viewing. I can be all up for it and at 6pm the sky is clear but by 8pm as I prepare to set up, the cloud has rolled in and that’s the end of that.