h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: How to Choose an Astronomical Telescope - A558137
Author: Stargazer Ade - U176116

Fresh from the unedited guide, proudly presented by Bossel's Scouting Enterprises.

Apart from unconventional colours and two or three typos, I'd say it's ok

I'm going to print it out, read it and then go and buy a scope.

How much do I need? Will I get something decent for a thousand quid or what? Or do I need to pay 10 grand? Not likely. Forget Rollers, how much for Skoda of telescopes, the Ford Mondeo of telescopes, the Jaguar S-Type of telescopes, etc? Not that you need to put this in your entry, I'm just curious.

Montague Trout

Off to buy shares in BSE

Mad cows?

not quite, or perhaps still?

(B)ossel's (S)couting (E)nterprises




well, I don't know the prices of Skodas and Fords in this business,

you can get a 4in reflector for between £250.00 and £350.00
you can get a 6in reflector for between £350.00 and £550.00

anything bigger than that, and you probably are waiting for a club member to die off so that their partner will sell the scope.

when you start talking about new scopes you can add about £150.00 to each of those prices.

second hand scopes usually keep their value (if well maintained).

I would say that this entry is ready for scouting, and as the chairman of an astronomy society, I should know what I am talking about.

yoohoo scoutie dear, how about claiming this as one of your picks.

You do know of course, that an entry has to be in PR for a week before it can be recommended, don't you xyroth

And watch who you're calling 'dear' - Mrs Gosho might send the boys round to, umm... rearrange your furniture

Although I'm interested for having one like that, I know very little about quality, produce, brand or price of this sophisticated device of the time. Yet I ought to be going through frequently your research entries on this h2g2 site to keep myself updated with latest information about Astrological Telescope.


Truely yours,

A.R.Shams
the author of the "Creative Living Spirit" series of messages for 'Ideal Living'.....with peace of mind and contention....

I find this entry confusing. I know a little about telescopes and I don't think explains about aperture very well. For example, you say:

"a telescope's aperture has no bearing on its magnification (or power) whatsoever"

but elsewhere, you say:

"there's a simple rule that we can apply to find top magnification: 50 times your telescope's aperture in inches".

I think you'll have to explain each of the three things you get out of a telescope: resolution, light gathering and magnification, and then say how each of them is related to the aperture.


I'm afraid I haven't time to read the rest of it at the moment, but I hope to have a look later.

Xyroth, as chairman of an astronomical society, you may be the person least competent to judge the entry, because you presumably already know all the stuff in it.

What we want is somebody who doesn't know anything about telescopes to read it and say whether they understand it.

Dr Montague Trout:
>Mad cows?

Sir Bossel:
>(B)ossel's (S)couting (E)nterprises

How about:
(B)els's (S)ubbing (E)nterprises

I wouldn't try for shares in (B)els's (S)couting (E)nterprises, though - they've been suspended.

fair enough I suppose.

I have been cought out once or twice in peer review with entries that were perfectly good for a "knowledgable amatuer" but not good enough for the "what's a telescope" level reader.

the only other stuff I would say is that tasco are recognised as a very good brand and that cheapo shop telescopes with wobbly mounts are usefull as finder scopes for home made telescopes as long as you get them for a couple of pounds.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've therefore moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Hoopla!

I have to admit that I provided that Champagne by accident. It was intended for a different Peer Review thread.

I am not happy that this one was picked. I had a number of problems with the entry, which I consider to be very confusing as it is at the moment. I asked for changes to be made over a week ago, but the author never replied.

Goodness me!
I'm the author of this piece and have to confess I'd completely forgotten about it. Worse still, I haven't monitored threads or anything related to this article and/or user space for longer than I care to remember. (I know, wholly unforgiveable...)
If there's any pruning, tidying-up, or any other clarification needed, please e-mail me in the first instance to [email protected] and I'd be happy to oblige.
Thanks!

You can see my problem with the entry in Posting 9 of this conversation. Perhaps you will consider what I said there, decide whether you want to make any changes and let us know here what you have decided.

I take your point about the potentially confusing references to aperture. I'll run through the piece with a fine tooth comb over the weekend. Since it's so long since I've looked at it in any detail, now's a good time to look at it afresh.

I've been assigned as sub-editor. The new copy of the entry is at A827309.

If you want to make any changes to it, I'd suggest looking thorugh it. Then save it in the Plain Text mode. Then I can cut and paste it into the new copy without having to put all those GuideML codes back in.