new telescope

26 Jul 2018

I bought my first telescope! I opted for the Astronomers Without Borders Onesky – a collapsible 130mm (5in) reflector. I opted for this telescope because:

• Relatively cheap at $200 – and I’m no stranger to the tendency for people to buy expensive telescopes that wind up collecting dust.
• Good for visual – I knew I’d want to get into photography, but primarily to start, I wanted to just see some planets and learn the sky.
• Compact/portable – easy for me to take places with less noise pollution (I live in the heart of an urban red zone).

I also bought a celestron kit w/ a variety of eyepieces, a 2x barlow, and a T2 adapter + 1.25” adapter for my Sony A7S II. This camera is not ideal for astrophotography, really, despite its low light performance. It has a large full-frame sensor and relatively few pixels, making for a general lack of detail in tiny objects through a telescope.

My first night I took it out to my parents’ place in Castillian Springs, where they live on a hill with unobstructed skies and much less light pollution. Spent some time getting acquainted with visual scoping, but didn’t have much luck with photography: I had trouble getting the focal point of the telescope on to my camera’s sensor – i.e. I couldn’t quite focus to infinity.