Beginners astro telescope

[crankedup5]

Thinking may purchase our 12 year old grandson a (Christmas) stargazers telescope. Easy to set up and use as well as offering some good images which may kindle interest and wishing to upgrade later.
‘Real World experiences and advise appreciated.

[2fast748]

As big an aperture as you can afford and simple/quick to setup (the best telescope is the one you look through, cliche but true.)

A dobsonian is probably the best beginner scope. Sky-watcher are prety ubiquitous.

[essayer]

+1 for dobsonian, the tripod (newtonian) ones are faffy to set up and awkward to store

An eyepiece attachment for a phone will allow interesting photos to be taken

[crankedup5]

Thank you chaps, I will have a closer look at your recommendations. Never know an early start to ‘star gazing’ may lead to deeper interest into the solar system.

[LankyStreakOf]

I enjoy visual Astronomy and have a good setup. I too started with a cheap second hand scope, but quickly found it to be very limiting and actually pretty useless.

Dobsonion is indeed very good value for money, but the larger ones are cumbersome and more permanent. Think kept in the garage and wheeled out. Fine if you live somewhere remote, rubbish if you live in a light polluted area with a limited view of the sky.

My recommendations...

Table Top Dobsonion with Push-To. Small, portable and use your phone/app to guide you to the object.
Celestron Nexstar 6SE with Goto (although GoTo is not as easy to master as it sounds).
Seestar or similar (taking pictures only but does a great job of it).
A good pair of binoculars. 8x20 or similar. Portable, can see loads and is quite engaging to scan the sky for interesting things.

The reason for the recommendations is that it's a Winter hobby, and good seeing is rare. Magnification is your enemy. Good optics win every time. It also takes a lot to stand around in the cold if you can't really see anything. Cheap hobby telescopes are just that and you'd be better off with a pair of binoculars.

I have a 10yr old Son and invested in a pair of Canon Image Stabilised binoculars which we use for Terrestrial and Astronomy alike. They are used far more than my £5k Telescope setup.

[FMOB]

If you go for binoculars then get something sturdy to mount them on is useful, holding something weighing a couple of pounds gets boring pretty quickly.

Rigid mounting is important, nothing worse than touching them and waiting for the waggling to stop.

[geeks]

Seestar S50 - DSO (Deep Sky Object such as nebula) stuff only really (as well as the moon) Less faff than a dob, auto aligns, has app control, portable and you can grab the images it takes and stack and edit them yourself. - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/smart-telescopes/... - Racing Pete on here has one and speaks very highly of it.

For planets, an dob will be far better but much more of a faff. - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywat...

If budget is a concern and you want to see if they will use it then:

This will do planets (with a little detail) and the moon https://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-astroma...

Or one of these with a tripod - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/startravel/skywat... will do well enough for the moon, some DSO and with a barlow planets.

The Seestar S30 (cheaper than the S50 but more widefield) is due to be released soon but may not land before Christmas.


Worth noting too that what you will see though an eyepeice is pretty epic BUT nothing will look how it does in pictures because eyes are pretty terrible for this sort of thing

[crankedup5]

Thanks again to all contributors, plenty to have me keeping busy researching and considering.