60mm Refractor Jupiters Belts

[Nemrod]

JR: I think the point was that the technology has come a long way. It's possible to produce high quality equipment much more cheaply now, and what was a high-end product 20 years ago might be mid/low end now, and it might be possible to get equivalent quality for 1/10 of the price. (I'm making these figures up, but this is pretty much how it goes).

The other side of that is that a lot of the things you mention (setting circles, coordinates) aren't all that important any more. They're useful to understand, but if you get a decent motorised scope and a computer with charting software there's nothing you can't do without understanding either. I mean, you can get a list of visible objects on your mobile phone, select it on the phone, and have the phone tell the scope to point at the object for you. We've come a long way.

Since we are into analogies, I think sailors still need to know their knots, astronomers would know how to locate celestial objects.

I don't know where I wrote this quote down from but I like it, as a boat owner and an astronomer it is a truth;

"What do telescopes share with boats? They share a mathematical formula indicating that size is inversely proportional to use."

I currently have a broken femur, sorry, I think my little Tasco is just grand on Jupiter and elsewhere and I can carry it with one hand despite my temporary handicap.



I can see the moons of Jupiter, belts and on some occasion a tiny little spec of reddish brown, the Great Red Spot with this little 700mm FL scope! It has a foil spaced Towa lens installed and a few other modifications.

I don't agree on the manufacturing, quality manufacturing is still expensive, cheap is, well, cheap.

JR

[psonice]

I'm not knocking old equipment, high quality optics don't date much. Just saying that if you spent the same money now, because manufacturing costs are generally much lower and machinery is of much higher precision etc., you'd expect to get something much better. Or you'd expect to get the same quality for less money.

And yes, cheap is still cheap, but even cheap can be acceptable. My own scope cost a mere $50 or so, brand new, and I see the stripes and moons (probably the GRS too, not managed to catch it when it's visible yet).

As to learning the ropes.. yes, it's a good idea. Maybe not necessary for a speed boat where it's all motorised though - which is pretty much the case with a lot of scopes now. You don't need to know how to find an object when you can select it on a screen and wait for it to appear. Personally I like learning the ropes, although it's pretty hard with astronomy on account of the constellations being mostly invisible behind the light pollution here. Other people like to press a button and spend their time looking instead. Each to their own

[astronut]

While being tactful is a good quality, let's not kid anyone. Tasco, Bushnell, Galileo, and Edu Science(Toys R Us) are all department store and or "toy" telescopes.

If you have an OLD Tasco then its optics may have been made in Japan and it might also be a collector scope; but the new ones should be avoided. (I had a Sears 60mm made in Japan in 1958!)

Yes you can buy better eyepieces, and hang weights off the bottom to help stabilize the mount, and tighten all the bolts, and buy a new diagonal etc etc--- but you still have a low cost usually inferior instrument. If you want to experiment buy one off of Craigslist.com for $30 -- there are usually dozens listed that were bought by a parent for a child or an unsuspecting adult -- used once or twice --- and then put in a closet never to be used again-- or sold again on Ebay or Craigslist.

The best thing someone new to the hobby can do is attend a star party at a local Astronomy club and look through the member's telescopes and ask questions. Folks you cannot really buy a usable telescope for under $200. Instead buy a pair of 10x50mm binoculars and start with those, rather than buying one of the scopes listed above.

Now tell me where I can buy that laptop with 4 gigs of memory, a 500 gig hard drive and a quad core processor for $99.95! The same applies to telescopes.

Don't flame me on this -- it's just that I see people all the time at our public observing events asking for help with their new "X" brand EQ mounted 70mm refractor that they just bought for $79.95 at a garage sale! with .965 plastic eyepieces and a plastic focuser!

The best thing we can do is make SURE they know these scopes are simply a waste of their money, and steer them to a pair binoculars.

Just the rantings of an OLD guy-- pay no attention. AND those pictures above are ALL collector telescopes with excellent optics-- not what you would buy new today. The Unitron is especially a very good one. Nemrod------ you have some GREAT scopes in your collection! WOW!

Hey Joe,
Im BIG into PCs & for the life of me I can't seem to locate a quad core laptop for $99.99 either!
You find some you WILL let me know & send a link eh? LOL!




Oh, and my dob OTA dosen't use cardboard its all metal ( alu & steel) incase anyone who admires only old small refractors needs this info so they are up to date with the rest of the World.............I own a nice lil 60 mm refractor & I have no complaints about it but...... I have nothing that comes to mind over bragging about it either...............

Dave

[jenniferchristine]

Ah - boats...
I did 12 years before the mast - well funnel anyways.
Hoist the main engines. Jibe that propeller. See I know all the commands.
I even know what a belaying pin is and even a Marlin Spike.
However I did my time when pneumatic analogue computers were in vogue for boiler controls - and that was my specialty.
Out there on the ocean, the stars were wild - no visual pollution for 1000s of miles.
Difficult to set up your eq mount though....

I had a telescope though - the sort you put under your arm while you peer myopically through the fog.

[Nemrod]

Hey Joe,
Im BIG into PCs & for the life of me I can't seem to locate a quad core laptop for $99.99 either!
You find some you WILL let me know & send a link eh? LOL!




Oh, and my dob OTA dosen't use cardboard its all metal ( alu & steel) incase anyone who admires only old small refractors needs this info so they are up to date with the rest of the World.............I own a nice lil 60 mm refractor & I have no complaints about it but...... I have nothing that comes to mind over bragging about it either...............

Dave

Frankly, I think this is the typical internet thread, the OP asked a question, he was told his department store telescope was incapable of resolving the clouds and that it was junk. I post that it may well be the quality of the optics or the quality of the eye pieces but that in fact small 60mm telescopes can be used for real astronomy and then we get a series of "crap" analogies and now I am accused of bragging.

that's what they call dept store telescopesvery lightly coated lensplastic EP,s and focuseryoull see alot of tasco and meades in this category at stores like walmart and kmartbest to stay away from themthats 450X advertised on the boxes is unrealisticas far jup goes with your scopeit will look white with probably 2 fuzzy bands

Sorry, most Dobs I have seen are pretty "crappy" since that is the word of this thread, bragging or not, I will pass on the low precision non GEM telescope. If somebody is so uninterested that to learn coordinates and setting circles is more than they care to know then I would think they are not very interested in astronomy.

My point is that a quality telescope even in a small size with a good GEM can be used for useful astronomy, grab and go and for learning. If this is "bragging" then so be it.

And while on the subject, my second point was that a 100 dollars Wall Mart 60mm scope should not be expected to equal telescopes in the 1,000 dollars plus adjusted price range, then or now. An excellent small refractor might today be a GEM mounted Orion 80ED or similar and could be purchased for around 1,000 dollars and could certainly resolve the moons of Jupiter, cloud belts and remain useful to a beginner as they progress through the science of astronomy.

A binocular or Dobsonian seems to be the go-to answer for most of the world today, sorry, I don't agree.

Have you ever carried a telescope on your back 25 miles to the top of a mountain in Glacier National Park, I have. From there, I would rather have a 60mm than nothing and if a Dob was what I had then, it would have been nothing as I could not have carried it there and back. But, then, cardboard and plyboard is environmentally degradable, I suppose I could have just left it there.

JR

[psonice]

JR: my own scope gives similar views to yours from your description. I can see the cloud bands and moons, and the rings around saturn. It's reasonably solid, with a GEM mount, and aluminium tripod so it's easy to carry. Only downside really is the higher power EPs are low quality and the finder isn't much good, but they're still acceptable and easily fixed with a fairly cheap upgrade or two. The scope cost $50, and was bought in a store.

And where on earth are you getting this "cardboard DOB" from? Especially as your own is made of wood True, a dob isn't going to fit in a rucksack, but a 60mm refractor isn't going to show you much beyond the nearer planets and moon. If that's what you want, it's a good scope. If you want to see some DSOs and don't expect to carry it up a mountain, a dob makes much more sense.

[Joe Lalumia]

You missed the "point" of my long "sorta rant" posting. which is -- I think it is our duty as more seasoned amateur astronomers to lead beginners far away from the kind of scopes I mentioned.

No telling how many kids (and adults) have been turned off to the Astronomy hobby because they were given a "toy" telescope or bought a "toy" telescope due to not knowing any better.

We need to be very frank with them and tell them not to waste their money --- and lead them to a pair of binoculars and a star chart. The point is NOT that these scopes are junk, because some of them can be used in a limited way, but that they really cannot be used as your main "tool" within the hobby.

And again to be quite frank-- you really need to break at least 100+mm to begin to resolve those dim objects in the sky ---visually. Better they should buy a nice pair of 10x50mm binoculars than the typical 60mm department store telescope.

[Nemrod]

All of the dueling, flaming etc aside, seriously, I think perhaps some of you (not all) have never actually used a quality 60mm to 80mm refractor telescope. The comments in general simply do not fit with reality and my experience with these types of telescopes and simply repeat urban legend as if it were fact.

First, the Wally World, department store telescope purchased in the last 20 years or so, yes, they are pretty poor, some more so than others and I don't mean that as universal of the genre, there could be exceptions. Unfortunately most of these inexpensive, sub 150 dollars telescopes either had poor optics, poor mounts, poor accessories or all of these and resulted in frustration for beginners who did not know better. That is true. I happen to have some of these in my collection usually purchased to scavenge a part from or to experiment with and I get them on CL and usually pay little to nothing for them.

Recently I purchased a complete Jason 454 simply to get the dew shield from. This was a complete telescope purchased by the owner in 1999 he said. It was pretty junky, plastic lens cell, plastic focuser, plastic diagonal, plastic eyepieces, plastic leg mounts, undersized mount, on and on. If this is what the OP has, I sympathize with him/her completely.

OK, side by side against my Unitron 114, Carton DIY and my hot rod Tasco it is immediately evident the Jason is out of it's league. The Jason simply does not provide the views the others do even with the same diagonal and eye piece installed. The contrast is less, stars are not concentric out of focus, the plastic lens cell is unstable, the plastic focuser is out of alignment. CA is severe in the shorter focal length and there is a lot of glare, not to mention the whole thing is unstable and wiggly to the extreme.

This is why I brought up the older 60mms. They are all metal, metal focuser, metal lens cell (often collimateable) and superior accessories and yes some of those old .965 eye pieces were not that bad compared to the extra cheap 1.25 stuff delivered with cheap scopes today. No, .965 is gone, you get a department store scope today and it has 1.25 eye pieces that are WORSE than the .965 units of yesteryear, not even close, and the diagonals are simply horrid.

Most of the 60mm refractor scopes today have inferior optics, the FL is too short for an achro format. These are not the instruments that were being sold in the 50s and 60s by any measure which were typically f15.6 to f 16.7 range. CA was much better controlled in these as a result.

Now, if I were to spend the time to remove the objective from the Jason and collimate it, darken the lens edges, paint the shiny black plastic to a flat black paint, flock the tube properly, replace the plastic focuser and cell with metal pieces, replace the GEM, I dunno, I am sure it would perform much better but still have severe CA due to the short FL.

Second, no, the old classics from the 50s and 60s were not perfect, their mounts were not as stable as compared to quality equipment today, a 60mm scope is still a very small scope then and now certainly but to compare a Unitron from 1955 to a Jason bought in Wall Mart is not realistic and to dismiss all 60mm telescopes as department store junk is not productive. No, small telescopes purchased today at a the usual box stores are not equal to what was once available and to get that same quality today, metal construction, self damping wooden legs, at least semi useful GEM mounts, wooden storage boxes and accessories that mostly worked and were actual metal and optical glass is going to run around 1,000 dollars and at least 500 dollars and probably more and in that price range there are some instruments that could be useful.

If a person wanted a small refractor and cannot afford a quality new instrument it could pay to cruise CL or eBay for an older, much older, but well maintained instrument. Of course, I see prices seeming to escalate for some of these classic Japanese refractor telescopes, so I don't know if it really is a bargain anymore like it was some years back compared to purchasing a new plastic Taiwan scope.

In the refractors forum, I suppose it would be to much to ask is it could be possible to discuss refractor telescopes without condemning an entire class of telescope wholesale and recommending a set of binoculars as a universal solution. Maybe, just maybe, a small refractor is the solution for some people.

JR

[Nemrod]

JR: my own scope gives similar views to yours from your description. I can see the cloud bands and moons, and the rings around saturn. It's reasonably solid, with a GEM mount, and aluminium tripod so it's easy to carry. Only downside really is the higher power EPs are low quality and the finder isn't much good, but they're still acceptable and easily fixed with a fairly cheap upgrade or two. The scope cost $50, and was bought in a store.

And where on earth are you getting this "cardboard DOB" from? Especially as your own is made of wood True, a dob isn't going to fit in a rucksack, but a 60mm refractor isn't going to show you much beyond the nearer planets and moon. If that's what you want, it's a good scope. If you want to see some DSOs and don't expect to carry it up a mountain, a dob makes much more sense.

IMO, and nothing more, I think a 5 to 6 inch GEM mounted Newton reflector, f5 to f8 OTA is probably the best all around compromise of capability and portability and expense.

As to the cardboard, I see them all the time, phenolic paper tubes, cabinet hinges, plywood mounts, not my cup of tea. I had a 12 inch all metal Dob some years ago, I rarely used it, in Houston the skies were to polluted, it was bigger than my Subaru wagon, I dumped it on the market and got a fraction of what I paid for it. Sorry, I am just not a Dob sort of guy and I know and have been told to my face at events, you cannot see anything with that (80mm refractor), you need one of these pointing to a phenolic tubed gigantic Dobsonian. I guess they have their place. A universal solution, hardly.

You know, most people cannot see anything, not because of their telescopes but because they simply don't know that they actually are seeing something and that the photos they saw in the coffee table books are all doctored, extended exposure and not exactly what you are going to see through any telescope that an amateur is likely to have available. They need to be educated, not sold a pair of binoculars.

JR

[psonice]

You missed the "point" of my long "sorta rant" posting. which is -- I think it is our duty as more seasoned amateur astronomers to lead beginners far away from the kind of scopes I mentioned.

No telling how many kids (and adults) have been turned off to the Astronomy hobby because they were given a "toy" telescope or bought a "toy" telescope due to not knowing any better.

All of the dueling, flaming etc aside, seriously, I think perhaps some of you (not all) have never actually used a quality 60mm to 80mm refractor telescope. The comments in general simply do not fit with reality and my experience with these types of telescopes and simply repeat urban legend as if it were fact.

I totally get the point about the 'store scopes', but it's a bit like ebay purchases - there's plenty of duds, and the occasional bargain.

My own was an impulse purchase on account of it being so cheap, and it really got me into the hobby, I'm sure plenty of others have had the same experience. Personally, I think this is BETTER than getting an expensive first scope to 'avoid disappointment'. It was so cheap that I figured it was negligible loss if I was disappointed, and I had fairly low expectations which it's greatly exceeded. They must have sold 50 of these scopes at that store, and there's hundreds of stores in that chain across the country! I can only see that as being great for astronomy.

Since then I've kept an eye out for a better scope in these kind of stores, but not seen anything good. There was a cheap reflector, but it was 75mm - my refractor is 70mm with no obstruction, so that would be a step down in aperture and quality, plus it had bad reviews. I guess that disappointed plenty of people. There was another fairly cheap goto scope, meade maybe? That I was interested in - the light pollution is bad enough here that star hopping is near impossible. But the box advertised the computer "sky guide" features heavily, and didn't mention focal length or included eyepieces!

Anyway, the point is: a small refractor is definitely a good scope. Like JR says, it's luggable. It's worth having one just to travel with, even if you'd much prefer a big dob as a main scope. And a cheap store scope can make a perfect first purchase, so long as it's reasonable. If you tell people to buy a decent scope and they're disappointed with the views (pretty likely for a lot of people, a sky washed out with light pollution and plenty of knowledge of what the sky looks like courtesy of Hubble is common!) might mean a big pile of wasted cash.