I’m planning to go to a rural spot that has a Bortle class 3 night sky around Southern California. Can anyone recommend a beginner friendly telescope with decent magnification for around $200? I’m not interested in using an accompanying smart phone app to go with it either. I’d like to see nebulae and galaxies the most. Thank you.
+1 on binos. They’ve kept me happy because they fit in a backpack or carry-on luggage. I’m deep in light pollution, so viewing is best done with some travel. They have less magnification, but they’re as bright as a much more expensive telescope and there’s a certain value to having two eyes on the night sky.
10x50 is where I landed. Probably the same weight as your 7x50. While yes, the 50(mm) describes the outer objective lens, the key thing is really the lens on the eye side. Divide the aperture by the mag and you find that exit pupil size. 50/10=5mm, which is about the size of a dilated adult eyeball pupil - and they get smaller as you age. I’m guessing you have a Celestron or similar astro bino which has some advantages for this hobby. I am surprised at the ~$40 price tag, so I no longer want to recommend against it. Where I WAS going was that 7x35s would likely give a similar image from a reputable manufacturer while saving a little weight and being more likely to be found at a garage sale. But who could say no to $40 new 7x50s? As long as OP avoids those 20x50 boating binos or 10x25 hunting binos, they’ll be in good shape. My 10x50s are closer to OP’s budget because I opted for Nikon Action Extremes to survive my beach spot, hikes, travel, drops, and any other mishaps alike. Things go bump in the night so rubber coating and waterproofing was worth it to me
I use 7x35s for outreach and they work pretty well. I got my kids the Celestron 10x50s and can’t recommend them enough. They’re really, really great. Not too heavy or bulky, even for kids, but still very capable of enhancing your stargazing experience. They can juuuust about split a Galilean moon, IME; Jupiter will look a little odd, but I haven’t been able to distinctly identify a moon with them.
By split a gallilean moon, do you just mean see up to 4 moons separate from Jupiter? I’m pretty sure I can distinctly see them, at least with elbows on a railing or on some mount. I guess I’ll have to look tonight if it’s clear. I kinda only remember catching 3 at a time and not investigating further. I do have 20/15 vision so I guess that plays a role. Good point to remind me not everyone has my hawk eyes. I don’t catch much color though. Usually too small and washed out. It’ll have slight pink bands at best. I haven’t been able to note a crescent shape for venus, either. But I figure even cheap scopes can show my planets, so it hasn’t been my focus
Yeah, that’s what I mean. I’m impressed! For me, Jupiter looked kinda smeary, like looking at it with an astigmatism, only it wasn’t an astigmatism, it was the moons. As for Venus, I guess you might just need higher magnification to cut through the glare and resolve the crescent. The minimum power I use in my dob is 50x and you can clearly see the crescent at that power.