What telescopes, preferrably as portable as possible, are great for under $800

[MacM545]

I have tried to research telescopes for photography, not for DSO though. I wanted to photograph and make videos of the various ”UFOs” that I’ve been seeing. I read about the Orion Skyquest series as well as the Celestron C6a series telescopes which might be excellent, at least relatively, within my budget. A budget of $800 for scope and mount, altogether. Obviously, this might be too low of a budget but what would people advise me? To be more specific, I really considered an Orion Skyquest XT10, and as for a Celestron, the C6a, https://www.highpointscientific.com...Pir2JhNgF6IGIHKsXul7oEV-fm7_ElGwaAp-iEALw_wcB

It has seemed unlikely to me that the Orion can be such a small amount with the mount and be excellent; a tracking mount even for an 80mm refractor can cost over $1,000. The Orion=about 50 pounds. Obviously, the mount option for the Orion as opposed to a refractor is different. A tracking mount though might not be needed for me, as it’s not made for tracking objects except for cosmic objects.
Basically, just some thoughts.

Obviously, a refractor is portable, but I wanted something with great light gathering rather than extremely expensive optics, even though it might be not a bad idea either.

 

[Alen K]

See, the challenge providing advice to you is the application. If you had asked what would be good for photographing DSOs, you would get plenty of advice. But you say you want to photograph UFOs. Assuming by UFO you literally mean "Unidentified Flying Object," the problem is that they are flying. That means you would want to follow the path of one in order to get a photo of it. That would be tough to do with any telescope. Better to use a large-aperture and longish focal-length telephoto, handheld with good image stabilization.

If you meant something other than Unidentified Flying Object, you will need to be more specific.

 

[Astrophotographer 10]

https://williamoptics.com/products/equatorial-mount-telescope-package/guidestar-61-package

About as cheap as you are likely to find.

How good the mount is would be another question. Probably fine if you polar align very accurately and use shortish exposure times.

Greg.

 

[JimH123]

https://williamoptics.com/products/equatorial-mount-telescope-package/guidestar-61-package

About as cheap as you are likely to find.

How good the mount is would be another question. Probably fine if you polar align very accurately and use shortish exposure times.

Greg.

Yes, that is about as cheap as you can get into this. Williams Optics is good quality.

But be aware that this mount does not have a Go To feature. Instead of having the mount go to the object you wish to observe, it requires you to aim the scope manually. This is not that easy to find objects.

But the mount does allow you to do a good alignment so that you can track longer before the tracking veers off course.

There are many cheap scopes that are designed to only look through and that do not have sufficient back focus to allow the use of a camera. If you buy one of these scopes, you would be out of luck in using a camera. You could, perhaps, ask here about some particular scope you may want to know about. AstroTech makes decent low cost scopes that are compatible with the use of a camera.

One more thing. You mentioned UFOs. An equatorial mount would be useless for trying to follow a UFO. Just couldn't be done. I have only seen one UFO in my life and it was the diameter of looking at a full moon, except this was in the afternoon. And if I had been in a position to photograph it, only a handheld, lower focal length lens, could have kept up with it. Didn't slow down at all.

 

[Aaron@Utah]

I am a bit confused by your post

if you're true goal is to capture UFO's you're going about it all wrong with a telescope and tracking or goto mount system to begin with you are never going to be able to track a UFO with a telescope since they are not predictable like starts that will always move at the same speed and for your $800 budget you should spend your money more wisely on a good DSLR or mirrorless camera with a fast prime or zoom lens

I would be using a nikon canon or sony with maybe a 70-200mm 2.8 zoom

you can get an older 70-200mm 2.8 and a fairy late model camera body that can do at least 1080 HD video and you would have a better chance of capturing UFO's than a telescope and tracking mount

few I would consider

Canon t5i or later with 70-200mm 135mm f2 prime or 85mm prime

or if you wanted more reach a 400mm 5.6 but thats going to be above your budget for the 400mm 5.6 combo 400mm probably run you 800 by itself

nikon d5300 d3500 d5600 etc etc with equivalent lenses

sony a6000 with 85mm 1.8 or adapted manual focus glass

mirrorless system is going to be better with manual focus glass do to focus peaking feature on them

or if you can find a used sony a7s first version and a fast prime

then you can basically shoot in the dark with that combo its the one I use with a canon 135mm f2 and can shoot high ISO stuff that is amazing but Im not shooting UFO's with it