Deciding on what telescope for beginners

[Skywatcher]

Just as you asked - yes you will have to buy something to attatch a camera to the scope - most goto cheapish scopes are alt az mounts (up/down) which means you will be able to do some rudimentary imaging with a webcam - moon craters /smallish pics of planets etc and very short ( 20 second or so) prime focus photography with your dslr if the scope and mount will take the weight - however if you want to do more of the deep sky long exposure photography you will need an equatorially mounted scope.

My initial advice would be not to go instantly for an expensive imaging setup but buy either a 4 inch refractor or a 6 inch reflector on an alt az goto mount. Get to know the night sky and enjoy what you can see before you splash out on an awful lot of gear - you will know early on if it is the right hobby for you - both of these scopes should give you good views of both planets and deep sky stuff , excellent views of the moon and will let you toy with the early stages of imaging.

Refractors are more expensive per inch but require little or no maintennance - they do for imaging though intraduce some colour abberations

Reflectors need the mirrors aligning (collimating) from time to time to get the best views.

once yo have your scope let either me or dan know on here and we will go through eyepieces/scope cooling how to use them etc.

I hate to be drawn on stuff like this but for a moderate first scope both those scopes are well in advance of a begnners setup

[ukwdwnut]

great info chris thanks a lot