New Telescope

Just prior to leaving on a vacation to the interior, I bought a new telescope. I’ve wanted one for years and now seemed like a good time to get one since the star gazing in the interior is so much better than in Vancouver. I had researced telescopes a few years ago along with first learning about them in the late 80’s. I had pretty much decided on getting a 6" Newtonian reflector because of it’s light gathering capabilities and lower cost.

When I looked into these scopes a few years ago, a 6" reflector cost about $500. Now they sell for $325 and this made it seem like too good of a deal to pass up. I almost got a 8" reflector, it was probably a better deal. The 8" gathers about 2X more light as the 6" and it was priced only $125 higher. Since I wasn’t sure how much use we would get out of the telescope, I decided to save the $125.

On the first couple nights of using the telescope I’ve managed to see a few binary stars (Albierto - one gold and one blue star), the Andromeda Galaxy, the Ring Nebula, and a few star clusters. I need to start a logbook where I record everything that I find. We also got to look at the moon, that was pretty interesting to see too.