Where to purchase my first scope?

Forget my last post lads. I was just further clarifying the post before that and in the interim Dave has answered the questions I was clumsily trying to get across.

ie. Get the biggest I can afford, store, transport for the 1000's of things I will see better and don't worry about the 2 or 3 planets that I may see slightly worse!

Thanks Dave and everyone else!! This thread would have taken a week to run its course on boards. Dedicated forum with dedicated and ultra helpful enthusiasts and all my questions were ansered in a few hours!! Helped by the murky dense cloudy foggy skies I imagine.

Just need to check with SWMBO about the shed tomorrow and I'll get the ball rolling with a trip to Argos. Maybe order the scope and ancillaries tomorrow night. Can't wait for Saturn to be higher up in the southern skies at a reasonable hour.....and have a huge scope to view it with!! I'm so excited!!

If you let the scope cool down so that there are no "local hot air currents" pouring out of the tube (local seeing) then a larger aperture should ALWAYS give better views of the planets...all other things being equal.

Peter.

P.S.

Going from a 10" scope to a 12" scope is like adding more than the entire light grasp of a 6" scope to the 10".

It' a BIG leap in aperture although it doesn't seem much at first glance.

Peter.

Pmgisme,

Great point! Funny that I wasn't thinking about it or visualising it that way, especially when I have had to explain similar to friends about Projectors. ie. No my 80in diagonal PJ screen is not just twice as big as your 42in Diagonal Plasma, its 4 times as big. They're not thick but they're just not thinking of the geometry of it, just like me not thinking of the geometry of the increased area when you add 2 inches to the diametre of a circle.

"As for the local hot air currents" pouring out of the tube, would I be right in saying that storing the scope in the small plastic shed I plan to put in the back garden will go a long way to minimising this? How long do you think I would have to wait for the scope to acclimatise given it would already be outside?

On another note. I was searching for astronomy vids on youtube last night. Doing searches on 'Astronomy', 'Dobsonianss', 'Saturn' etc What should I come across only a Vid of the ISS through a telescope by our very own Barberskum!! The name would have meant absolutely nothing to me only for Barberskum posting in this thread last night!! What a coincidence!!

As for the vids. Some of the Saturn and Jupiter onces were absolutely amazing. One could 'see' seeing in action. After focus was set one minute one could see indistinct banding and blurry rings and the next few seconds one could see amazingly more distinct cloud bands, sharp rings and the Cassini division. Same with the jupiter vids. One minute indistinct bands and the next, lovely detail and the Great Red Spot!!

Would I be correct in saying that my eyes would have a better view than a webcam view. I assume the webcam is lower resolution than my eyes. Would my eyes be able to pick out more detail than the camera. These where vids remember so I assume a webcam can't use the advantages of long exposures and stacking on the fly etc ie areas where it has an advantage over my eyeballs and brain. There was a vid of Saturn where at the very end of the vid the poster inserted a still of saturn using stacking and post processing of the best frames from the vid. It was an amazing picture and I understand the reasons why it is so good and why a live image through your eyeballs and processed by your brain is not as good.........

But heck, if the actual video footage of Saturn more closely approximates what I would see with my eyes then I definately have lowered my expectations too low, (nothing like the pictures on the box, in mags etc ie. I went to far adjusting my expectations in the other direction after hearing that)

Did I already say.............'I am So excited'!! :lol:

Did I already say.............'I am So excited'!! :lol:

That'll quickly wane when you see your bank balance disappear into a black hole!

If you want to view the planets build an aperture mask for the dob stepping the size down to 6" or so, that should provide better details.