Tonight while out walking I looked up at the night sky and started thinking about telescopes.

I thought about using a telescope to take pictures of the night sky. I have taken some decent pictures with just my digital camera.

I usually try to take pictures of eclipses. Here was one that I took that has a red moon along with Mars and Spica. I imagine what this would have looked like with a telescope.

Here is the first picture taken of the moon through a telescope in 1864. I wrote a post that included  this photograph back in 2014 and also included a picture that I took with  my camera on a tripod.

See: First Photos

Here is the picture I took.

I thought back to long ago when my younger brother got a telescope for selling items. I think it may have been greeting cards. I remember looking at the moon through his telescope.

His telescope was a reflector that had just a cardboard body. Tonight I thought about what type of telescope I would buy if I decided to get one. Would I get a refractor or a reflector? Would I get one that is motorized so that I could track objects? Would I get one that connects to the internet for positioning? Would it have an integrated camera? So many things to think about.

Or, perhaps I  should just get a simple telescope to see how often I would use one before investing more money.

What do you think?

Steven