Good Telescopes for Christmas
If you think you’d like to get your astronomy buff a telescope this year for Christmas, but aren’t sure what to get, then I’ll list some choices that I think are pretty good.
First, please keep a couple of things in mind:
- Magnification is irrelevant. Most telescopes operate between 30 to 70 power for visual use. If it’s too high your image is fuzzy, the field of view very narrow, and the mount shakes every time a bee farts 20 miles away.
- What matters most is knowing what you want to look at. There are a variety of telescope designs, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. A good compromise for general use is a short focal length reflector.
- Buy as much diameter as you can afford. If you’re torn between an 8 or a 10 inch telescope, and can afford the extra, get the 10 inch.
Ok, in no particular order, here are my recommendations for a good telescope to give as a gift:
The Edmund Astroscan. I bought mine in 1984 just before comet Halley came around. This telescope is indestructible and trivial to use. One look at it and you know how it works. It’s advantages are that it’s got a wide field of view with the eyepiece that comes with it, making faint objects easy to find. Its main disadvantage is that it’s hard to get good views of the planets because of the short focal length. You can still see the rings of Saturn and the belts on Jupiter though.
The Meade Lightbridge Dobsonian. The are extremely nice telescopes that I fell in love with when they first came out. Buy the biggest one you can afford. Right now, Astronomics is offering a $100.00 rebate on the purchase of any one of these for Christmas. These telescopes have awesome optics that will give wonderful views of just about anything in the sky. The main disadvantage to these scopes is finding one. They are more popular than a Wii console.
Any of these iOptron Refractors. Although I haven’t actually used the optical assembly, I’m going to go out on a limb and recommend these scopes anyway, primarily because of the mount. At $300.00, even if the tube sucks, you haven’t lost any value. These mounts can be used for any small telescope. I recently bought one of these mounts and find them an amazing value for the price. The website recently announced that the GPS option is now available for these, I’d go ahead and spring for that if you can afford it, it’s only an extra $50.00.
Finally, if I were going to ask for a telescope for me personally, I would want the iOptron mount and this optical tube assembly from Orion. I love his little telescope and I’ve wanted one for a while now. I looked through it at a star party once and vowed to one day get one. It has the best optics for the price I’ve seen yet. The entire thing would cost around $600.00, that’s an amazing value.
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