Starting my search for a Astronomical Telescope

My youngest sons 11th birthday and he would like a telescope not to difficult you would think until you start looking into this and find you can pay anything from £30.00 to £30,000. So this blog is my story of how we made a choice and I hope later on how we got on.

My starting point in this quest was the internet and that’s when I found it was not going to be such a simple matter. Luckily I have used telescopes before although it had been 30 years ago when I was at school, but at least I knew the difference between a reflector and a refractor. I all so new that you would need something larger than what I had a school if you wanted to see anything more than just moons around Jupiter or a muted belt around Saturn.

After a quick search on the internet and finding that it was not going to be too easy to make a choice I had to make a short list of what the telescope must do and came up with the following list

• Of a size worth bothering with (can see something with it!)
• Simple and quick to use in limited time
• Could be used for deep sky objects viewing (did not know exactly what this was but it sounded interesting on the internet)
• Possibility of photography latter on
• A small budget of £100.00 to £150.00

After my internet search and by now I had concluded that choosing would not be easy I thought of ebay, could I get a good seconded hand telescope or a bit more scope for my money. This search reviled 2988 telescopes and binoculars for sale starting from £19.00 to £3,420.00 for a top of range 10” Meade. But at least I could now draw up a list of possible telescopes within my price range, but this is not going to tell me if they are any good or you do what I want.