Visual Astronomy

The Great thing about astronomy is that you don’t need any equipment or spend any money to enjoy it. With the unaided eye you will be able to observe various objects in the night sky as listed below: - 

The Moon

Spotting Constellations

Shooting stars (Meteorites)

The Space Station and satellites

Planets 

Nebula (Like Orion’s)

Galaxies (Milky way and Andromeda) 

I would recommend using an App like Sky Safari or Stellarium to help you navigate the night sky and find objects of interest. 

If you want to see the sky in a bit more detail investing in just a pair of Binoculars would help you achieve this. A pair of 10 x 50 binoculars is a good shout as they can be used without a Tripod as they are relatively low in magnification. If you would like to invest in some more powerful Binoculars like 20 x 80 then a Tripod would be required. 

The Next step from binoculars this would be to Invest in a telescope for Visual Astronomy. There is a lot of choices when it comes to telescopes and different types of telescopes are available all with Pro and Cons. 

Refractor telescopes use lenses to gather light and focus it to a point. This was the first type of telescope to be invented, in the early 17th century, and was first used for serious astronomy by Galileo, 400 years ago. The images produced are upright, which makes refractors good for ground based observations.

Modern refracting telescopes use two or more lenses to reduce an effect called chromatic aberration that causes different wavelengths of light to focus at different points. Refractors with two lens elements are called achromatic refractors. Apochromatic refractors use three or more lenses, at least one of which has special properties, to completely eliminate chromatic aberration. These telescopes give the best quality image, and are very good for photography, but they are also very expensive for their size. Refractors also need to be longer than Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes for the same aperture size and are hard to build on large scales.

Reflectors use a mirror, rather than a lens, to focus light from distant objects. Reflecting telescopes were first invented by Isaac Newton to avoid the problems of chromatic aberration found with refractors. They use a curved mirror to focus light onto a second flat mirror, from which the light is directed to an eye-piece.

In order to work properly, Newtonian telescopes must have their mirrors perfectly aligned. This is called collimation, and is necessary to make sure that the optics of the telescope are effective. Reflectors are the least expensive telescopes for their aperture size and large reflectors are easier to build than refractors of the same size. They are, however, still longer than an equivalent Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.

Dobsonian telescopes are Reflector telescopes held on a special mount by friction. They are very cheap to build and simple to operate, making them very popular with beginners and amateur astronomers.

Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (SCT) have the advantage that they are much smaller than other types of telescope because they use a series of mirrors to fold the light path. All professional telescopes, including the Faulkes telescopes, are now of the SCT design.
 

SCTs use a spherical primary mirror to focus the parallel rays of incoming light onto a convex secondary mirror. This then reflects the light back through a hole in the primary mirror to the eyepiece or detector.

The only drawback with these telescopes is that the shape of the primary mirror introduces spherical aberration. This happens because a spherical mirror will focus the light to slightly different points, blurring the image. This can be corrected either by using a corrector plate or by using a parabolic primary mirror instead of a spherical one, although these are more expensive to make.

I would highly recommend a Dobsonian mounted telescope. They are very easy to use and locate targets. They are generally cheaper and you get a lot more aperture for your money with this type of scope. 

You can use them to take photos with Phones using a phone adaptor or DSLR’s using a T-adapter. 

There is a lot of Dobsonian telescopes on the market starting from smaller table top ones through to ones that are so big you will need a step ladder to look through it so please take the size and weight of the telescopes into consideration. I would highly recommend the Sky Watcher 200p or 250p Dobsonians (8inch and 10inch apertures).

If you would like to go for a Refractor telescope then I would recommend either the Altair Astro Starwave 80ED-R or the Sky watcher Evostar 80ED. If wanting to go for a Refractor for Visual I would highly recommend a Azimuth mount rather than a Equatorial mount as they are much easier to operate. 

If you would like to go for a SCT Telescope I would Celestron Nexstar 6SE. This scope is supplied with a Electronic ‘goto’ tracking mount. This will make it easier to find targets and track them through the night sky once the mount has been star aligned. This type of mount will require power to operate.