Telescopes?

Question

How much would a half decent telescope cost? And not being too expensive. And are they worth wild, can you see much interesting things with them? Would love to get into that hobby, and feedback would be great. Thanks.

Answer 1

If you insist on getting the telescope new, you shouldn't spend less than $300.

But let me make something perfectly clear. What you can see in a telescope depends primarily on the aperture. This is the diameter of the primary lens or mirror. The difference between a brand new $190 telescope with 4.5" of aperture and a $300 telescope with 4.5" of aperture is often in the quality of the telescope, especially the mount.

A serious telescope will have a sturdy mount and the mount is often the most expensive component of the telescope. Without a good mount you are in for hours of frustration.

If you buy a used telescope you may be able to find a good one for as little as $150, if you look around and are patient. For example, the Celestron C4.5" was a particularly good model because it came on a super sturdy Vixen Polaris german equatorial mount, which was suitable for astrophotgraphy.

Here's a photo of a similar model mount:
http://www.arnholm.org/astro/SP/VixenSuperPolaris.JPG

Compare that to the mount on this newer Celestron:
http://www.telescopes.com/products/celestron-firstscope-114-eq-newtonian-reflector-5937.html

Now the latter mount may be perfectly suitable for casual use but why pay so much when you can get something better for the same price or less?

Occasionally you can even find 10" Meade Starfinders for around $300 used.

So in all honesty, you don't actually need a lot of money to buy a good telescope, but you need to be willing to buy it used and do the shopping around to find a good one.

Before you buy, you should learn more about telescopes and decide what kind you want.

You can learn a little about them here.

http://hometown.aol.com/siriusbc/telescopes.htm

You can find used ones here:
http://www.astromart.com

You can find new ones here:
http://www.oriontelescopes.com

http://www.telescopes.com

Answer 2

I used a $100 60mm refractor for years with excellant results but they are now about 150 to 200 base price and go up depending on what features you wish to see. I was able to track the tilt of saturns rings pretty easy.

Answer 3

This is about the cheapest decent telescope I know of:

http://www.telescope.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=447&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=4&iSubCat=13&iProductID=447

$285.

If you want to spend less than that and still see some interesting things, binoculars are a better idea. Like these:

http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Action-VII-7x-50/dp/B0001HKILS

$71.

Here's a book that will talk about what you can see. You might want to get it first, it no doubt will have tips about buying binoculars.

http://www.amazon.com/Binocular-Astronomy-Patrick-Moores-Practical/dp/1846283086/sr=8-2/qid=1171077550/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-3074565-1015850?ie=UTF8&s=books

Answer 4

a good place to go is oriontelescopes.com
the very basic ones are as little as $300, if you could spend a $1000 you can get something a little bit better.
do not buy those $100-$150 scopes from walmart and such you'd better go with binoculars.
good luck!

Answer 5

But a Meade in the Discovery Store. Approx. $350, but you will need to buy additional lenses.

Answer 6

normally a good pair of binoculars would work. a lot less expensive and they should work as well or better that a telescope