The question I’m asked most frequently on cruises is, “What kind of telescope should I buy?” There’s no single right answer for that question. It’s the Golden Age of Telescope Gadgetry, and there’s practically no limit of ways to spend your money in this hobby.
The type of telescope to get will depend on many factors:
- Your budget
- What you want to see (Moon, planets, deep sky, double stars, etc.)
- Portability and “footprint”
- How familiar you are with finding your way around the sky
- Your expectations
- That being said, here are some possibilities to consider.
Incidentally, I am not compensated by any telescope or gear manufacturers. And I am not necessarily recommending specific brands, although some have some unique features. “Telescope of the Year” designation is from High Point Scientific, Inc. (https://highpointscientific.com), who are a reputable and popular retailer in the US.
Too Long; Didn’t Read — a Quick Suggestion
If there is an astronomy club in your area, see if they have any scheduled public observing sessions. It’s a great no-cost way to check out the view through a lot of different telescopes, shown off by people who know how to use them. It will help manage your expectations about what you’ll be able to see and how it will look. Don’t expect the view through the eyepiece to look like a photo from the Hubble Space Telescope!
If you’re itching to start exploring the night sky, I recommend a good pair of binoculars. You can use them to explore constellations and the Milky Way, and they’re useful in the daytime as well. I own Nikon Aculon 7×50 binoculars, my favorite accessory for stargazing while my telescope is taking images. I also have some Orion 2×54 ultra-wide angle binoculars, which are a little more finicky but great for views under very dark skies. You’ll need to purchase some rubber eyecups to use with the Orion 2×54 binoculars.
What to avoid
Ads for low-cost telescopes are aimed at luring novices who don’t know what to look for. Here are a couple warning signs and things to avoid:
- Ignore any claims about high magnification (“Magnifies up to 400 power!!”). There is a theoretical maximum useable magnification for any telescope – it’s 50 times the aperture of the telescope in inches. For a 3-inch (75mm) telescope, you can’t use any power higher than 150x. For a 4-inch, it’s 200x, etc. And these figures are the absolute maximum, assuming your have the telescope set up properly and the seeing conditions are good. And the clearest, most satisfying views will be at less than half that maximum amount.
- Look out for cheap tripods or mounts. Check the reviews carefully. Cheap telescopes with inadequate tripods and loose mounts will wobble every time you touch the focuser or whenever the wind blows, spoiling your view.
- Any telescope with an aperture under 3″ is likely to cause disappointment. The size of the telescope’s lens or mirror will determine how much light the telescope passes through and how much magnification you can use. Too small a telescope will be only useful for looking at the Moon and for terrestrial viewing (e.g., bird watching).
Excellent starter telescope
The Orion StarBlast is a $250 telescope with a 4.5-inch aperture. It’s a tabletop telescope, compact, easy to transport and set up. It’s great for kids and adults. (I bought one of these for my granddaughter.)
The StarBlast comes with two eyepieces that provide 22.5x and 45x magnification, well within the useful range for a scope of this size. The mount is stable and yet easy to from target to target. It comes with a “red dot” finder that quickly shows you where in the sky the scope is pointed.
Best all-around telescope
The beginner’s telescope that will afford you the best view of the Moon, planets, and deep sky objects is an 8″ Dobsonian reflector. Sky-Watcher, Celestron, Apertura, Explore Scientific, and others make telescopes in this range. The 8-inch (200 mm) primary mirror will collect a lot of light for deep sky and will resolve small craters on the Moon or details on the planets. The Apertura AD8 shown here lists for about $700, and many websites are calling it the best Dobsonian of 2023.
A Dobsonian is relatively cheap and has few moving parts. It will probably not need a power source unless you get one with computerized functionality.
Disadvantages of the Dobsonian are (1) that they can be pretty bulky and (2) many of them do not have computerized means of finding objects in the sky. They are also not suitable for astrophotography except for the Moon and planets.
Schmidt-Cassegranian Telescope Bundles
Schmidt-Cassegranian telescopes (SCTs, for short) have a folded light path and take up much less room than Dobsonians. They tend to be much more expensive, however. Most of the high-end ones (Celestron and Meade) have computerized “go-to” functionality. Once you’ve aligned them on the sky — and some of the newer ones will do this automatically — you can use the hand controller, computer, or even phone apps to point you to thousands of objects of interest in the sky.
Many retailers bundle the telescope with eyepieces and other accessories. These can be handy if you’re starting from scratch, but you may end up purchasing more than you really need, especially with eyepieces. A medium power (20-28mm) eyepiece and a high-power one (9mm), combined with a 2x Barlow lens, may be all that you really need. The Celestron 8SE bundle shown in the image below costs roughly $1700.
An SCT will give you outstanding views of the Moon and planets. They are not so good for extended objects in deep space like nebulas, but they are very good for star clusters.
Disadvantages of the SCT are (1) expense, (2) dimmer view than a Dobsonian of the same diameter mirror, and (3) they are prone to dewing over in humid air. Unless you live in a desert, you will likely want to purchase a dew heater or a dew cap. Because the telescope tube is closed off by a lens at one end, they can take a long time to come to thermal equilibrium. Don’t expect to take one from a warm house into a chilly night and be able to use it to its full advantage until it’s had an hour to cool down. You’ll also either need a power supply or batteries to run the mount and dew heater.
Tabletop telescopes
Tabletop telescopes are becoming quite popular for people looking for a small telescope that is easily transportable and easy to set up. The Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTi 150P shown below retails for $470. It includes a Synscan mount, which you can control with your phone or tablet and find thousands of objects in the sky.
The disadvantages of a tabletop telescope are that (1) the smaller objective mirror gathers less light than an 8″ telescope, and (2) you need a stable table or platform on which to set it up. But if you’re looking for something that’s easy to cart around and that your kids or grandkids can use, look no farther.
A frustrating scope, but an inventive finder
Celestron’s StarSense line of telescopes use your smart phone as their finder scope! A cradle attached to the telescope points your phone’s selfie camera at the sky. The StarSense app then determines precisely where your telescope is pointed. When you want to find an object, locate it in the app’s database, and then on-scree arrows will show you the direction to push your telescope so that the desired object falls within the scope’s field of view.
The StarSense Explorer 130DX shown above is $480. Celestron sells cheaper telescopes that also use StarSense. Frankly, those smaller scopes are more frustration than they’re worth. I have heard stories of astronomers buying those smaller scopes, pulling off the StarSense cradle to use on another telescope, and then throwing away the small scope!
One potential disadvantage of this technology is that you must make sure your phone is fully charged before going out for the evening with it. Your phone will be turned on pretty much the entire time you’re using the telescope.
Dedicated imaging/”party” telescopes
Relative newcomers to the telescope lineup are ones that you can’t even look through! These telescopes have built-in cameras and software that performs “live-stacking” of dim celestial objects. Once locked onto a target, these scopes will take continuous short exposures, gradually stacking images together. Over the course of a couple of minutes, you can watch a galaxy take shape — in full color, something you would never be able to see through the eyepiece of a telescope.
Some of these scopes allow up to 9 different phones or tablets to be connected at once, so they are “party” telescopes. You can save the images and edit them later.
Disadvantages are that (1) they tend to be expensive and (2) you might miss the thrill of looking for something yourself, with your own eyes. They also tend to be susceptible to dew. (The Vaonis and SeeStar come with a built-in dew heater; the Unistellar eVscope does not have one.)
I have not seen the ZWO SeeStar in action yet, but the price seems amazing compared to the other scopes. ZWO is one of the leading manufacturers of astrophotography cameras and controllers.
Conclusions
I recommend that if you’ve never owned a telescope before, try some out before you buy one. Don’t spend $2000 on a telescope and find out that you don’t like the way things look. The best way to try out a scope is to find your local astronomy club and attend one of their public viewing sessions. You’ll have the chance to see many different types of telescopes and what they will actually show you in the sky.
My personal experience: people tend to be disappointed at how nebulas and galaxies look through the eyepiece, but nothing thrills you like seeing the Moon’s craters or Saturn’s rings!