For christmas I decided to finally treat myself to a telescope. Sure its much easier to go on the internet and find some awesome images of the cosmos. I'd be able to skip the hassle (stuff starts moving fast at +200x), the lost time (dang weather) and best of all, the cold! But my thinking was that I'd learn a few things and gain some inexplicable satisfaction from actually seeing it with my own eyes. I was right.
I picked up an Astromaster 130EQ Telescope from Costco. It seemed to be a good starter telescope, with minimal cost. It came with decent recommendations on a few of the astronomy forums. Good sized newtonian reflector, equatorial mount, and a motorized tracker option. For less than $200, it's an amazing deal. I ended up also buying the extra eyepiece and filter kit, but skipped the motor mount. I'd read that it was a little coarse. The finder scope leaves much to be desired. I just rough point, and use the 32mm eyepiece to center what I'm looking for. Then I just swap finer and finer eyepieces to "zoom" in on the target.
The local weather report is the first stop before a night of viewing. The Clear Sky Chart is an amazingly valuable tool for that. I can plan when I should be out for optimal viewing, or if I should just find something to watch on Netflix ;-) and call it an evening.
For planning I use Stellarium. Its open source (free), cross platform, yada yada. A quick look at Stellarium before I move the telescope outside lets me know what I might be able to see, where it will be, and by changing the time, even get an idea of what I might see if I wait an hour or two.
Jupiter is amazing with the included eyepieces. Even better using the eyepieces in the kit. A few of Jupiters bands are visible, as are the 4 Galilean moons around it. I tried to max out my setup: the 6mm eyepiece with the barlow lens (2x) but Jupiter was just too hazy. That and its a pain to keep aligned. I occasionally wonder if the motor mount would be worth it.
