How much does a typical amateur astronomer telescope cost (such as a Meade or Orion model)?

Question

How much does a ground-based professional telescope cost (such as HET, Gemini, or Keck)?

How much does a space-based professional telescope (Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra) cost?

Can someone provide links for me so I can cite them? Thanks!

Answer 1

The question is a tad vague. It all depends on weather your into visual observing or astrophotography, DSO’s or planetary viewing. As others have said a decent scope starts at around $300, but the best advice I could give to a question that open is to advise you to join a local astronomy club and try some of their scopes and see what you like/can afford. There is a wide variety of scopes in the same price range, so you should find out what aspect of astronomy you are fond of then buy the equipment that suites your likes. As an added advantage to joining a local club, meny times you can buy someone’s used equipment at a good price. At the very least you will get better advice then here, because will be able to discuss in grater detail what you want.

Answer 2

If we exclude the telescopes known by amateurs as "astrojunk," and "department store scopes," the range of typical amateur telescopes is approximately $175 (for the well rated Orion Star Blast) to $2,000 (for an 8 inch schmidt cassegrain on a computerized mount). A wide range of Newtonians (the Star Blast is a Newtonian) is available within this price range, many options under $1,000 and quite a few under $500.

Telescopes in the Keck class are about $500 million to $1 billion.

Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra are in the several billions of dollars category due to the costs of completely robotic functioning and getting them into orbit.

Answer 3

A good amateur telescope costs anywhere from $300 to several thousand dollars depending on the size of the optics, the mount and the peripherals purchased (such as go-to computer). http://www.shutan.com/meade/index.html

The Keck telescope cost $183 million dollars to build. http://www.noao.edu/system/tsip/keck_cost.html

The cost for a space telescope is in the billions of dollars. http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050606.html

Answer 4

The typical amateur telescope ranges between $300 and $3000, however, telescopes as much as $1,000,000 can easily be had by anyone with the money.

Answer 5

try americansciencecenter.com
edmundscientific.com