Calling all you astronomers

My dad is looking for a telescope to start viewing the stars and planets with, preferably with an attachment for his 350D camera so he can snap what he see's.
Does anybody know who makes decent telescopes and what to look for?

Something around £200-300 UK would be ideal.

Advice greatly appreciated

2nd hand Opticron ES80 would be a good choice.

Take a look at this website for more info:

http://www.scopetronix​.com/

Good luck.

id stick with celestron and meade. its hard to say which company is better but i say if you have the funds get AT LEAST a 8 in schmidt cassegrain telescope, anything smaller you will have a hard time seeing fainter objects under magnification (different eyepieces). ive had the meade etx90at and pretty much the only thing you can see super clearly is the moon. if there is a nearby comet, that too. and juptier is a white glowing dot, and you can juuuuust make out its moons. this small telescope couldnt do much. under higher magnification eyepieces, everything just got grainy and dim.

they have gps versions that set themselves up automatically to the north star. this is handy because otherwise you will have to set it up yourself if you want to use something like meade autostar to located stars at the press of a few buttons. drawback is this costs alot of money. i was looking to buy the meade 8" LX200GPS-SMT or the celestron nextstar 9 gps. gps is also again very handy because since the earth rotates you want the telescope to rotate with it to capture galaxies without blur. this can be done on a telescope without gps but again you will have to go through the preliminary setup of aligning it with the north star.

a very very sturdy tripod and mount is needed for long exposures as these telescopes are heavy. if the tripod isnt sturdy enough there are tutorials online to fill the legs with sand, etc

meade has an adapter, im not sure if it fits though, might want to call them or email them to make sure

be very aware that telescopes cost a huge bundle of money. and i dont mean $600 huge, more like $2000+ huge

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Go to "star parties" - gatherings of amatuer astronomers with their telescopes. You can look thru the scopes, talk to people who know, and start climbing the learning curve. A good listing of UK astronomy clubs is >>>here<<<

Kaitanium's advice is good but I wouldn't put down cash until you've looked thru a few scopes and talked to their owners firsthand.

be warned -- taking photos thru a telescope is not simple.

DavidEB wrote:
http://www.sky-watch.com/links/clubs_​uk.html
Kaitanium's advice is good but I wouldn't put down cash until you've looked thru a few scopes and talked to their owners firsthand.

be warned -- taking photos thru a telescope is not simple.

i agree totally, you will need to test things out. but the 8in minimum still holds. and yes taking photos with a telescope is not that easy. this is an expensive purchase and you probably cant afford to mess it up.