My dad gave me his old telescope because I’m interested in starting astronomy as a hobby, the tlelscope is a Zennox 900×60, is that a good or at least decent telescope for a beginner?
5 Answers
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Anything that lets a beginner see more in the sky than his/her eyes alone is a step up. The name of any telescope, especially a used one, does not tell what shape it’s in, despite it’s nominal original quality.
My first telescope was a small reflector, many of which now sell on Ebay for $20. But it let me see Jupiter and its moons, Saturn’s rings, the Pleides, the Great Nebula in Orion, and many other sights that I couldn’t see before. That was 45 days ago and it gave me the love of astronomy I have today.
“900” represents the focal length of the primary lens/mirror. “60” is the diameter of the primary lens/mirror in millimeters (60mm is about 2 and a half inches, and is a common size for inexpensive beginner telescopes). Neither of these will let you see the sky like photos from the Keck telescopes or from the Hubble, but it will let you see what you may not have seen before.
A 60 mm diameter will limit you to around 200X magnification. Anything more than that will tend to blur what you’re looking at. It’ll be a bigger blur, but still a blurry view. If you have more than one eyepiece for the scope, the ones with the smallest focal length may not be much use. Many beginner scopes advertise “600X” “power”, but this is usually useless. Use all the eyepieces to see what they do for your view. Try them on Jupiter (morning sky), Saturn (evening sky), or the Moon. You’re a beginner, you’ve got a beginner’s scope. Now is the time for you to learn, so that the next telescope you get, you’ll know what you’re getting for your money.
Be sure to thank your father for the gift.
Good luck, have fun, never never look at the sun!
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Zennox Refractor Telescope Review
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before the small telescope bashers jump in, i’ll give you an honest OWNERS point of view.
i bought my Zennox purely for the EQ mount expecting the scope to be rubbish, partly right as the eyepieces that come with this telescope are rubbish compared to only slightly more expensive items.
first thing to do, buy a 32mm plossl, or any branded 32mm eyepiece. it makes navigating so much easier. it also allows you to see so many well known objects. 2nd item: the star diagonal provided is a mirror version, this is right way up but left/right are reversed. if your budget allows buy a 90degree correct image diagonal, correct image matches most star maps and the 90 degree makes viewing easier. 3rd item: a 10mm eyepiece, this gives 90x magnification and good views of jupiter, saturn, the moon but use the 32mm for open clusters like the beehive and the pleiades.
The Zennox is a good starter scope as long as you do the above, you can see a lot more than you may think, certainly more than most people who normally answer these questions would have you believe. there are many good FREE books to give you something to look for, “in starland with a 3 inch telescope” by william tyler olcott is free as its out of copyright and downloadable as a pdf file from “archive.org” and considered by many a top choice for small telescopes/binoculars.
for other resources see “60mm telescope club” a yahoo group, cloudy nights forum have a classic telescope section with many 60mm models discussed, stargazers lounge also for other telescope related questions.
one thing to remember, most (99%) of 60mm telescopes are good telescopes with poor eyepieces or tripods, some of the fast (f9 or less) cheap telescopes will have some chromatic aberration but not enough to spoil the party 🙂
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If you are far more interested in finding out to speak Spanish than study or publish it (they do teach studying and writing but speaking is far far more heavily emphasized)