The difference between a $100 telescope and a $500 one is night and day for planetary shots

I started out with a cheap refractor last summer and got some fuzzy blobs of Jupiter that looked like a yellow potato with stripes. Then I saved up and bought a used 8 inch Dobsonian from a guy on Craigslist for $450 back in October. The first clear night I pointed it at Saturn I actually gasped because I could see the rings separate from the planet, not just a smudge. Over three months the difference was basically going from squinting at a blur to actually counting bands on Jupiter. Collimation took some learning but now I get shots that look like real planets, not mistakes. Has anyone else noticed how much more detail comes through once you hit that 8 inch aperture level?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia_green211mo ago

Yeah but is anyone actually getting good planetary shots with a cheap scope though? Right tool for the job makes all the difference.

ryan_ellis1mo ago

Oh man, I gotta jump in here! I actually just read this thread on another forum where a guy was getting crazy good shots of Jupiter with a secondhand 4-inch Mak-Cass he got for under 200 bucks. Like, you could see the bands and everything. It's wild what people can pull off these days with some patience and a halfway decent webcam (or even just a phone held up to the eyepiece, though that takes some fiddling). So yeah @patricia_green21, the tool matters but it's not everything - a cheap scope in the right hands can totally surprise you. I think the real trick is learning how to stack frames in software, which is basically free. You don't need a $3000 setup to get started, just a willingness to fail a few times (and a bit of clear weather, which is the real challenge).