What makes a reflector good? Most important: is the primary mirror parabolic or spherical? A spherical primary is cheaper to make but provides a less pleasing view. The key word is “good.” There are rotten reflectors as well as rotten refractors. You can see hundreds of objects with a good 4.5″ scope.Ī 60-mm aperture is too small to provide a good view of much more than the Moon and bright open clusters like M45, the Pleiades. A very common size is 4.5″, and 4.5″ is plenty of aperture for a first scope. So a typical low-end reflector will be 4″ or so in diameter. Mirrors are easier to make than lenses, so within any particular price range reflectors tend to be larger.
Most small hobby killers tend to be refractors (with an objective lens in front) rather than reflectors (with a mirror at the bottom). The price tag will tell you which is which. There are, of course, some very high-end small scopes, mostly optimized for astrophotography. So as a general rule, stay above three inches in aperture. Small scopes tend to be low-quality, too, with uncorrected objective lenses that display color fringing around bright objects and often won’t even come to sharp focus. While this scope may look pretty good, its equatorial mount, lousy finder, 60-mm aperture, 0.965-inch eyepiece, and 3× Barlow make it a hobby killer.Īnything below about 3 inches (76 mm) in aperture is likely to be too small to provide a pleasing view of anything more than the Moon and a few bright star clusters. What you want is the right-size scope for your interest level and ability. That’s true up to a point, but if you buy a scope that’s too big and unwieldy, it could become a hobby killer simply because it’s too difficult to take outside and set up. So in general, the bigger the aperture (the diameter of the objective lens or primary mirror) the more useful the scope. It stands to reason that the more light you gather, the more you can see. Even a great scope can be a hobby killer if it's too difficult to carry.Ī telescope’s primary job is to gather light and squeeze that light down into a small beam that it directs into your eye. Chief among them are aperture, eyepieces, and the mount.
So what makes a hobby killer? Many factors add together to make a lousy overall package. Making an informed choice can get you a scope that will provide you with many years of enjoyment. If you’re a beginner, a few minutes reading this article before you buy a telescope can save you a lot of disappointment later. It only takes a couple of nights like that for a person to decide that astronomy isn’t any fun - thus the term “hobby killer.”Īs with so many other things in life, education can help you avoid making frustrating mistakes. I’ve watched people spend all night trying to find something, anything, to look at, often spending their entire time fiddling with the scope rather than observing the sky.
When you want to enjoy a night out under the stars, you’re better off with a pair of binoculars or just with your naked eyes than with a telescope that can’t be aimed easily and doesn’t show a pleasing view of whatever you do manage to point it at. It may be hard to believe, but some telescopes are worse than having no scope at all.
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And every year we face the same problem: how to gently tell some of them that what they’ve got is better suited for a boat anchor than for astronomy. Every January my astronomy club hosts a telescope workshop in which we help people learn how to use the telescopes they got for the holidays or tune up scopes that have been gathering dust in closets.
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