Advice Anyone know about telescopes / astronomy ?

[Urgat]

Folks, with Christmas and my birthday approaching I am giving serious thought to obtaining my first proper telescope.

I have done some research on beginner scopes, and have a slightly better idea about the various types, but frankly there is still a lot to consider.

If i remember correctly, some of you guys are into it so I would love some advice if possible.

I am mainly interested in the night sky
Looking to spend around 300 (give or take)
I think goto or star track computer assisted aiming would be a good idea (I can always turn it of and aim manually to practice, but I can't turn it on if I don't have it)
It can't be too unwieldy, as ill need to transport via car on occasion to better sites.
The thought of having to clean lenses / calibrate mirrors scares me a little... Is it tricky? (I know some designs are enclosed and require very little maintenance)
Once I get proficient I would like to move onto imaging, and would rather not have to completely replace the scope for a better one suited to that task.
My main interest lies in deeper sky objects. Obviously I will sart with solar system objects till I am doing it right.

Any advice would be most welcomed.

 

[rynnor]

Deep Sky objects aren't really for amateur kit - if you are really interested in that side of things you might prefer to go down the rent-a-scope direction rather than spend your money on scopes - http://www.itelescope.net/

You can still do some interesting stuff with amateur kit but a lot depends on your local light pollution levels - go to's are ok but if its taking you to a thousand blurred objects you may not get much from it. If you want to take pictures it's a lot more expensive...

 

[Urgat]

A lot of the reviews I read for "beginner" scopes around the 300 mark (including go to) mention that they function well for deep sky objects...

http://telescopes.toptenreviews.com/telescopes-for-beginners-review/

Here for example. The top three scopes all indicate that they are ok for deep sky veiws and detail.

Are they basically lying then?

As for imaging. I have seen some decent amateur pictures listed as taken using similar scopes to the ones in that article, so am further confused now.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

 

[rynnor]

Pretty much lies yes - I guess it depends on your level of expectation - my advice is to go to a viewing evening at a local astronomy group to get an idea of whats possible with amateur kit.

Imaging - you can get decent pictures on a cheap scope but thats generally due to an expensive camera or imager setup. The other thing is that decent pictures require the telescope to track the object to compensate for the earths rotation for a long exposure and a cheap mount probably wont cope with the weight of an SLR hung on the business end.

Go to the astronomy club - judge for yourself

 

[Urgat]

Thanks man

 

[Job]

Without a starfinder youll never find anything but planets though they can be pretty cool on a six inch dobsonian to see galaxies youll need at least 10 inches of reflector or equivalent in standard scope but then again half the fun is doing it yourself with the basics

 

[old.user4556]

Try here - http://www.meteorwatch.org/

The site struggles with too much traffic, but there has been a write up / review in the past week for telescopes for beginners. Also worth following on Twitter as a lot of people share their experiences and photos with said telescopes.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Job said what I was going to say.
If you're interested in deep sky imaging, you're talking about larger aperture scopes to mop up the light, and that ramps up the cost.

That said, the comparison chose the Celestron Nexstar 130SLT as the best budget scope and you can get one for £299 with free delivery. It's review kicks shit out of the scope I was considering (Meade ETX80AT-TC) and a number of other reviews online seem to bear out the quality.
If you're looking to get into astrophotography, you might need to see about capturing a number of frames with a CCD based imager then "stacking" the images to interpolate the sharpest image you can.
http://www.astrostack.com/