What is the best new telescope for under $2,000?What are some reliable websites?

Answer 1

http://www.meade.com/

http://www.telescope.com/jump.jsp?itemID=0&itemType=HOME_PAGE

http://www.celestron.com/c2/index.php

All three of these places have good scopes.

Answer 2

The best telescope for you depends a lot on what you want to observe. If it's the moon and planets, the best scopes are refractors or catadioptric scopes (combination of lenses and mirror). If you want to observe deep sky objects like nebulae and galaxies, a reflector or a Dobsonian telescope would be the best.

Whichever you choose you can get a good go-to computerized telescope for under $2000. The best brands are Meade, Celestron and Orion telescopes. Start with a catalog from Orion because they include information on what telescope to use for your needs. You can get a free catalog at http://www.telescope.com

Answer 3

Just real quick- my history of telescopes was like this: 1st: a good pair of 10x50 binoculars and a binocular guide book, combined with learning curve using Internet, books, learning how to star-hop, etc. (This was a good choice.)
2nd: A cheap, Chinese-made refractor from Wal-Mart. The lenses were not even glass. (This was a very bad choice.) Without experience especially, it was hard to locate, and then track, anything with the earth turning so darn fast, especially at a higher power.
3rd: A Meade ETX-90 computerized scope. I had years of fun with this thing. Once you know what you are looking at really looks like (like from learning on a bigger scope), it is still fun to find the few galaxies, a comet now and then, etc. even though it just might look like a smear, or cotton swab. After awhile I wanted more aperature.
4th: But travelling kept me from buying a big scope. So I got a Takahashi Sky-90. This is another world when it comes to optics and quality. By this time, I realised that the fun was with the high-quality wide-angle eye pieces instead of the high-powered, light-consuming ones. This scope is so small I could fit the case in an over-head bin on an airplane.
5th: Now I realise that super expensive scopes can be had on sites like astromart.com. I could have purchased my Takahashi and all the expensive accessories (like for photography) at a very-much reduced price and still obtained the quality with a little patience. And every once in awhile, you can find someone unloading a high-quality scope on eBay - but much care is needed.
Astromart.com requires registering and approval. It's free if you dont use an email address like Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail, but the extra scrutiny is worth it.
I also learned a lot on CloudyNights.Com. Click on "Reviews" for scopes, accessories, eyepieces, books, etc.
To help justify your purchase, many of the top-end scopes like Takahashi (Japanese) and Astro-Physics (American) and Ritchey-Chretien Telescopes, hold their value pretty well if you take care of them. So, if you can get $3,000 worth of equipment for $2,000 used, for example, it can be a lot more gratifying. I also heard cloudynights now has classified ads, but I have not checked it out.
Lastly, I can not stress enough how important it is to learn the night sky, constellation by constellation, Messier by Messier, as a pre-requisite to keeping interest in the night sky. Also, making your own star maps with a programme like StarryNightPro (Canada) (see the space.com link below) or another good programme out of the UK, SkyMap Pro 11. Sky and Telescope (skynight.com) has an interactive star map. I wish you success.

Answer 4

http://www.astronomyonline.com.au/

What is wrong with the guy who answered first, you don't answer a question with an insult :)