"Watch the stars, and from them learn."  - Albert Einstein

"Buy a poor telescope and watch them give up." - John Sohl

The planetarium director's frank advice in a nutshell:

"Don't buy a telescope"

Here is why: ( Click here to ignore this advice.)

Most "department store" telescopes are outrageously over marketed with claims that are simply misleading at best and outright dishonest at worst. First of all the claims for magnification are true but not of any value. These telescopes will not produce anything but a blur for any magnification larger than about 150X. Secondly, the mounts are usually so wobbly that the view through the scope is at best unstable. Thirdly, the finder scopes are usually worthless for actually finding anything in the main scope. The fancy digital scopes that find everything for you are no better either (see below). Ignore the pretty pictures on the box, the images through a small telescope will never look like a professional astrophotograph! Many a person has become very disappointed and discouraged after struggling with a department store telescope. Sadly, most of these telescopes become expensive living room sculptures or just closet clutter.

What do I suggest you get for the budding young (at heart) astronomer?

I suggest that you buy a GOOD pair of binoculars. Probably the most overlooked type of "telescope." A good pair of binoculars is a cost-effective way of introducing yourself to the night sky. All serious amateur astronomers own a good pair of binoculars. Don't rush to buy a telescope -- learn your way around the sky first. You can also take a tiny amount of the hundreds of dollars you saved and buy a beginners sky guide book and a subscription to either Astronomy or Sky and Telescope magazine. ("Astronomy" is the more introductory of the two, but both are good.) Go to your local book/magazine store or library and look at both and see which one you like the best. Both magazines contain monthly star charts, diagrams, and descriptions that include objects that are good for viewing in binoculars.

What type of binoculars should you get? For astronomy, the handheld binoculars should be about 7x50 to 10x50 (the 7 and 10 refers to the power, the 50 to the diameter in millimeters of the lens, or the ability to gather light). The 50mm diameter, provides higher light gathering ability, showing more detail than say 32mm at the expense of being heavier. The only way to figure out what type binocular best fits your needs is to test them out. A lot of amateur astronomers prefer 10x50 binoculars because they seem to "open up the sky" a notable amount and give star fields an almost 3-dimensional veiw. The use of very large binoculars generally requires a tripod. See videos below. But I strongly recommend that you buy a camera tripod even for low powers. A tripod will make observing star clusters and Jupiter's 4 Galilean moons easy and you will see more detail. Make sure the binoculars you buy have a tripod mounting screw hole on them or have an (optional) accessory bracket/adaptor so that you can mount the binoculars to the tripod. Note, you could opt to use 7X50's but lower magnifications are not as satisfying and the smaller image scale still benefits from a tripod mount. 12X50 is also a good choice but powers beyond 10 to 12 become difficult to hold steady. With star gazing, comfort of the eyes and neck et cetera can not be underestimated and translates directly to seeing more detail. A tripod with observing stool, or even a lawn chair are common items at star parties. Finally, I have also tried the fancy image stabilizing binoculars by Cannon and they do a nice job but are quite expensive.

Expect to spend between $150 and $250 for a good quality pair of binoculars. You can start by going to camera stores and looking at their selection. Avoid cheap off brands, the quality of the optics and optical coatings are where they save their manufacturing costs. Generally, the best brands are the same as the brands of high quality cameras and telescopes, e.g., Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta, Meade, Celestron, Orion etc. Expect to spend about $30 to $80 for a good strong, stable tripod and look for one that extends high enough (at least 5 ft.). Finally, expect to spend about $30 for an introductory astronomy guide book and a magazine subscription. In summary, expect your present to cost between $150 to $300. (Note that this is less than many department store telescopes!) Don't forget other sources too, such as pawn shops which often have both binoculars and tripods for very reasonable prices. (My family owns several pair of binoculars, but my favorite binoculars for astronomy are my wife's 11x80's which cost about $400.)

What can you see in "just" a pair of binoculars? You can see: craters on the Moon, the rapidly orbiting moons of Jupiter, great gas clouds in Orion (in which new stars are being born), the Andromeda Galaxy, clouds of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, double stars, birds, mammals, your neighbors, etc. Many books have been written detailing the different objects that can be viewed in binoculars. Any good bookstore will have at least one book specifically about things in the sky you can find with your binoculars.

What about those really cool Digital Electronic Telescopes that find thousands of objects for you? Again, I'd suggest against it. There are several problems with these telescopes. The biggest problem with these scopes is that they still require that the user "know the sky." For the telescope to find objects for you it must first know where it is in the sky. To do this the user must "align" the telescope on (one to three) guide stars. If you don't know where Spica or Vega or other stars are then you can't make the telescope find any objects in the sky. You must be able to locate a handful of stars and center them in the telescope manually before you can use the automatic finder features. Expect to still have to do some searching too, all the telescope will do is get you close (unless you are really good at the alignment procedure.) On top of all this, the affordable digital telescopes still have cheesy mounts that are difficult to use, wobble in the slightest wind, and drift off the object. They still have low light gathering ability and will not produce views that compare with the pictures on the box. Yes, the properly aligned telescope will "find" thousands of objects, but most of these would be difficult to see in such a small telescope unless you are an experienced observer. (Note, the thousand dollar plus versions of the digital telescopes are excellent scopes. Mostly I'm referring to the smaller digital scopes you can find in the department and discount stores for $200 to $400.) 

There is a hidden downside to a scope that does everything for you as your first scope. Much of the fun of astronomy is "knowing the sky." If the scope does everything for you then why be in the hobby? 

But I REALLY want to buy a telescope!

Go to a star party first! Look at different types of telescopes, try different types of telescopes, ask the owners of each telescope to tell you about telescopes. Ask if any of the people there have a telescope for sale. You can contact your local planetarium and/or astronomy club to find out where and when any local star parties are scheduled. Finally, find out as much as you can first.

The world wide web has numerous web sites with information about buying a telescope. I have a suggestion below and have written a page on that topic too. Here are few of the better sites:

My advanced site for first time telescope buyers.

Sky and Telescope Magazine has a page that is a good introduction to getting started in astronomy. This page has links to their pages on buying telescopes and binoculars.

The Clark Foundation's Winter '98-'99 Project ASTRO Utah newsletter (pages 3-6 are the related pages) contains an excellent intro to buying a telescope. This is a pdf file, so you will need to have the adobe acrobat reader installed.

Michael J Edelman has an excellent Frequently Asked Questions page that is extremely detailed. (Make sure you start with the "read this first" section.)

Finally Cloudy Nights is an excellent online community where you can ask what scope to buy and read reviews on telescope equipment.

The Ott Planetarium director's opinion of what is a good first telescope:

If push comes to shove and you really want a recommendation, I'd suggest a 6 to 10 inch Dobsonian reflector with a Telrad^(TM) (or similar) finder, and with a set of two wide-field plossl eyepieces having focal lengths of approximately 40 mm and approximately 15 mm. Did that sound like Greek? If so, you should check out the information in the previous five paragraphs.

This telescope will provide many years of enjoyment and will allow the owner to expand the telescope's capabilities for only small increments in cost as they become more and more skilled. (And, if you don't have a good set of binoculars, I'd STILL recommend buying a pair of binoculars as described above.)

NOTE: I have written a web page that gives complete and careful detail to what I think a first scope should be.

The Ott Planetarium is sponsored by the Physics Department at Weber State University.

Go to the WSU Physics Department Homepage

 Go to the Weber State University Homepage

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Last Updated May, 2009
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