Which telescope is better, Orion or Galileo for beginners?

Question

Which is the better brand? Or what is a good telescope for about $125 max.

Answer 1

have u considered buying a binoculars??
Seriously if u are a beginner its much easier to use binoculars.If you don’t know the sky, you'll have a hard time setting up the telescope and aimming at things.
a binocular and a star chart would be enough to get u started.with a
10x50 binocular u can see lunar features, Jupiter’s moons,star clusters, nebulas

Answer 2

I too am an avid amateur astronomer. Grommet's point is well taken, but unless you make the additional investment of a proper binocular tripod arrangement - which will run you much more as a package than $125, I'd recommend a small refractor from Orion or Celestron.

That will get you the Moon and planets, which is about all you'll see if you're in light-polluted urban skies anyway. If you really develop an interest in seeing Deep Sky Objects (nebulae, galaxies, clusters, etc.), and can get to dark skies to see them, you can always move up to a Dobsonian reflector later.

Make sure to get a few good (plossl) eyepieces.

Whatever you do, DON'T buy a telescope from your local department store: 99% of them are absolute crap.

Answer 3

Orion is a more reputable brand. Galileo is generally a retail store brand.

For $125 you'd be better off getting some 7x50 binoculars because it's going to be hard even finding a cheapo telescope thats halfway decent for $125

Answer 4

Orion has a generally better reputation. Sky and Telescope recommended their Space Probe 3 Altazimuth as a good inexpensive ($99) starter scope in an article last December.

Don't be discouraged by the nay-sayers. Get a bigger scope if you can, but any telescope is a lot more fun than no scope at all.

Answer 5

As an avid astronomer with four telescopes, I have to say that if my spending limit was $125 I wouldn't buy a telescope, I'd buy binoculars. They're easier to use and you can use both eyes! Also, if you decide astronomy isn't your thing, you can use binoculars for other purposes.

If you are a newcomer to astronomy, I'd like to recommend an excellent article titled "10 Steps to Successful Stargazing" at:
http://www.skynewsmagazine.com/PDF/10steps.pdf

Answer 6

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