The $5 Telescope vs a $50 and $500 Telescopes. 

Liquid mirror telescopes are pretty cool, slightly limiting that you can only really point it directly up though

Yes, you have my permission.

You better get on that shit now cody, Im waiting to see you upload a video with a bad mercury pun

Oh, wait. what if you made an alloy that solidifies in room temperature and then you can stop the spinning ;)

@ or why not just spin the room?

Poor alignment of the optics in the cheap refractor gives you red fringes on one edge of the Moon, blue on the other. All for no extra cost!

See the redshift and blueshift of the universe, exaggerated for clarity!

@@MyRadDesign Red on one side, blue on the other? that means you can use 3d glasses and see the moon in 3d!

@@amyshaw893 profile pic is accurate

demonic_pug watches 0__0 no thats an actual image of saturn’s moon titan

That makes sense because it's the only component there that has a use.

And the "tripod"

Gewel ✔️

😀😀😀😀

everything is free if nobody catches you

While this is true, it can be a hobby killer for many kids that would otherwise be interested in astronomy

I'm glad it worked for you, but my experience was thinking I was no good when something cheap wouldn't work right. Granted, I might have had a better perspective if my mother hadn't kept telling me, "A bad workman always blames his tools."

@@charimuvilla8693 thank god i got a Celestron first scope as my first

@@icomeinpeace2717 Perhaps it wasn’t God that you had to thank, but more like your dad or somebody real. 👺

@@nixl3518 or myself

Yeah in Europe you would just get one fron Aldi.

Many drug stores here have much stuff. If you're curious look for a picture of a CVS pharmacy.

@@SamiiYou But you can order one from lidl.

Drug stores here tend to have random garbage products near the toys, the "as seen on TV" aisle, and the greeting cards. Pretty sure the intent is "oh crap I forgot a gift". Or to promote caving to nagging children. Or both.

@@adriantp_ In Denmark it is just skin products, sunscreen maybe shampoo and cheap glasses.

It was hilarious. I actually have one of those it works ok on a good day Haha.

William Macgregor well it really look real and sure does not lol.

William Macgregor I do think that sometimes cheaply made products are so bad they in fact offer no value - and a person should always get some kind of value for their money. Looking at the moon with my own eye still renders a better image than using the $5 telescope he explored in the video.

Darryl Learie a full moon*

Remember, the original retail price was 20$.

Hmm, it seems like theres a bit more than just 12 records...

@@oy3930 He's "DJ Scott Manley"

@@oy3930 Of course he meant 12 (hundred) to 15 (hundred) :)

@@Bunny99s i know, i was simply joking around :)

@TJ Thunder That comment made me far more happy than it should have

new or used? i know a guy that has one slighty used, one owner.

Good luck finding an 8 foot telescope on sale.

The carrier bag for the Hubble Space Telescope is included! Bonus large, orange, external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters. Fuel is extra.

How much is packaging?

@@JustSomeCanuck Oh, I'm sorry. The Hubble Space Telescope travel kit has been discontinued.

RGB = Power

it's an NTSC telescope!

Telescopes by Razer

Linus Tech Tips: These telescopes increase performance.

No, RGB is short for red, green, blue, when discussing chromatic aberration.

Manley: Oh what a hunk of man he is LOL.

my mount and tripod cost $500 and i'm pretty sure a howitzer is an optional attachment. the legs are steel tubes probably 3 inches thick.

Probably doesn't have any as dobs are great for visual but not for photography.

@@spiritas5372 Depends on what you're imaging. It's true they're no good for anything that requires a long exposure, but bright objects like the moon and planets that can be taken with short exposures should image fairly well.

@@spiritas5372 You should explain why - because the target rotates during long exposures, even if the target is tracked, but a dob is certainly good enough for short exposures. An aligned equatorial mount driven at 1 revolution per sidereal day is a bit beyond the average beginner!

@@ahaveland Not necessarily. I'm currently building one with an Arduino, stepper motor and a couple of gearboxes plus some bits of hardware. Total cost for parts was under $100 so far. Eventually I want to make it self-aligning with a couple more steppers, GPS, compass and gyroscopes.

@@stamasd8500 I'm building one too with arduino, gps, steppers and all 3D printed gears. Hardly a beginner project though!

Can confirm, my father has some milspec binos from Vietnam-Cambodia era and although they are not as magnifying as a proper Tele, they have come in handy for watching eclipses, since they have obscuring filters that you just snap in front of the lenses

Robert that is correct. Good sky grade binoculars will give you vivid views of Orion Nebula, the Moon, Andromeda, full constellations, you can tell the planets are blobs-not stars (about it) but with steady arms or a camera tripod you can see the four largest moons of Jupiter. Much less skill and patience required. Some telephoto cameras do quite well with planets, but you are looking at a digital video image, not direct optics. I carry binoculars whenever i take my telescope out (about three nights a week but I live on a mountain 10 miles from the middle of nowhere in a national forest) Cheap refractors ($50-100) are however how children should start. Keeps them from believing they are being tricked by Masons at NASA and PhotoShop into believing the planets are actually round objects millions upon millions of km/miles away.

Couldn’t agree more. I’m an avid amateur astronomer and space nut as most others on here. Growing up when I first took an interest in astronomy I didn’t know what to get. My great uncle and aunt who build there own telescopes and buy their van based on if it can fit there biggest telescope when they travel to their club locations (awesome!) had me start out with just a good pair of binoculars. That way I could see the moon and many other planets to a certain degree and learn where everything was. If I was to of bought a big telescope that cost much more and really didn’t catch the “fever” for astronomy so to speak like I did the telescope would of gone to waste. Totally believe beginners should use a good pair of binoculars to start out. Thanks!

I was thinking this too! My Dad's sixty-year-old field glasses can give a better view of the Moon than that Vivitar. Not as steady, though.

@@jpardoa94: Having less magnification actually is a feature when you are just starting, since with a larger field of view it's easier to find the things that you want to look at. That's why you typically have a finder scope attached to your telescope, to provide a larger field of view for aiming purposes than the main telescope does.

i'd read that when i first started. luckily i have means so i just went and splurged on a $700 setup (130mm reflector with parabolic mirror). even then i can see why magnification isn't super important. even at the maximum magnification my lenses can reach (250x or thereabouts), i can only see jupiter as a brownish blob with a few bands. certainly nothing like the magnificent photos from hubble.

I have an opposite sort of story: a telescope that my uncle bought at Sears about a million years ago. He gave it to me when he moved away, and even though the images were all clear, for years I thought it was junk because it had a small lens and I couldn't see all the nebulae etc. But then I actually started learning astronomy and looking through other scopes, and I discovered that the optics in that old scope are very high quality! I still have it, because it has its uses.

I know you're quoting a meme, but Scott's been a DJ for a long time and only recently were non-vinyl alternatives even viable or commonly available. Vinyl really sucks in some ways, but it's also very easy for DJ's to manipulate, which is why it was popular for so long in the electronic music scene. Most electronic music before 2005 or so was only available on vinyl. If you've been DJing for more than 10 years, you have a vinyl collection, and not really by choice. Lord knows I'd like to get rid of mine, but digital versions of these tracks don't exist and I've been lazy about ripping them.

I first got into vinyl, because it's a shit ton better than cassettes.

@@eNons3nse wait, he's been a DJ?

@@GewelReal Yea, he is a DJ.

Oh, he used to be a DJ as well, so of course he would have a huge LP collection...

That vinyl collection was no doubt part of the reason this video kept reminding me of the ones where some audiophile compares a cheap Crosley record player with their Audio Technica turntable.

To be fair, his entire RU-vid channel is about being a nerd...

For one thing, that guitar is actually a video game controller.

Robert Price no way, are you sure? I can see a chrome tremolo, chrome tuning heads and strings. Can only see 1 pick up but I imagine there is another 1 or 2 white ones washing out with the pick guard. Guessing it’s a Fender Squire.

Same. Well i got a good chuckle out of it, at least.

I think I know. It was a joke! ;-) ;-) :-D

nah, I think some of those pictures (at least in visible spectrum) could be taken by something cheaper: like the VLT or Keck telescope

best thing is that he did not even moved a muscle well saying that lol

666Tomato666 That sentence made me actually LOL. Not everyday you get to say that ...

Makes you wonder why the produce this , just more for the land fill I guess

I have a zoom lens from them made in 1978. At the time it was very nice quality.

yup now they are in the cheapo section at target up front for all your cheap phone supply needs lol.

Yep, I once bought a Vivitar camera and it was a piece of junk. They sucker you in cause they have low prices, but the quality is so bad you can't really use them for anything.

They never actually *made* anything themselves, it was all contract made overseas, by various makers... they did sell some decent prime telephoto lenses in the mid 70s, but most of their stuff was "C" or "B" quality. I had a 600mm f/8 from them, with a Pentax K mount adapter, that I used with my Pentax MX in the late 70s btw, the founders died, and the name was sold by the estate, its been resold a few times, wikipedia says its now owned by Sakar International who's big into junky stuff sold at mass market retailers

@@geepeerces Ah okay, thanks for the info. Alot of companies actually do the same thing, have someone else make a product, and they simply stick their brand on it. Polaroid is a company that used to exist, but they too went bankrupt. However, the Polaroid brand name still exists so companies can make a product and stick the "Polaroid" name on it. I guess they feel people will buy a product if it has a recognizable name on it, as opposed to one that doesn't.

Tricky to set up in the garden though...

True, but have you checked the price on mass these days? Who can afford it?

@@outsider344 your mum

The Virtual Scotsman you ruined this golden thread

gravitational lensing caused by the mass of yo mama

Hazy and poorly focused... You sure weren't just drunk at the time...? haha ;)

@@genelomas332 I mean, I probably was, but I remember that telescope being t r a s h all the same XD

@@lanceleone2704 hahahaha 👌

This isn't the same Vivitar brand that were known for their quality camera lenses years ago, especially the original Series 1 range. It's such a shame the name is being put on such crappy products now.

@Lord Hosk I'm out of duct tape, will have to wait until monday to buy new one.

You'd spend more on all the cameras to take the images to the computer which would also be more expensive than the 500 dollar telescope just to make the comparison.

@@merendell For comparison under equal conditions, all setups would be allowed to use 100 cameras and a super computer. It's not the fault of the cheap telescopes that the big one can't make much use of it. 😁

@Charles Yuditsky I wonder if you could make lenses from scotch tape 🤔

@@PaulPaulPaulson You actually can't use computers for optical interferometry, it has to be done with actual optical hardware. You basically just need a single camera at the end then, after you've merged all the beams. Setting up a proper optical interferometer with 100 telescopes would probably cost you like $10 million though. Maybe more. There's a reason there are only like 2 places in the world using optical interferometry, it's waaaaaay harder than radio.

r/Showerthoughts

And foam is just a lowtech Payload adaptor

Soda cans are just low-tech cryogenic fuel tanks...

Not to mention it was the other way round compared to the others.

Damn right. An engaging and determined personal interest in any field of science can bring up their grades across the board, not just science classes. If you don't have $5, take the kid to a local planetarium or a skywatching meetup some summer night.

Lucas Thompson Do planetariums not charge for entrance? There’s none around me, and I haven’t been to one since I was a kid.

@Alex Rowland To get inside and attend attractions/events, yes, but most (all?) of them have astronomy club meet ups on clear summer nights that can be attended for free. If there isn't one near you, there's probably at least a skywatchers/astronomy club somewhere in your vicinity.

@@lucasthompson1650 Thanks for responding, that's great to know! I live in the desert of southern Utah, so it would be a great place for an astronomy club, I'll have to see if there's any close by.

It was on the Chang-e.

Haha it is to

At least it's not pluto

Wow the Vivitar scope can see that! Sold!!

.. you don't know where I'm setting up my scope.

I tried that last week and I'm still seeing high quality images of the sun too this day... please make it go away.

That's not a very good idea considering it uses plastic lenses, even the tube is plastic.

​@@ScientistDog Well, if you melt it it just ends up in the trash slightly faster than it would have otherwise. That said, it's only 50mm aperture, so there's not a whole lot of light being gathered, and you can partially block the objective if you're still worried about melting something.

@@ScientistDog dude don't look at the sun .

@@RoyontheHill Well, sleepib did mention to use it as a projector. Implying the image is supposed to be projected on a screen behind it, not your retina. But yeah, all that light focused through plastic lenses is going to make it melt in no time.

And it has worse optics than something he found in the trash ...

I have a 24" refractor in my laundry room. But I can't use it because some plumber put it in line with my water supply.

If you are referring to the "Phillips" package, I think that is a box of florescent lamps.

@@DistracticusPrime You do mean that in terms of the OTA length, right? :D

Davide D'ippolito Electron vs F9 vs what?

@@tinldw the 3rd rocket can be the shuttle (around 450mln/mission)

Davide D'ippolito but you can't get it anymore

@@tinldw it was a joke...

Problem 1) The Getaway. How are you going to steal one? LOL

Before I knew anything about digital cameras or Vivitar I bought a cheap ま20 pounds Vivitar camera. Really poor, even for the money. Later, on the DSLR video guide RU-vid channel, I saw Simon Cade review a Vivitar camcorder and literally throw it in the trash. It's not a fait accompli that if something is ridiculously cheap, it's gonna be awful, because companies like Casio make awesome ten dollar watches. And Greggs pies. But Vivitar seem to wear their consistent and utter crapness like a badge of honour. A brand to be avoided, even if you're short of cash.

@@GreenMorningDragonProductions -bear in mind that “Vivitar” today is just some bullshit distributor of Chinese crap who bought rights to the defunct name. In the 1970’s, Vivitar sold reasonably decent 35mm camera lenses, not as good as Nikon or Canon, but usable enough for amateurs.

Spörde Spyrdenstein your son is happy

why is your profile picture undercoverdude's logo?

@@sweeflyboy Undercoverdude's logo is Walt Disney's stuff :-P

Is the mile the SI unit for telescope quality?

If Galileo can do all that science with his crummy telescope, then it's good enough for the kids.

I do teach historic astronomy to kids and adults, using graduations of cheap scopes that are optically equivalent to those used between 1500 and 1750AD. Cheaper refractors and AZ mount long tube reflectors (usually 114x900mm and 60x400mm) for the Newton variants. You'll be amazed what you can see in a very dark deep country winter night. They do a marvelous image of Orion, Venus phases, Jupiter and the kids can see Saturn is Saturn. The simple cheap scopes are also easier for the novice to control. Then I show them my current scopes.

Is this something you assume, or something you know?

Hagledesperado. We know the specs on the telescopes of those eras. We know the relative dimensions and the quality of the early lenses for the refractors. The size and quality of the Newtonian mirrors. Some artifacts still exist. Then it is a matter of finding scopes on the market that approximate these measures. The views should match. Optics is math and quality of lens and mirror.

Who Knew?

I’ll bet there’s a Proclaimers album in there?

It’s all polka music.

Next video $50,000 vs $500,000 telescope! 22” RCT with all the bells vs 1 meter planewave observatory grade RCT

@@joelsfallon I really want a comparison with private space based telescope. The atmosphere ruins the quality of shots regardless of how many fancy lenses and mirrors you use.

Did you try looking through it at Earth?

my poor grandfather bought me one a couple years ago for something like 40 dollars

Cool

I confess I never even saw the not-a-watertank. I was too busy looking at the state of his outdoors.

Sean C To me it just blended into the wall, but at second look it seemed more like a section of a rocket like the Nexø II experiment from last year.

They also have an 80mm, maybe a recent addition?

If he had filmed the video overhead on a chipboard workbench, he could do a decent Big Clive impression as well.

Scott needs to work on his unboxing action - this was very tame, needs more mini-chainsaw.

@@quaidbergo While watching the unboxing, I was inwardly wishing that SM would toss the contents across the table and yell 'TIME!'

@@craigeaton5510 Keep your scope looking nice.

a pistol

3:12 i was about the comment that too but i thought i should check to make sure someone else didn't beat me to it

They might do that with the $50 scope. The $5 scope is so bad that they might use it once or twice then throw it in the trash. What child is going to pursue astronomy if unable to see the craters on the moon with their first scope. Even Galileo had better optics.

20 bucks would be better spent going to an observatory and getting a great view of the sky.

the best function of my first telescope was to pound a concussion into a neighbor kid with the eyepiece (made of steel back then).

@@buggsy5 You're right, I was given a similar quality telescope when I was around 6 and ended up as an electrician. More seriously, that vivitar is good enough for something that's probably going to end up broken in a couple weeks anyway.

What? Telescopes are for looking at stars? I thought they were only built to look in peoples windows. Ive been using it wrong this whole time..

Do you mean 15x70?

thanks for the laugh

Are you kidding? How did he got that lens?

@@curbowman buy or make it diy

Lol

555

my first I think was a 5 or 6" reflector, on an equatorial, took ages to set up.

I have a 10" Skywatcher. Great engine. But I have a question : how far can you zoom ? When I go up to 200x, the picture is blurry, and I don't know if it's because of the limit of the dobson, the 3x barlow lens I use, a bad alignement of the mirrors or something else.

@@acHe607 can you adjust the focus?

@@acHe607 your maximum useful magnification would be 50x your telescopes aputere in inches, but bare in mind, just because your your telescope can theoretically go that far, as you have encountered, it isn't always good, magnification isn't all that important, you want to use an eyepiece that frames your target nicely because the more your magnification goes up, the more light loss and detail loss

@@TheMhalpern I try. When I don't use the barlow, I can see a clear dot. But with the barlow, impossible.

I have a WO FLT-132 that I got for a good price, but I am not very happy with it. I should have just shelled out for a Takahashi or Astro-Physics.

I have three Taks myself, a TSA-120, TOA-150 and an FSQ-106EDXIV. They are magnificent scopes!

Nice, I decided to get a premium mount before optics. Now that I have a Mach1 its time to get some high end scopes. :)

Taks are fantastic scopes indeed. Owned a couple of little ones (60 and 85mm) which were physics-defyingly sharp for their size.

It looks like an Orion skyview pro 100. Not sure if they still sell those. 100mm f6 achromat, will have considerable chromatic abberation on bright objects, and there are filters that help with that at the expense of varying degrees of yellow tint to the image, the most expensive option, the baader semi apo having a slight yellow green tint but not as strong as basic minis violet fringe killers. A basic light yellow filter also helps a bit as well. The best being a Stack of fringe killer and neodymium filter, which the semi apo combines in one filter. The SVP mount is big enough for visual use with an 8" Newtonian, and I actually used mine to image with an 8" f4 and 80mm f11 refractor as guide scope back in the day. I had purchased the SVP127 which is also no longer sold as a package, which was a 5" maksutov Cassegrain f12. I got the 80mm f11 as a celestron nexstar 80gtl 2004 $149 Costco special , and purchased a baader bracket dovetail adapter, surplus tasco starguide 4 tripod (same as nexstar 4/5 tripod), and made me a decent etx125 substitute with the 127 on the nexstar mount. Then I bought the 8"f4 optical tube from Hardin (no longer selling consumer scopes, these were made by GSO in Taiwan), a guide scope rings set from Orion to use the 80mm as a guide scope, and a 12mm plossl XY adjustable reticle eye piece (so you can move the reticle around to line up with the best guide star) and I used that set up for film astrophotography for a while. This was 2004/2005. It was the maximum for the mount, but I had no problems, and also later on bought a 2" cg5 tripod used which improved stability, and adapted my smaller (astroview/omni cg4) class Hardin star hoc mount to work with the SVP tripod (1.75"), which made it the equivalent to the omni cg4 (which was not out yet). Having friends in an observing group where the smallest big scope was 12" and we had an 18" and sometimes a 28" out there, I quickly realized that hearing all the oohs and ahhs and calling out if they would still be on it in 3-4 minutes when my exposure was done, made me realize that autoguiding and your own dob as a visual scope was really the way to go. Also because when I finally got my DSLR (Nikon d50 2006) I discovered that digital is less forgiving of guide errors than film. This was back in the days of the Orion catalog, and before Orion sold any goto scopes other than the intelliscope push to system, which was also available as an add on to the skyview pro. The 100f6 was also available on the smaller astroview mount which is adequate for it, and the 127 mak is still sold that way From my greater experience learned since then, and 5 years (part of it as top dog) sales at opt 2006-2011 I would personally suggest the celestron omni 102 f9.8 scope if one was to get a 4" refractor as their main scope. F9.8 has much less false color, while f6 excells for wide field (extreme wide field in the realm of 15-25x binoculars or wider with the widest 2" eps), there is the color I talked about earlier, which is far reduced at f9.8 (f10 basically) Orion (these at least) and celestron scopes are both made by synta, the omni mount is the same as the astroview BUT it comes with a 1.75" steel tube tripod that the bigger SVP mount comes with, so it is very stable. The series also includes a 120 mm f8.3 refractor which is at the limit for that mount but still useable, a 150mm f5 reflector which a buddy of mine did some decent astrophotography with when he hacked the dual axis drive controller for autoguider capability. Also a fine visual scope (I had bicoastal pair of Hardin 6-5 equivalents for a while) . There was, maybe still is, a 6" 150mm f5 short tube refractor in the series as well, but I would only suggest that be used as a low power wide field deep space scope due to excessive false color and mount loading making it not a good high power instrument. Refractors are heavier than reflectors when they get that big. The omni 102 long tube refractor is excellent for all uses in its class, excelling in planetary and lunar, and with 2" eyepieces can still show some wide field views, and in fact, refractors offer the best contrast on open star clusters even in the city they can be seen better than other designs that have central obstructions. And I. Dark skies the clusters are amazing. And one of the best views of m101 (a large faint spiral galaxy) was in a 4" refractor in dark skies. The extra contrast helped bring the spirals out The scope is also in the under $500 range. I did use my star hoc on 1.75 tripod a couple times with the 8"f4 visually and it worked well, and recently put a c8 on my current astroview on a 2" tripod and it was rock solid, so I know that omni mount is no slouch. c8 is lighter than 8" newtonians and much shorter, so I wouldn't suggest putting a longer than f4 8" on one, for that size (f5 f6) you want to go with a CG5/SVP.

I suspect the hardware and software to point them in the same direction and combine details would cost a lot more than the telescopes.

No, nothing really useful you could do with 10 shitty telescopes, unless you just want to look at 10 different things at the same time.

Daniel Jensen ahh yes with my 10 eyes

In the simpsons putting multiple megaphones in line worked. I dont see why this wouldnt

@@GlowingSpamraam Lol, well maybe you want to go back and forth between looking at 10 different things. Or you want to invite 9+ friends to a telescope party?

if you know you're going to be into astronomy that's not a bad first purchase. But for most folks who are mostly just curious, something in the $20-$100 range is probably a better idea, you're not out so much.

I just bought my first telescope. I ordered an 8" dobsonian and the company messed up and sent me a 12". I called them and they let me keep it. Cant wait to try it out.

@@NuclearHotdogsWOT wow that is fantastically generous of them. that should be great for taking pictures of bright objects like planets, maybe even the orion nebula.

@@NuclearHotdogsWOT very very nice upgrade

@@NuclearHotdogsWOT whats the brand?

Yep, easier to get going than my heavy tripod.

Lol.....

Aperture is the diameter of the primary lens of the telescope. Logically, the larger that diameter is, the more light enters the telescope at once, giving better details and brighter images. Therefore, aperture matters much more than simply the magnification you are viewing an object at. The focal length of a telescope is the distance between the primary lens and its focal point (the light is refracted in a conical shape, eventually intersecting at the focal point), and the magnification is calculated by dividing the focal length of the eyepiece you are using into the focal length of the telescope.

Aperture was an underground lab that focused on the squishy sciences. IIRC, they were the first to land a portal on the moon's surface.

magnification only matters if your telescope is high quality enough to actually see details, otherwise you'll just get a blurry mess no matter how good you are at focusing. there's a rule for effective magnification vs aperture but i forgot what it is, but generally the wider the aperture the greater its angular resolution and the finer details it can make out. i have a 130mm reflector and at best i can make out a few bands on jupiter. can kinda see the red spot even with the image magnified to fill up the lens.

Apature is the diameter of the objective lens (the big one at the front) or the primary mirror (depending on the design of the telescope) and directly determines how much light the telescope can gather -- the bigger the better, the more light that is gathered the more detail you can see. The focal length is the distance between the objective lens (or primary mirror) and the focal plane (the point where the image is focused at). The focal length determines the "zoom" level of the telescope (or more precisely the angular size of the resulting image). Camera lenses are sold based on their focal length, I have for example a 100 mm - 300 mm zoom lens and that determines the angular size of the resulting image. Imagine taking a camera and setting it up to take a picture of a wall, with one lens it will image a 10' by 10' area of the wall, then you change to a lens with a longer focal length and now you can only image a 4' by 4' area of wall. Magnification is a product of the focal length. The moon, for example, has an angular resolution of about 31 arc-minutes. If you look at it with a telescope that has a 2 degree field of view the moon will only take up a quarter of the width of the image (or 1/16th of the whole image). If you use a telescope with a longer focal length that has a 1/2 degree field of view the moon would take up the whole image. With a telescope, you can use different eye pieces to change the magnification, but all they do is limit the amount of the image gathered by the telescope that you can see -- it's analogous to using digital zoom in a camera. It doesn't show you any more detail, it just makes the detail bigger. So to go back to the earlier example of a telescope with a 2 degree field of view, rather than changing to a telescope with a longer focal length you can just change the eyepiece so that the moon fills the whole frame, but it would so by only showing 1/16th of the image gathered by the telescope. BTW: When I changed from using 35 mm film to a digital camera body the image sensor in my digital camera is smaller than 35 mm film which has effectively increased the magnification of my lenses, but it's done so in the same manner as changing the eye piece in a telescope. For my camera the effect is minimal and the benefits of it being a digital camera far outweighs the minor loss of image quality. So, if you want to be able to see more detail (i.e. have a better image, not just a bigger one) you need to get a telescope with a bigger objective lens (primary mirror) so that it gathers more light and if you want to focus on a smaller piece of space you need a telescope with a longer focal length. See, magnification isn't a factor.

You should be able to do far better than that. That is a 5" aperature and you should be able to see Cassini's Division under good seeing conditions and a good ring tilt. The basic rule is that more than 20x/inch aperture is seldom useful and 20x only when the atmosphere is quite steady. Average seeing is more like 5x to 12x. So, with your scope, look for magnifications in the range of 25x to 60x. Go higher if the conditions are steady. You didn't mention the focal length, but many reflectors of such small diameter are f/8 or f/10. That would put your focal length somewhere in the 1000 to 1300 mm range. That means a 25 mm eyepiece will give you somewhere around 40x to 52x. You might be able to use a 15 mm eyepiece occasionally. There is an exception to the rule when you are just trying to split double stars. There you are not looking for detail, so a lot of blur is acceptable. I have used as much as 50x on such occasions, but the stars are pretty dim.

If you are looking into a beginner scope I would recommend looking at the celestron 127eq Newtonian. It's cheap but you can also get some nice views of many objects. The mount and tripod are a bit on the cheaper side, but it's nice enough that you will be well rewarded with a bit of patience

Ari Loggia I will check that out!

Just to be clear for the ones that would not understand the joke : NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN (with an instrument not explicitely made for this purpose, unless you explicitely do not want to enjoy looking at anything anymore).

So people who paid the full $20 got a better one than Scott?

"The entire range from crap to middling." xD It was definitely worth it to read the rest of that.

I have a 200mm Pentacon Auto f/4 (50mm aperture), M42 mount made in GDR in the 1980s. It cost me the equivalent of about $10 new back in 1992 when I still lived in Eastern Europe. I use it with an adapter ring for my Canon 400D and 6D. Can get some very decent pictures of the moon with it, but frankly not much else. I need a better camera mount.

Someone else mentioned it in another comment, but Vivitar is kind of a "zombie" brand. They were a pretty reputable manufacturer of cameras and lenses through 80's or so, but they went bankrupt and somebody bought the name, so it just gets slapped on whatever crap they're trying to sell these days. So, sometimes what you get is crap and sometimes it's middling :-)

I have a 75 to 300mm zoom lens for my Canon EOS Rebel T6. I can see (and photograph) Venus' crescent phase, Jupiter's moons, and Saturn's rings (only at 12 pixels length-wise, mind you) and moons. A telephoto lens such as the 250 you mentioned or my 300 will allow you to get decent resolution on solar and lunar eclipses and planetary conjunctions (I just checked one of my photos from last week's lunar eclipse and the moon by itself was 900x900 pixels). While a telescope would collect more light and allow for greater magnification, telephoto lens have a clear advantage in field of view. You add in a wide-angle lens and a camera tracking mount such as an iOptron SkyGuider Pro and you could take long exposures of whole constellations. Ultimately, whether you buy a telephoto lens or a telescope depends on whether you want lots of detail on singular objects, or a little detail on lots of objects.

@@Devlinator61116 a largish telescope will cost a lot less than an equivalent focal length camera lens, nevermind the camera body. I have a 130mm Newtonian reflector with a 600mm focal length that cost $200. a similar camera lens is easily in the thousands. so yeah, unless you're made of money, astrophotography is best done with a decent telescope setup with T-adapter and a camera body. i have almost the same camera kit (rebel t5 instead of t6) and i can tell you my pictures of jupiter came out far better with my telescope than the camera with the 300mm lens.

125 or better and 900mm FL will let you see the Cassinni Divisions in the rings. Plossl eyepieces are your best next step too. 4mm and 10mm for a 125x900 make good views. Lower than 4 you get fuzz.