Turn left at Orion
since first publication, this is one of the most popular astronomy books of all time. It is a unique guidebook to the night sky, providing all the information you need to observe a whole host of celestial objects. With a new spiral binding, this edition is even easier to use outdoors at the telescope and is the ideal beginner's book. Keeping its distinct one-object-per-spread format, this edition is also designed for Dobsonian telescopes, as well as for smaller reflectors and refractors, and covers Southern hemisphere objects in more detail. Large-format eyepiece views, positioned side-by-side, show objects exactly as they are seen through a telescope, and with improved directions, updated tables of astronomical information and an expanded night-by-night Moon section, it has never been easier to explore the night sky on your own"
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- My personal recommendation: start with a pair of inexpensive 10x50 binoculars and a copy of Consolmagno & Davis' "Turn Left at Orion".
If you live in the US, you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding dark skies. Dark skies are the most important ingredient :).
Good luck, and clear skies to you.
- I bought Orion SkyQuest XT4.5 classic dobsonian telescope. It turned out to be really good first telescope for me. Turn Left at Orion(5th ed) by Consolmagno & Davis is really good book that you should consider buying.
- The recommendations about binoculars are definitely worth considering.
However, if you're ready for the telescope, my advice is to spend as much money as your budget has on getting the biggest aperture you can buy.
More light = more better.
Auto-tracking is nice, but learning how to find objects in the night sky is a fun and worthy exercise, and if you have a big aperture you'll actually be able to see the things your telescope points to.
A few things to keep in mind:
* You're not going to see DSOs (Deep Sky Objects, like nebulae and galaxies) from the middle of a major urban area. You need access to a dark site. (Search for "light pollution map") Planets are easy to see from anywhere, cities included (though the viewing is always better the darker the sky is).
* Many objects in the night sky will look like little fuzzy gray spots to your eyes, no matter how awesome your telescope is. Don't expect a Hubble experience from a 6" scope (or 8, or 12+).
* Don't expect to take photos through your telescope, either. You might manage to get some cool shots of the moon (which looks _amazing_ in a telescope, btw), but true astro photography is a whole 'nother beast (both fun and expensive).
With all that as background, I'd recommend a 6" or 8" Dobsonian if you've got the budget. Something like an Orion Sky Quest XT8 or XT6.
My favorite book, by a light year, is "Turn Left at Orion". It'll help you find thousands of cool things in the night sky, and it's great for beginners on up. — https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Left-Orion-Hundreds-Telescope/dp...
P.S. Definitely checkout r/telescopes for additional advice and info.
- Telescopes: depends on your use case. Check out the sticky on reddit.com/r/telescopes
Books: Again, depends, but Turn Left at Orion and Cosmic Challenge are good ones.
- One of my favourite books is Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consolmagno. It describes the different astronomical objects that you can expect to see and how to find them in the sky. I think it also does a good job of setting expectations because you just won't see Hubble class images from your backyard. The is also a companion website http://www.cambridge.org/features/turnleft/
- You mean Guy Consolmagno? He co-authored "Turn Left at Orion", which is one of my favourite reading recommendations to beginning amateur astronomers of any age :)
