Astronomy Hacks

Choose the Best General-Purpose Telescope

Understand the advantages and disadvantages of popular scope types.

If you want to start a war, just ask a group of astronomers what the best type of scope is. Everyone agrees that “junk” scopes should be avoided, of course, but that’s about the extent of the agreement. There are many types of scopes, all of which have advantages and drawbacks relative to the other types. Each type of scope has proponents and detractors, and the debate can become quite heated. In this hack, we’ll attempt to provide unbiased advice about the strengths and weaknesses of each type of scope.

Tip

Just so that you’re aware of it going in, we confess that we’re “Dob bigots.” We tried to get an “SCT fanatic” we know to help us with this hack, but he’s not speaking to us. Neither is a “refractor maniac” we know. And they’re not speaking to each other. We’re only kidding, of course, but feelings do run high when people start debating the best scope type. The Coke–Pepsi, PC–Mac, and Linux–Windows wars are nothing compared to the scope-type wars.

Scope Characteristics

Here are the three most important characteristics of a telescope:

Aperture

The aperture of a telescope is the diameter of its primary mirror or objective lens, which may be specified in inches or millimeters. Amateur telescopes have apertures ranging from 60mm (2.4”) to 30” or more. Aperture determines the amount of light a scope can gather, the fineness of detail it can resolve, and the maximum and minimum ...