Type of scope for miles out landscape photography/viewing?
I've got pretty clear sights towards the Mojave and it's adjacent mountains as well the city of Las Vegas, I'd love to take advantage of my location in seeing the dazzling casinos, airplanes, mountain wildlife and clear skies when weather allows it.
I'm crossed between choosing a refractor scope, binoculars or a spotting scope, AFAIK tho spotting scopes see way further than binoculars they are usually capped at 300 yards in clear imagery.
I need something able to capture 7/10 quality of wildlife and buildings close to 10 miles way. How feasible is that on a budget of $300?
Posted Aug 13, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC
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I think I'd choose maksutov telephoto lens and DSLR or a Maksutov or SCT telescope plus a camera adapter. They first is 90% photographic and the latter is 80% visual. Either will need a very solid mount to avoid the jiggles at high magnification.
Specifics can get complex.
My experience with high magnification terrestrial viewing is that the atmosphere tends not to co-operate. Especially during the day. Heat shimmer will probably be quite bad around Vegas. It should settle as the desert and roads cool at night. The dawn magic hour might be your friend.
You're right about the heat shimmer, we've been having some funky weather, fog, flashfloods, and thunderstorms over in an hour, the nights can start off hot with warm rainstorms and eventually blow over into a very cool and crisp early AM.
A versatile setup is more my interests, I've looked up a Maksutov on Amazon would you say this is a good one? Cassegrain mak30
Results for SCT bring up Celestron branded scopes which seems to have the worst reviews.
That Maksutov refractor looks very nice, but I worry the price is indicative of its quality, one thing I've heard about telescopes are the cheaper it is, the more time you'll spend setting it up every viewing.