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Astronomy
The universe is fucking awesome. You should peer into it. You can see some amazing shit from your own yard throughout the year.
Equipment
Equipment ramps up in price as you get more serious. You can start with nothing.
Your eyes
You can learn a lot about the night sky with little more than a tilt of your head.
The first step is to grab yourself a starmap/software that will show you the constellations. From here you can learn the significant stars in the sky and learn the constellations, which besides being impressive to the LAYDEEZ, will also set you up for using equipment.
At the very least, consider learning constellations like learning the map of Grand Theft Auto. Learn this, and you will be able to know which points of light are random stars and which points whiteof light are significant stars, and which points of light are planets.
Binoculars
Binoculars come in many different shapes and sizes and are meant for many different purposes. Binoculars cover everything from Opera Glasses to birdwatching to astronomy.
At best with binoculars you'll be able to see some details on the moon (but nothing amazing), no craters. Perhaps some different shades of colour. You'll also see a heck of a lot more stars in the night sky. Planets will just look like larger blobs of blurry white light,
If you're very cautious about buying a telescope, consider buying binoculars. 7x50s or 10x50s will do you just fine. Note that the larger the binoculars are the harder they are to keep steady in your hands while observing. If you doubt this, hold a 4lb weight above your head and keep it perfectly still (you won't be able to).
Telescopes
If you're serious about watching the night sky, you'll want a telescope.
When looking to buy a telescope the first trick you'll run into is ZOMG MAGNIFICATION. Every "toy" telescope in the toystore will boast bazillion times magnification, and when you know nothing about telescopes, this will seem great. It ain't.
What you want in a telescope is girth. The fatter/wider the scope is, the more light will enter it, and the more you can see. Telescopes are essentially "light buckets" from which you can see faint objects. Once you can see the faint object, THEN you can magnify it.
Telescope types
Refractor
Refractor telescopes are what a layperson thinks of then they think of a telescope. Yar Harr Matey golden tubes with lenses at either end. These are generally the Chinesium shitbox telescopes you see at big box stores and if you're looking for your first telescopes, stay away from here as the good ones are expensive as shit.
Achromats
These are the shit refractors you buy. Do not buy if it's your first time getting a telescope, reflectors offer many more options.
Apochromats
Now these? This is the good shit. The endgame astro gear. Apochromats have no aberration in their view like achromats do and are what you will buy if you look to get into astrophotography. They're easy to set up, and easy to take down with none of that "collimation" nonsense that reflectors suffer from. They simply just add on an extra lens to correct the fringing in achromats and go on doing what they do best: providing the clearest view of the night sky. Admittedly, apochromats suffer from a variety of flaws. Chief among them being their stupid, stupid price. A 61 millimeter apochromat (new) costs around 700 dollars. That's two and a half inches for seven hundred freaking dollars. These are not for the light of wallet. Only buy these if you're confident they are what you want.
Reflector
Newtonian Reflectors use two mirrors to show you the sky. Instead of being a big-end to small-end scope, they're just a big fat tube. The light comes in at the top, reflects off of a parabolic mirror at the bottom, and focuses on a secondary mirror at the top, which sends the light into the eyepiece, which means you don't have to squat down. They're also much cheaper to make.
A standard reflector comes on an AltAz mount (a tripod with a counterweight and controls for switching the Alt and Az).
Reflector mounts can also come with motorized/computerized components, letting you punch in some numbers to view an object, and take timelapse photographs with a camera mounted.
Dobsonian
The Dobsonian telescope is usually a Newtonian reflector on a very simple mount. These types of telescopes are intended for purely visual use and offer by far the greatest bang for the buck in terms of aperture for the price. Mounted reflectors will set you back at least a thousand dollars extra for the same aperture a Dobsonian gives you, for example the SkyQuest 10(1000 USD) versus the Meade 10" LX200(4850 USD). Dobs are probably the most intuitive telescope to just pick up and use owing to the simplicity of their mount, usually just a piece of wood on some teflon pads to ensure smooth turning. You grab the telescope tube and aim it like a cannon at what you want to see in the night sky.
Motorized Dobs do exist but they are exorbitantly expensive and suffer a host of disadvantages compared to motorized Newtonians.
In my opinion, if you're first getting into amateur astronomy and you want to start off in the best position possible, get a Dob.
Choosing a telescope
The first thing to do is figure out what you want to do with your scope. Astrophotography can rule in or out a heap of choices. Figure out whether you want to punch in some numbers and have the scope aim itself or whether you want to aim manually. This will narrow down the type of scope you want to one of the above scope types.
Next comes your budget. Whatever you have to spend on a scope, knock off 10-15% for accessories (barlows, filters, collimators).
With this final budget, pick the scope with the largest width. 5" is ok for the moon and basic planet watching. 8" is ok for nebulae/star clusters. Wider is better. Scopes are lightbuckets, after all. Go for the widest you can afford (and you'll note that the price goes up according to width).
Telescope accessories
Barlow lens
A Barlow lens, usually a 2x or 3x lens, will double or triple the focal length of your scope, essentially doubling/tripling the strength of your eyepiece. The barlow fits into the scope like a regular eyepiece, and an eyepiece will fit into the top of the barlow.
Filters
There are plenty of filters to filter light from different objects. I would recommend you NOT get any sort of filters unless you have some experience with using telescopes. Now with that said...
There are a lot of different types of filters, with the main ones being solar filters, moon filters, colored filters, and nebula filters. You should buy moon filters if you, guess what, want to look at the moon! It's usually so bright that it messes up your night vision whenever you look at it and the moon filter reduces the brightness of the object. Colored filters are self explanatory, they're just colored pieces of glass that light travels through. These are used to accent certain features on planets usually, for example a red filter for looking at the red stripes on Jupiter, or a green filter to increase contrast on Mars.
Those are the normal filters, now we get into the big boys. Nebula filters come in two main types, broadband and narrowband. Broadband filters block light across the whole range of the spectrum, and are generally less expensive than specialized narrowband filters. You'll see this type advertised as "light pollution reduction" filters as that's their main purpose. They generally enhance the viewing of deep sky objects from galaxies to planetary nebulae. Narrowband filters, on the other hand, are almost exclusively reserved for nebulae. The two most common narrowband filter types are Oxygen-3(OIII) and Hydrogen-beta filters. O3 filters are most useful for planetary nebulae while Hydrogen-beta filters are best for a small number of faint targets, like the California nebula. O3 filters are good for most spectacular objects in the sky so buy them if you're deciding between multiple narrowband filters.
Solar filters are the last variant. NEVER LOOK THROUGH YOUR TELESCOPE AT THE SUN. Now that the warning's out of the way, there are two main types of solar filters, white light filters and H-alpha filters. White light filters are incredibly cheap and provide an image of the sun through a (broadband) filter that simply reduces the brightness of the sun by an obscene amount. Easy to use and easy to buy. H-alpha filters, on the other hand, are usually bundled with a dedicated solar telescope. These filters are useful for seeing solar prominences and the granulation of the sun, which white light CANNOT do. They provide a much more spectacular view of the Sun at a much more spectacular price. The lowest value of these costs around 800-900 USD.
Location
Location usually doesn't make too big of a difference, but the main points are that you need
- Somewhere without a bunch of trees or other obstructions blocking all the cool shit
- Somewhere that is dark (e.g. not near a city)
If you live in a rural area with lots of trees, you will most likely want to find a body of water nearby because you can get a fairly good view of the sky in at least one direction.
Misc tips
- Before looking at the sky, sit somewhere dark to let your eyes adjust so that you will be able to see more in the sky.
- If you need a flash light, find one with a red tint as this will help prevent your eyes from adjusting to the light making it hard to see anything.
Professional Equipment
Remote telescope observations are possible using super high tech super expensive scopes professionally maintained in a remote location with little to no light pollution. Free scope time during full moon week is also available since it's harder to see dim objects but you can still scope planets and bright objects or just scope before the moon rises.
