![]() ![]() These are like Bicycles: You can go a lot further than a Razor scooter, but you still can’t go down the freeway. Taking a step up, you have the basic Refractor and Newtonian scopes on manual alt-azimuth mounts in the $100-$200 range. That cheap department store telescope that also comes bundled with a microscope? Think of that as being like a little Razor scooter: It won’t get you very far, it’s more than a little shaky, and will probably fall apart after a few weeks. Here’s a helpful analogy: Think of buying a telescope like buying your mode of transportation to the cosmos. If your interest is astrophotography, you can find good options across that range, depending on what you want to image. In general, expect to spend $300 at the bottom end for a quality instrument, and up to about $2000 for a large aperture computerized scope. So how much should you spend? That’s a question you need to answer for yourself based on what you can spend and how much enjoyment you expect to get out of observing the universe. At the same time, you don’t need to spend thousands on professional quality gear, unless of course you want to start hunting for undiscovered asteroids. Just keep in mind that you are buying a precision optical instrument, and quality convex lenses and concave mirrors are difficult to make, so when you see a shiny $100 telescope with a whole set of eyepieces and a tripod, you can be pretty sure there were a lot of sacrifices made that will leave you disappointed with the view you get through it. At the same time, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a telescope that will bring you years of enjoyment. Spend too little, and you wind up with something like the red Tasco telescope I got as a kid that was really only good for looking at the moon and taking up a dusty corner of the garage. It isn’t a linear value curve rather it tends to be more of a bell shape. The adage “you get what you pay for” has an interesting application with telescopes. The sections below should help you think through some of those questions and narrow down your choices. Do you want to do visual observing or astrophotography?.What do you want to look at? The moon, planets, bright nebula, double-stars, galaxies?. ![]()
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