A few times a year someone will ask me
to make a recommendation to buy a telescope sometimes they will add a
dollar limit, a few hundred dollars seems to be a popular amount.
This is not an easy question. Questions about how the
metrinization of time-space leads to the "General Theory of Relativity"
and black holes is much simpler. It is very easy to spend a lot
of money and get a telescope that will only be used a few times,
sometimes with the person using it not even finding the moon.
After all the moon is only up half of the time at night, and it is
often cloudy at night. Clever people join a local astronomy
club like the
National Capital
Astronomers, NCA. Students can join for $5 and
non-students for $10 for a year; "Star Dust" the club newsletter can be
e-mailed to you as an Adobe PDF ten times a year in color, the old
people that get it mailed to their house only get a black-in-white
copy, and quarterly you will receive a publications called the
"Reflector" from the
Astronomical
League which NCA is a member of and helped form a long time ago;
and for an additional $33 you get a subscription to "
Sky and Telescope" through
the club. There are other astronomy clubs around, too, this is
just the one that I belong to; and it has been around since 1937; and
one of our former junior members did win the Nobel prize in Chemistry a
few years ago; and another former junior member is a world famous women
astronomer. Four of our current members have minor planets,
called asteroids, named after them. NCA is a very unusual
astronomy club in that it has a very diverse membership. This
particular club also has a group that grinds mirrors and makes their
own telescopes if you are interested in that sort of thing. By
joining a club you will have lots of people to talk to and many of them
own telescopes, a few have even built their own telescope; and most
will let you look through their telescope. if they own one, during star
parties; and they are likely to show you their telescope if you ask and
may instruct you on the use of that telescope until you roll your eyes
in boordom. "Sky and Telescope" and "
Astronomy" magazine have a lot of
telescope and binocular advertisements as well as monthly star charts
and information about what you might do with your telescope or
binoculars. Now days if you buy a telescope or binoculars
you can go mail order, now mostly handled by buying over the Internet,
or from a local telescope shop. In the Washington DC metro
area there are currently two telescope stores that do not sell junky
telescopes that I am aware of:
- Telescopes, always expensive read a
lot
before ever buying!
A few useful links from "Sky and Telescope" magazine published about
buying binoculars are included below:
Really good wide field binoculars may actually be best. You can also
image stabilize your binoculars for almost no money and a short trip to
Home Depot for very little wood. See URL:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/visualobserving/Image-Stabilize-Your-Binoculars.html.
You might try this link too
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/skyandtelescope/access/886289841.html?dids=886289841:886289841&FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE:PAGE&date=Apr+1997&author=William+J+Cook&desc=My+Favorite+Binoculars+for+Astronomy.
I know it goes on forever, just be glad you do not have to type it
in. See URL on binoculars from "Sky and Telescope"
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/howtoequipment/3389576.html.
Good luck on your family adventure with the universe. Remember if
you don't occassionally use it then you wasted your money.