Get started in Astronomy

Right then,

Drop those strong Christmas hints to the loved ones about this. As I understand it it may be the Meade ETX70 about to appear in their shops for 170 Yoyos. This cope should be a good startup for those withput a lot of dosh, so if indeed it is this one then I'd give it a try. I  have the top of this range of scopes (ETX125) and have so much fun with it. i will direct those who are interested to a brilliant website which contains info all about this scope, together wioth guided tours which enable you to make your very own trip into the sky!

Watch this space. Couldnt find the thingy on the Lidle website but maybe someone can search there better than me.

Any luck finding the link? Would make a good christmas pressie...

According to Wife, it's on the adverts for next weeks offers, outside the shops.

I've got a bone to pick with somebody.

Who was it that recommended a cardboard Newton-Spiegelteleskop from AstroMedia? Twenty Euros of pure hell. The instructions are all in lotsofgynormousGermanwordsthisbloodylong with a couple of attempts at a diagram for the soddin' obvious bits. I've a good mind to call up the bloke what sold it to me and suggest ways to him how I could see Uranus with it. On a clear night I can see stars better with me own failing eyes.

Aldi has this jobby for €70,00 this week.

Ah, those dinky toy telescopes

Seriously folks, could you recommend buying the Lidl or Aldi models? Are they any good? Would one be able to see galaxies etc?

@GreenTea
I'll have you know Ms Tea, this model is used by NASA. Ask Jeremy when he's finished doing the vegetables and has bedded the kids - he'll confirm.

@MajorBrummer
Depends on how much you drink - again a question for Jeremy.

Nope the Aldi one is only any good for looking at the ladies undressing in their bedrooms.

If the Lidl one is an ETX then my answer is yes. They have been klnown to sell the bottom of my range of scopes.

If the scope has a smaller scope attached known as a finderscope then it can be useful.

Good fun can also be had using 12x80 binoculars. Right now overhead (when it isn't snowing) you can use them to look at things like The Pleiades or even the Andromeda Galaxy. Before you ask me where they are please please download Stellarium from www.stellarium.org. It is free and fantastic and I use it all the time to plan what to see.

So for astro use the Aldi scope - nope. Fine perving instrument though.

Ah Jeremy, why did you have to let on?

Folks, if you want to see anything more than the moon, the Orion nebula and a couple planets, you'll need something much bigger than you'll ever find at Lidl or Aldi. You'll also need to spend at least a few hundred euros. If you want to get into astronomy as a hobby, then you're much better off jumping straight to a 6" or 8" scope, because anything smaller will just piss you off when you find out you really can't see shit.

IPJ, I'd agree with that but many just want to test the waters at first. I haven't seen these scopes yet but I reckon they - if it is the ETX70 - will help those to take the first steps. I spent 1500 Euros on my scope, but I knew I was going to be committed.

So I'd still take a chance on those cheaper scopes. Great if there is a lunar eclipse etc.

Well, I can see the logic in that. After all, if you're going to send a telescope up into space on a wing and a prayer, better to buy a cheap disposable one at Aldi than spend a fortune on something you can't repair if things go wrong.

Anyway, I admire the dedication of any amateur astronomer who has the guts to go out stargazing on a crystal clear winter's night in Siberian temperatures. I'm more of an amateur theoretician myself - I let others do the observing work with really big telescopes, and I do the more intellectual stuff of looking at the pretty pictures.

I've bin preparin' me little reflector fer Christmas so's me and me boy can build a nuvva one out of cardboard. D'ya fink we'll see much wiv it?



Also. Can ya pleez save yer spare cardboard for us coz we ain't got kwyte enuff yet.

Ah Sin, leave him be. The poor bugger was out in the freezing cold and forgot to put the kids to bed before the wife came home and found the video about Saudi running.

I'm sorry, but that just sounds rude

On a more serious note, is the 125 worth shelling out for, or can someone recommend something else in the same price range?

Sorry, have had a couple, what I mean is is the etx 125 the bees knees in this price range or is there an alternative?

Wotchatalin' about Gabaraldi? Dat reflector has something associated with me. You wait til ya see the big one what me mate is knockin' together as we speak. In fact, you'll probably be able to see the serial number on the big one with the little one in me piccie... from a coupla lightyears away.

Sin, I give credit where it is due and thus to your celestialities. Jeremy, in my my opinion, has astrofuckedup this forum on this holy night.
Let me show you why my quandary is deep.
Over on another thread: GreenTea is talking about snow-capped pink things, Keydeck is sorting and cooking his onions, AshleyM is reading about how Linda Goodman goes down on her husband and Mars has been given a red and white condom. KylieDürr has just requested a crash course in anything to be administered by Bluedave and LavenderRain has allowed herself to be lovingly referred to as "Lav" and whimpered not.

The Rantapine is in the fourth celestial as of now and only a curved telescope can pick out its flickering galaxial trajectory; meaning that if all goes well then tomorrow will be Wednesday, and LavenderRain wil be freed of constipation, GreenTea will have had the horrors of the snowcapped pink thing revealed to her, Keydeck will have cooked his onions and be suffering the horrible fate of eternal priapism, AshleyM will have gone down on someone at the Housewives Convention and of course KylieDürr will have been flattened by the love-filled thrusts of Bluedave. Mars will have mounted Venus, emptied the blue and white condom and it will thus snow pearly spunkflakes on Earth tomorrow.

I beg of you Sin! Is it me or is it the night that's in it?

Sin, cardboard telescopes are for amateurs. Now you're into all this Japanese stuff, start collecting paper and make yourself an origami telescope:

I dunno. I just builds 'em. I don't look down 'em in the freezin' cold. A warm bed and feminine company in the night is my preference.

Origami telescope. I likes it.

still nothing on Lidl web site

You're all a bunch of cheap bastards, this is what you wanna buy your loved ones:

Fly me to the moon.

Scogs, this thread was started by Jeremy who professes to have interpreted something that his spouse told him - he having just come in from the freezing cold where he had been watching an eclipse of his eyeballs while at the same time trying to defrost the curvature of his telescope. This is the starry thread tonight. Let's keep it that way.

'ere. I've just read that origami telescope article and I reckons this geezer could do it with me material. I'll be round to flog 'im some in the mornin'. Luvly-jubbly.

In Ireland, those who practise origami are looked down on disdainfully. The practise is deemed environmentally unfriendly and has been discouraged as a common hobby among the working classes. Monkstown will confirm this. Astronomy on the other hand...

Okay then,

first go to the Weasner site.

In the Meade range, you have three scopes, the ETX70, ETX90,ETX105, and ETX125. Sorry that's four.

I'd go to Foto Sauter in Sendlinger Tor if you are serious. There is also an astro shop in Grafelfing, and a non Meade shopcalled Teleskop Service Ransburg out in the sticks.

as I understand it and don't forget I am a bit rusty on this, the main competitor is Celestron who also do similar scopes.

What is fantastic about these scopes? Well they are of a design known as Matsukov Cassegrain. This sort of means you can have a compressed tube assembly half the length of a normal reflector (hope I don't get "ipj'd" for a wrong comment there)

The shorter tube means you can grab and go with the scope into the garden at short notice. Now what is really brilliant is that they are controlled by computers which means that once you've input your location, local time (daylight savings or not) then input two known stars (many of which btw are Arabic) from well known constellations, then the scope is said to be "aligned" and you can then start to tour the heavens.

Then your next task will be the pleasurable one of learning your way round the sky, so you know which stars the scope is looking for!

Has anyone written any cool tours? Why yes the brilliant Dr Clay Sherrod has written tours of each constellation taking you through each in detail showing you the exciting objects in each. They are on the Weasner site.

What the hell am I looking for? Well a 19th Century comet hunter Charles Messier was annoyed by many fuzzy objects in the sky such as those annoying things like the Orion Nebula among o´thers that he decided to catalogue them all. There are about 115 of them up there which we beginners cut our teeth on. Each has a number e.g., the Orion Nebula is M42 and is quite stunning in my scope. The Pleiades is M45 and can be seen with the naked eye. There's a galaxy up there M31 in the constellation of Andromeda which is to be honest "interesting" but not as much of a wow as you might think. In summer the 
Wild Duck cluster M11 is awesome whilst M8 the Lagoon Nenula made meÂ
 gasp at its beauty when I saw it in the middle of literally cloudsÂ
 of stars in the Milky Way.

There are spectacular double stars which are colourful. The summer classic is Albireo which is a glorious yellow blue combination. Your winter stunner is Gamma Andromeda also nice. Then in Leo is the double which looks like a pair of car headlights Algeiba.

There are stars which "wink" such as the famous Algol in the constellation Perseus. Over an evening you can see this star switch off like a light over a few hours. That leads to the interest in variable stars, some spend their whole astronomy amateur "careers" just
studying them. A friend of mine did just that for twenty years and is renowned in the field. Met him in Arabia.

I spent a year just learning my way around objects outside our solar system and am still an utter beginner. I'm teaching myself my way round the Moon on and off - I am hunting for cheese there. But my new interest is on the moon and planets. Nothing too high tech, just lots of fun and fascination. I 
can give links to any stuff I mention here if you want. 

All this of course is when the bloody clouds open to let me get out there. 

Just download google earth and click on the "sky" function. No need to shell out on a geek tube.

Bummer. Just as I thought. Gonna have to cough up one or two large for a decent one. Been wanting a decent one ever since I was a kid.

I would love to have an LX2000. Ohh how much I dreamed with those things on my younger days. Next year's Christmas present for sure.

You are talking about amateur astronomy.
To become a professional astronomer that telescope is not enough, you need a lobotomy

Well it is my belief that the scope advertised in Lidl is an ETX70 even though it doesnt explicitly say so on the tin. It has an autostar handset which means you align the scope then it shold take you to nebulae, planets etc. If I didnt have my existing scope I'd be tempted to nag the wife to buy it for Christmas.

It is a Meade ETX series telescope, but it's not clear which model from the Lidl Telescope advertisment page.

Hi Jeremy,

Here in Berlin we have a flyer and Lidl website reference for what seems to be the Meade Computer-Telescope that you are mentioning.

Meade

Computer-Teleskop

* Hochauflösende Optik
* Höhenverstellbares, stabiles Alu-Stativ
* Vergrößerung: 14x – 262,5x
* Linsendurchmesser: ca. 70 mm
* Brennweite: ca. 350 mm
* Automatische Himmelsnavigation auf Knopfdruck
* Inklusive Astro-Software, Nylon-Rucksack, 3MA-Okularen, Amici-Prisma und 3-fach Barlow-Linse: 1.050 mm
* 5 Jahre Herstellergarantie
* Preis je Stück

179.-*

* Bitte beachten Sie - Dieser Artikel kann aufgrund begrenzter Vorratsmenge bereits am ersten Angebotstag ausverkauft sein. Alle Preise ohne Deko. Für Druckfehler keine Haftung. Irrtümer vorbehalten.

However, if you stick in another postcode e.g. Altöttinger Straße 22, 84518 Garching you get a different telescope (Bresser Zoom-Spektiv) with a different description

Bresser

Zoom-Spektiv

* Spektiv:
Vergrößerung: 25 – 75/200 m
Objektiv: Ø ca. 90 mm
Max. Sehfeld: 19 m/1000 m
Tubus gummiarmiert und wasserdicht – beschlagfrei durch Stickstofffüllung
Gewicht reduzierendes Polycarbonat-Material
Länge: ca. 42 cm
* Stativ:
Aus stabilem Metall
Höhenverstellbar
* Mit mehrschichtig vergüteten Präzisionslinsen und BaK4-Prismen
* Inklusive Tasche, Tau- und Sonnenschutzblende, sowie Mondfilter
* 5 Jahre Herstellergarantie
* Preis je Stück

179.-*

* Bitte beachten Sie - Dieser Artikel kann aufgrund begrenzter Vorratsmenge bereits am ersten Angebotstag ausverkauft sein. Alle Preise ohne Deko. Für Druckfehler keine Haftung. Irrtümer vorbehalten.

In your opinion, is there any substantial differences between these two models?

(Edit) If anyone is interested in this offer, it seems only to be available from the 13.12 (Thursday)

Them's fightin' words! [img]http://planetsmilies.net/angry-smiley-168.gif[/img]

I saw that Aldi's is advertising a kind of a scope today in the SZ. It's a Spektiv 30-90x90 mm and includes a 3 year guarantee. Is selling at €69,99. A cheaper way to perv perhaps.
Here's the link to the Aldi's Website and the offer - Spektiv 30-90

I saw that Aldi's is advertising a kind of a scope today in the SZ. It's a Spektiv 30-90x90 mm and includes a 3 year guarantee. Is selling at €69,99. A cheaper way to perv perhaps.
Here's the link to the Aldi's Website and the offer - Spektiv 30-90