telescopes

[spareparts]

any of ya'll know anything about telescopes? I got my oldest daughter one a couple of years ago, it was a cheapie. We tried to use it, she was very interested, but it was hard to focus on anything, and it was hard to keep it on an object. The only thing we looked at was the moon, stars were just fuzzy dots. The thing would give me a headache everytime we used it. I'd like to get her a better one for Christmas, I don't want to spend a bunch of money, but I'd like something better than the piece of crap we have now. I've searched on line, I know you get what you pay for, but I'm not going to spend $2000 for a "mid line" telescope either. I'd like to stay under $150 if I can get one that worth a crap, if its going to take much more money to get a decent one, I'll probably look for soemthing else to get her instead. Any input is appreciated

[joe7670]

This may help.
http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/buyers.htm

A trip to a local university may wow her. At least when I was in Gainesville, UF used to open up their astronomy observatory every few weekd and allow anyone to see what they focused on and they explained what it was. All for free.

[BuilderFL]

Spare, you're about an hour drive to Orangeburg were the Stanback Planetarium, SC State University is located. A visit to a planetarium is amazing and those pretty girls of yours will love it. Best of all, I think admission is free. Check out this link. http://www.go-astronomy.com/telescopes.htm
By the way, I also bought a few telescopes for my two girls, but that was over 12 years ago. My two boys didn't seem to care much about them.

[Destroyer]

Spare my friend, I'm afraid you're out of luck on the telescopes unless you find a nice used one on eBay. We went through this same thing a few years back with my son. Any good, quality scope is going to cost a lot more than $150. Celestron, Bushnell and Meade are good brands and there are others.. Look for a motorized scope, ones with a GPS feature are desireable. One word of advise (from someone that's been there) ... Before you sink large amounts of dough into this, make sure that it's not going to sit in a corner...lovely to look at but never used. :sad:

[Skools Out]

i have one of these and it has been a great telescope for me for the money. i keep it at my beach house to use out on the beach wish i had a second one here at the house. this is a pretty good deal if they get more in stock i paid around $200 for mine few yrs back.

Bushnell Sky Tour 70mm Refractor Telescope



http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/refracting-telescopes/skytour70mmrefractortelescope.cfm

[bcmarinamanager]

Try hayneedle.com or telescopes.com. First order of business is that a good optical telescope can not be bought in a retail store ie. Bushnell. You can find plenty of good starter scopes at either of these sites, and even amazon.com. Celestron is a decent cheap scope company. A good medium scope manufacturer would be Meade or Orion. You can find refractor or reflector scopes of about 130mm size in 200-400 range. They can come with nicer equatorial mounts too so that you can more easily track what you're looking at in the sky. Hope this helps.

Update: If you have the money, this scope is AWESOME!!! A full 8 inch aperture!! You can see some close galaxies with it, if you can find them, and easily see the rings of Saturn and the cloub bands on Jupiter. http://www.amazon.com/Orion-SkyQuest-Classic-Dobsonian-Telescope/dp/B001DDW9V6/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1292183230&sr=8-12