My first telescope arrived today, the Orion ST80. I decided to get this as my first scope for two reasons. First it is extremely cheap, since its an achromat. Yet, it is a very popular refractor size – 80mm aperture with a 400mm focal length. This scope is widely used as a guide scope, which I plan on using after I’m done figuring out which way to look into it 🙂 Large guide scopes as this allow for more stars to be visible to the guide camera, and also at 400mm, the guiding is applicable to much longer focal length telescopes, than the typical 50mm guidescope.

Last Updated on September 1, 2019