Telescopes. What do I need to know as a beginner?

[compprep]

My wife is part owner of camp in the Adirondacks. See wants a low cost, say max $250 telescope. What brand, type, features should I look for?
TIA!!

Jim

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[First Stang]

If you are serious about astronomy or plan to be, I would go for a celestron 8se. Check Opticsplanet.com. They have a cyber monday deal. It’s more expensive but like a gt, has plenty of upgrade options. Otherwise, Celestron or Meade are good brands. Have fun!

 

[Cobra Jet]

Awesome thread - hopefully there's more star gazers and planet watchers who will chime in...

There's sooooo many telescopes and telescope reviews that it's hard to make any type of informed decision without either going broke buying one with tons of features or getting one that's inexpensive but doesn't fulfill the quest to see the above planets, stars and galaxies.

We picked up a Celestron AstroMaster LT70 a bit ago. It has decent features for being a beginner scope. We wanted one with its own tripod and weren't looking to spend major bucks for a telescope. We also wanted something that was a little decent for star gazing beyond the naked eye. Based on what I've read online, Celestron is a decent company and many of their scopes have quite a range of positive rankings amongst Pros, Enthusiasts, and Beginners. Sure there are better scopes out there (brand, features, functions), but there's just so many telescope brands/types to wade through.

We also wanted one where we could hook up a phone to it to take pics of the images we were seeing. Let me say the whole hooking up the phone bit is a PIA; there's no easy way to do it and just when you think you have the image sighted in, it can be frustrating trying to get that image capture. After you finagle it a few times it's doable to catch an image, wish there was a better way though.

Anyone have any better Telescope suggestions, more so Telescopes with ability to capture images?

 

[Paul McWhiskey]

Try to master driving with binoculars before using a telescope. It is probably far more dangerous than tracking your car.

Sorry! The smart ass got the best of me. No harm intended.

 

[compprep]

Try to master driving with binoculars before using a telescope.

How do you know I HAVEN'T mastered this???

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