Best affordable telescope to start astrophotography in 2020?

If you plan to start your astrophotography hobby, one of the first questions that probably comes to your mind is what kind of affordable telescope you should buy. There are many types of telescopes which can be quite overwhelming.

The short answer to this question is that – in my opinion – you should buy either an ED doublet or triplet refractor. The main reasons are that (a) such refractors produce high quality images of deep sky objects; (b) refractors are relatively affordable; (c) refractors are easy to setup and use, and (d) refractors do not require any maintenance. As there are many different types of telescopes available, I will break down this blog into three parts where I discuss what the most important criteria are to look for when buying your first astrophotography telescope; what types of telescopes fit those criteria; and what affordable telescopes are available on the amateur astrophotography market today.

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Important criteria when buying your first telescope for astrophotography

I would argue that there are at least four criteria you should look for when buying your first astrophotography telescope. First of all, the telescope should produce a high-quality image of deep-sky objects. Second, your telescope should be affordable. Third, your telescope should be easy to set up and use, and fourth, your telescope should not require any maintenance. Before I start discussing these criteria in more detail, I have to warn you that your telescope is only one piece of the astrophotography puzzle. You will also need other gear such as a good tracking mount and a camera. It will also take time to master all of the astrophotography skills needed to accurately track and capture deep-sky objects. In short, mastering astrophotography is like running a marathon, it’s not a sprint.

1. High quality pictures

The first requirement is that you want a telescope that is able to produce high quality pictures of deep sky objects such as galaxies, star clusters, and/or nebulae. At least two problems may occur when you buy the ‘wrong’ telescope that is unfit for astrophotography. First, a bad quality telescope will suffer from chromatic aberration, also known as “color fringing” or “purple fringing”. This is a common optical problem that occurs when a lens is unable to bring different wavelengths of the light spectrum onto the same “focal plane” – for instance your camera sensor. Put differently, the red, blue and green part of the light spectrum will hit your camera sensor at a slightly different angle, leading to chromatic aberration.

Chromatic aberration will result in colors that do not resemble the actual colors of the deep sky object you want to image. Moreover, it will produce nasty purple halos around your stars, something you want to avoid at all cost! Let’s compare my very first picture of the horsehead nebula taken with a poor telescope that suffers from chromatic aberration (I can’t believe I’m showing you this!) to my latest picture and you understand what I mean :-).

Another problem in astrophotography is called astigmatism, from which many telescopes suffer. To put it in simply, your telescope will produce stars that are nice and round in the center of your picture. However, towards the edges of your picture, stars will become oval. Equipment such as coma and flatfield correctors can be used in combination with your telescope to eliminate astigmatism in your pictures.

2. Affordable telescope

Astrophotography can be an expensive hobby with some steep learning curves ahead. My personal advise is that you should not spend all your precious money on the best astrophotography telescope and gear. What if you don’t have the time or motivation to develop all kinds of skills such as how to setup and polar align your mount, how to auto guide your mount, and how to capture, stack and post process your images? You could end up with an expensive telescope that may be hard to sell. Be advised, I will recommend telescopes that are nowhere near the cheap kind of telescopes you find in a toy store. As you will see, a decent beginner astrophotography telescope will already cost you about $500 to $1000! Of course, affordability depends on your personal financial situation and price may be more or less of an issue for you.

3. Ease of use

When you are just starting your astrophotography hobby, you want to practice as much as you can. For a lot of us, this means allocating some of our precious time to nights that bring us clear skies. It can sometimes take weeks or even months until this happens (in The Netherlands at least). When you do have some clear skies, you want a scope that is immediately ‘ready to go’. I mean, the telescope should not break your back when you carry it outside and put it on your tracking mount. It should also be straightforward to attach a camera and bring the telescope in focus. I often see that – at least for visual use – fellow amateur astronomers recommend a telescope with a large aperture for a low price – mostly dobsonian or newtonian reflectors. As a consequence, lots of people end up with a huge telescope that sits in their basement and is never used. Not because these telescopes are of poor quality, but because it is simply to much of a hassle to carry the telescope outside and put it on a tracking mount. My personal opinion is therefore that it would be better to start your astrophotography hobby with a telescope that has a lower aperture. These telescopes are not so heavy, your can quickly take the telescope outside, put it on your mount, attach a camera, and enjoy capturing deep sky objects without breaking your back.

4. Low (or no!) maintenance

The final requirement I would look for in a beginner astrophotography telescope is that the telescope requires little or no maintenance whatsoever. Let me ask you this. When you start your astrophotography hobby, do you want to spend your precious time ‘under the stars’, learning the ropes of this beautiful – and sometimes frustrating – hobby? Or do you want a telescope that can be out of alignment and requires maintenance? Of course, some of us really like to ‘tinker’ with their telescopes and any kind of maintenance can be learned. But my point is that you probably want to spend your precious time on learning how to image beautiful deep sky objects rather than maintenance.

Refractors and reflectors

So now that we know what kind of criteria to look for in a good beginner astrophotography telescope, let’s talk about some of the main differences between different types of telescopes. Much of it comes down to telescopes that are either refractors or reflectors. Refractors are the telescopes you are used to seeing in cartoons and movies. Light enters the telescope through a lens situated in front of the telescope. The lens(es) then refract(s) that light onto either an eyepiece (for visual observations) or a camera sensor (for astrophotography). The quantity and quality of those lenses vary between refractors. Many stores sell cheap, achromatic refractors. I urge you to stay away from those when engaging in astrophotography. Yes, they are very favorably priced. If you have a strong urge to buy an achromat, I urge you to scroll up and take another look at my first picture of the horsehead nebula, that should cure you. As discussed above, cheap achromat telescopes suffer from chromatic aberration and produce false color images of your deep sky objects and ugly purple halos around your stars. At minimum, you should buy a refractor that is known as an ED doublet. ED stands for extra low dispersion which produces much less chromatic aberration as compared to an achromat telescope that does not have ED glass. If you want an even more accurate picture in terms of colors, you should buy an apochromatic triplet refractor – also called APO in short. These refractors have three lens elements and will produce a highly accurate colored picture of deep sky objects. Most triplet refractors do suffer from astigmatism, meaning that the stars at the edge of your image will look oval rather than nice and round. Flatfield correctors can be bought that can eliminate this effect. Quadruplet refractors have such a corrector in the design of the telescope – but the more elements, the more expensive and heavier the refractor telescope becomes…

A reflector is a mirror-based telescope. Light enters the telescope and is then reflected by a mirror in your telescope. This light is usually first reflected by a so called primary mirror that sits at the base of your telescope, onto a secondary mirror which reflects that light again onto either an eyepiece (for visual use) or a camera sensor (for astrophotography). Reflectors come in many shapes and sizes and they have their own advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that they generally do not suffer from chromatic aberration. One disadvantage is that the curved mirrors in many reflectors produce coma – oval stars at the edges of your images. A coma corrector can be bought and used in combination with your reflector to correct for this effect. Some of the more expensive reflector designs have parabolic secondary mirrors which counter coma and produce a nice ‘flat’ starfield across your picture (e.g., Richey Cretien telescopes). Another disadvantage is that the primary and secondary mirror need to be perfectly aligned to get a high quality picture of your deep sky object. When they are out of alignment, you will need to perform ‘maintenance’ on your telescope, also called collimation. Collimation basically means ensuring that your eyepiece or camera sensor is aimed at the center of your primary mirror and vice versa. As said, reflector based telescopes come in all shapes and sizes, from newtonian and richey cretien telescopes to smith cassegrain and maksutov types of telescopes.

Which affordable beginner telescope should you consider?

In this section I will compare six types of telescopes: the refractor (ED doublet or triplet), the newtonian telescope, the richey cretien telescope, the Rowe Ackermann Smith Astrograph (RASA), the Smith Cassegrain telescope and the maksutov telescope to the four criteria I have mentioned. Here we go.

High quality pictures

The first criterium was that the telescope should enable you to take high quality, chromatic aberration free images of deep sky objects. I would say this cancels out the use of either a smith cassegrain or a maksutov type of reflector. Both types of reflectors have a longer focal length, which makes them excellent telescopes to image small, bright objects in the nightsky, such as our planets and perhaps bright globular clusters. Due to their longer focal length, however, they are ill equipped to capture faint light from nebulae and other fainter objects in the night sky. There are all kinds of accessories to make a smith cassegrain or a maksutov telescope more fit to capture fainter objects as well, such as focal reducers. This being said, I would argue that your first telescope has to be able to capture faint deep sky objects ‘out of the box’, without having to buy additional equipment. So two down, four to go.

Affordable

The Rowe Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph (RASA in short) is a reflector telescope which is excellent for deepsky imaging. With a large aperture and a low f/ratio (2.0), this is one of the ‘fastest’ telescopes in the world of amateur astrophotography that enables you to capture faint deep sky objects. However, it comes with a pricetag of about $1750 in the USA and over 2000 euros in Europe. I would say that, for a beginner telescope, the price is a little over the top. Also, it has a unique design which takes some getting used to. When you are just starting your astrophotography hobby and don’t want to deplete your bank account, then skip this one. If you’re not bound by any budget, by all means, consider the RASA. Three down, three to go.

Ease of use

The Richey Cretien telescope is very useful to capture smaller objects in the nightsky such as galaxies and globular clusters that are half a degree or less in apparent diameter. The uniquely designed parabolic mirrors create correct colors and coma free pictures of your deep sky objects. This being said, this telescope type ‘zooms in’ on a small patch of the night sky, and needs an advanced equatorial mount with very accurate guiding capabilities. The RC telescope is more suited as a second or third telescope, but I would not recommend buying one when you just start your astrophotography hobby. So, we are down to the last two finalists.

Maintenance

The final battle is between the refractor and the Newtonian reflector, and it is a difficult one. Newtonian reflectors are favorably priced. This being said, they do need some maintenance in the form of collimation. Maybe it comes down to the question whether or not you like to tinker. If you do not mind to spend some of your time and effort to properly align the mirrors of your Newtonian reflector, then this telescope may be a good place to start. Do keep in mind that this telescope suffers from coma – oval stars around the edge of your pictures – for which you need to buy an additional coma corrector. You would also need to buy some collimation tools. Because of the maintenance issue, I would argue that the best telescope to start your astrophotography hobby is either an ED doublet or triplet refractor. Specifically, I would encourage you to start with a refractor with a modest aperture of about 70mm to 100mm (3 to 4 inches). A good triplet refractor will produce high quality pictures of your deep sky objects, it is still relatively affordable (although not cheap). Also, such refractors are relatively light, easy to setup, and do not require any maintenance. These so called ‘wide field’ refractors are perfect to start capturing some of the larger, famous deep sky objects such as the orion nebula, the horsehead nebula, and the andromeda galaxy. Because of the wide(r) field of view, some periodic error in guiding is not fatal. This means that you can start with a beginner level mount such as a Celestron Advanced VX or the Skywatcher HEQ5. The ‘widefield’ triplet refractor is – in my humble opinion – the number one telescope to start your astrophotography hobby.

A non-exhaustive list of refractors to start your hobby

In my opinion, the refractor wins the battle for the best beginner astrophotography telescope to start your astrophotography hobby. There are a lots of ED doublet and triplet refractors available on the astrophotography market. Most of them will cost between $600 and $1000 dollars. Below, I will provide a non-exhaustive list of ED doublet and triplet refractors that I would consider if I would start my astrophotography hobby today. I’ve included links to respectable USA and EU based web-shops. Although the refractors are genuinely of good quality, I highly recommend you to do your own research. Talk to owners, go to fora and discuss what kind of telescope suits your particular interests! Clear skies!

ED Doublet Refractors

Explore scientific AR-102mm doublet refractor f/6.5

USA: OPTcorp.com EU: Astroshop.eu

William Optics ZenithStar 81 F/6.9 doublet Refractor

USA: OPTcorp.com EU: Astroshop.eu

TS-Optics ED 102 mm f/7 Refractor Telescope

EU: Astrohop.eu

Triplet refractors

Meade 80 mm Series 6000 f/6 ED APO Triplet Refractor

USA: OPTcorp.com EU: Astroshop.eu

Orion 80 mm ED F/6 CF Triplet APO Refractor OTA – 09534

USA: OPTcorp.com EU: Astroshop.eu

EXPLORE SCIENTIFIC 80MM FCD100 F/6 ED APO TRIPLET REFRACTOR

USA: OPTcorp.com EU: Astroshop.eu

TS-Optics PHOTOLINE 80mm f/6 FPL53 Triplet APO – 2.5″ RAP Focuser

EU: Astroshop.eu