In case anyone was wondering if this is any good - it is! This model has been in production in China for years from the same factory (Synta) and is sold under various brand names. I bought mine over 10 years ago branded Meade and it is the perfect combination of focal length, mirror size and portability for a beginner in my view. Even the mount isn't too bad and can be driven if required. I paid £200 for mine so this is a bargain and heat added!

Not in this case. I can see rings of Saturn including Casini division, cloud bands on Jupiter plus of course it's moons, surface features on Mars, the Trapezium in the Orion Nebula and a lot more that bins can't see easily. However, I do agree that bins are usually better than a cheap telescope, it's just that this appears to be a good cheap telescope!

HEAT! Will come in handy when I'm next in my shed spying on my hot new neighbour.

Here come the flat earthers! :wink:

Re flat Earthers, download the Nasa app of the international space station and watch the live feed of the curved Earth

On a beach if you can view a ship coming on the horizon you see the top of the mast first, proving the Earth is round, As the ship becomes nearer more of the ship appears.

Erm this would occur in a flat earth theory too.
If the sun was rotating in a disc, the sun would appear to go down and up.

It's the same illusion perception as if you were looking down a long corridor. The sides appear to go in and the top and bottom appear to get all into a centre point.

We know it doesn't but it looks like it does.

As mentioned, this needs to be scientifical and I said I would go halves !

I'm not quitting my research until I feel I have a better understanding. But right now the proof for a round earth seems bleek

Sounds like my wife, no idea why she wears that bra, wish she was fiction.

Do you have a device with GPS? If not, get one and you've just proven the earth is round. For a GPS satellite to orbit the earth it needs to be circling an object with gravity. Flat Earth Theory does not allow gravity to exist, and nobody on earth has invented the crazy maths or physics that would be required to be able to get such an object to be in the right place in a flat earth sky to make GPS possible. That would also mean that relativity is scrapped, so some new physics would have to be fabricated there too, which would likely break quantum theories and mean all your electronic devices you use today can't function. The amount of nonsense that has to be made up with each level of flat earth theory is laughable.

Here come the flat earthers! :wink:

hmm stupid phone and hold app

in the flat earth theory the Antarctic is the wall around the disc therefore the north pole is the centre. using this model the sun should go round in a circle around the north pole and never set. in reality it does for 6 months of the year. and then they have darkness for another 6 months. this can only be explained by a rotating sphere at an tilt to the sun. theres your non mathematical scientific proof that anyone can prove

in the flat earth theory the Antarctic is a great wall to stop us falling off and therefore the north pole is the centre of the disc. if the sun rotates around in a circle in line with the disc above the earth that would mean the sun would never set in the north pole. just go round and round. but in reality the sun does set in the north pole and because of the tilt of the sphere it sets for 6 months of the year and doesn't set for the other 6 months. that observation can only be explained with a sphere rotating at an angle. theres your proof.

in the flat earth theory the Antarctic is a great wall to stop us falling off and therefore the north pole is the centre of the disc. if the sun rotates around in a circle in line with the disc above the earth that would mean the sun would never set in the north pole. just go round and round. but in reality the sun does set in the north pole and because of the tilt of the sphere it sets for 6 months of the year and doesn't set for the other 6 months. that observation can only be explained with a sphere rotating at an angle. theres your proof. ☺

Wasn't there a first World War Gun (Big Bertha) that kept shooting miles off target due to the rotation of the Earth? Now this doesn't prove the Earth is round but it does prove that it rotates.

Kyballion, I think you jest with us but I like these sorts of question because they are usually not quite as simple as they sound. I know the Earth is a Spheroid but I've never thought of the proofs. I knew a few of the the proofs but you did stop me in my tracks as I thought of others.

Here is your solution with a little mathematics to help you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon

10 Easy Ways You Can Tell For Yourself That The Earth Is Not Flat

Just the 1st point about the curved shadow of the Earth on the Moon, coupled with the Foucault pendulum (which proves that the Earth rotates) is good enough proof for me & as "scientific" as one can get.

All I know is this, I have taken my Meade ETX90 scope down to Camber sands with the 9.7mm eyepiece and has 90mm aperture. I have no idea what distance this is in miles, but it's very far!

Assuming the diameter of the earth is near 3950 miles and using the Phythageorn table to work out this curve, the first 1 mile there would be a drop of 8 inches. The next drop at 2 miles would be 2*2*8 = 32 inches drop.

So a 20 mile distance should have a 268 feet drop in the curvature

This should mean absolutely no boats should have been visible or anything else for that matter as clearly the earth is not opaque.

I was able to very clearly see the bottoms of the boat using the highest zoom on my telescope.

I have read about mirages and the probability of all atmospheric conditions and the chances are that it would have been very unlikely for me to have observed this mirage 3 times in 1 month, near impossible in fact as these conditions are have to be so precise.

I am pretty certain I was not looking at any mirage.

But if someone can explain this, please do, ever since this bet my mind has been blown by this possibility

Thanks

Aargh, you beat me to it :disappointed:

I have done alot of hiking in my time and have yet to see it. Again, this is simply not true. I have been to the beach to check this out after a influx of videos showing the boats do not disappear. I thought it was CGI or something else, I went to Camber Sands with my telescope and indeed you can clearly see the bottoms of the ship even after they appear to vanish even with my super zoom Meade scope.

This apparently occurs because of a horizon perception illusion

Keep em coming everyone!

Shadow of the Earth during a total Lunar Eclipse

HEAT! Will come in handy when I'm next in my shed spying on my hot new neighbour.

Does the Earth revolve around the Sun in a flat Earth? Just curious?

I have already checked this out, Eratosthenes test also works if the earth was flat. So this is not definite proof.

This was also covered by Vsauces YouTube channel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth.27s_circumference

@Kyballion You can do the experiment yourself btw, I think it would be good excercise for you and give you time to contemplate why you think flat is correct.

Stand at the top on a mountain, you can see the curvature in the cloud base.

Greeks knew the earth was spherical as you see a ship's sails before you can see the hull.

I have to say, when I was first told about this, I came to the conclusion that people are definitely devolving back into the Caveman era

However I was offered a £1000 to find 1 scientific test I could perform or use that undoubtedly proves this curvature.

2 months on and I am only finding evidence and proof for a flat earth.

It's kind of mind blowing to start seeing things from this perspective.

All you find is mockery and bigots for the curved earth theory, even in the science community.

I tried hard to find something, I guess my mate was pretty clever putting a £1000 lump on the table. I still do not own the money

If anyone out there can find something that is scientific and 100% proves the curve I would be happy to share the competition winnings!

I have a theory about these theories.

I feel that whole flat earth theory is merely to take attention away from the other theories. Such as 9/11 being an inside job, etc...

The company who make this telescope (Synta) are highly regarded in the astronomical community. For example, Synta has owned Celestron since 2005 and prior to that takeover had supplied all Celestron's refractors, Newtonian telescopes (like this one in the deal), and binoculars going back to 1990. Before 1990, Vixen in Japan were Celestron's main supplier. They also manufacture under the label of several other highly respected brands.

Sub £100 it's difficult to recommend anything that would be significantly better than this telescope. Pop along to the buying guide on the First Light Optics website for a well-respected buying guide.

Of course, binoculars are more portable and a good grab and go solution. It goes without saying. But they won't have the resolution (dictated by the objective size), and complaints of wobbly mounts on telescopes pale into total insignificance compared to the difficulty of holding binoculars steady.

For many, I'm sure looking through this £100 will give the best views of the night sky they have ever seen to this point.

Of all the items on HUKD telescopes seem to get the most badly informed crap. The key thing with scopes is aperture, how wide the lens or tube is, as it's all about how much light can be grabbed. For a reflector like this, 114mm is about the minimum size. You do not need a 200mm plus dobsonian to get a reasonable view of the night sky, but a scope like that will show more. On this one the mount is pretty poor, and the supplied eyepieces won't be very good either, but it will give good views of the moon and be OK for planets and big star clusters. It will magnify a lot more than binoculars. Typical binoculars give 10 times magnification, for a scope the magnification is found by dividing the scope focal length by that of the eyepiece, in this case 90 times.

This one is OK value at the reduced price, poor value at the original. A better starter telescope is this one. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/skywatcher-heritage-130p-flextube.html These give really good views and are easy to use. Binoculars are good for learning the sky, but are different to scopes - they give a much wider view of the sky with less magnification. Good quality, inexpensive bins are Olympus DPS-1, at about £55 for 10x50 ones.

It is well after midnight. I am going to meet a local nut with legendary large telescope.
We are going to have a bottle of port, maybe 12 pack and after that I hope he will let me see Uranus.

No, clearly he will have a DSLR on it, inverting and recording all in 4k glory..... Well that's what my "friend" does while watching the flats....

I once ground out an 8" mirror only never to get it silvered. That's 30+ hours I'll never get back. It wasn't hard although testing was a bit tricky as you really need somewhere to set up the testing equipment and leave it in situ. Back then scopes cost about the same as they do nowadays but that isn't including wages increase or things like Goto mounts. Things have certainly got cheaper and quality better compared to then.

I don't think you'd save much money although you could build a speciality scope. Maybe not the place for HUKD :o

Don't bother with a cheap reflector telescope, get at least a one-up-from-entry-level Dobsonian telescope. They can even be built from scratch as a DIY project, plenty of tutorials on the internet, build videos on YouTube etc. if you're too cheap to buy one.

I have discovered the cheapest way to make excellent observations is to befriend a local nut with a good telescope, and arrange an evening to pop round to share some quality time with their Sky Prodigy 6 for nothing more than the cost of a 12 pack or bottle of port.....

So what's the overall consensus? Buy this or spend £100 on binoculars?

I'm thinking this would be better because it has a tripod, so can have a steady view.

All faint and fuzzy, and very underwhelming. Telescopes like this are completely pointless for viewing the sky by eye, they just can gather enough light. The only way to actually see anything in any detail is taking long exposures using a motorized mount like a heq5 a laptop, software and decent camera. I ended up spending 1500 or so.

Oh dear, another cheap telescope deal.

Buy a pair of binoculars for £30 imo. As an astro nut and probably more keen than your average HUKD, I own a Celestron 102SLT and 3 pairs of binoculars. atm there are 3 coats over my telescope. I do observe just occasionally but when I do I mainly use my bins for quick sessions and maybe use my scope once per month. This will take setting up each time you use it, equatorial mounts need aligned or else things will drift out of field pretty quickly.


I don't doubt you can see the rings but Cassini division would be hard and details on Mars impossible. You'll be able to see most bright object, some bands on Jupiter and its 4 biggest Moons but the mount on this will make it difficult to keep seeing steady under high magnifications.

Buy bins first to whet your appetite and then save up £300+ for a decent Dobsonian with an aperture of 150mm or more.

This is an expensive coathanger... I know.

Hot. Thanks OP.

With these types of telescopes don't expect to see much! Very,very,very distant objects just seem a tiny weeny bit closer...good pair of bins might be a better bet.

In case anyone was wondering if this is any good - it is! This model has been in production in China for years from the same factory (Synta) and is sold under various brand names. I bought mine over 10 years ago branded Meade and it is the perfect combination of focal length, mirror size and portability for a beginner in my view. Even the mount isn't too bad and can be driven if required. I paid £200 for mine so this is a bargain and heat added!