Best Telescope: Top-Rated Best Telescope for Beginners (Kids) under $100 – Astrophotography – Want to buy the best telescope for beginners? You must be looking for some features and traits in your telescope. Due to different apertures, focal lengths and other specifics, different telescopes are suitable for viewing different objects in the universe.
While some are able to show only the moon, the rings of Saturn and moons orbiting Jupiter, others can be used to view the clusters of stars and bright nebulae. If we talk about the price, even cheaper telescopes can be good, but you need to hunt thoroughly and lots of hard work is required.
Best Telescope: Top-Rated Best Telescope for Beginners (Kids) under $100 – Astrophotography
My First Lab Stargazer Telescope
This telescope has glass optics of high quality and the eyepieces are about 9mm and 20mm. The lens allows magnification with eyepieces, of 150x, 100x, 90x and 45x. It has a tripod base of heavy duty with the legs made of steel and is about 1.25 inches. This provides stability to the mount of the telescope.
Orion 11043 SpaceProbe 3 Altazimuth Reflector Telescope
This telescope has a 3-inch aperture and is a general purpose telescope, excellent for viewing the moon, the rings of the planet Saturn, some bright nebulas and star clusters and also for the plants orbiting around Jupiter. It is great for beginners.
Meade Instruments 209003 Infinity 70 AZ Refractor Telescope
The telescope has an aperture of 70mm, which is equal to 2.8 inches. The focal length is 700 mm. It has a f/10 focal ratio. The telescope has eyepieces for both the low as well as the high magnifications.
Celestron 21036 PowerSeeker 70AZ Telescope
The setup of this telescope is extremely quick as well as easy. For the purpose of smooth tracking, it has slow motion controls. The Barlow lens of 3x assists in tripling the magnification of each eyepiece.
Celestron 21061 AstroMaster 70AZ Refractor Telescope
The telescope has a star pointer, which is permanently mounted. It has an amazingly quick as well as easy setup and no tools are required for the same. It has erected image optics. Such optics is suitable for the terrestrial as well as the astronomical use.
What to know before buying?
There are four different kinds of telescopes, for the intermediate as well as the beginner astronomers.
- Refractors – Also known as the Galileo type of telescopes, these make use of a series of glass lenses to refract the light. Their price range can go up to thousands of dollars if you are to pick up a specialized, advanced one, with a custom built. These are usually general purpose telescopes and can be used for viewing the moon, planets like Saturn (with its rings) and Jupiter. They also have the ability to view the larger objects in the deep sky, like the Andromeda galaxy and the Nebula Orion. One limitation faced in cheaper versions of these telescopes is the presence of chromatic aberration. They usually have a wide field view.
- Newtonian reflectors – These types of telescopes use a primary mirror, which is large, instead of the lenses. The mirror is positioned behind the scope and it is responsible for reflecting and focussing the light back towards the top. Here, again reflection takes place from an angled secondary mirror and out towards the eyepiece. Most professional instruments used these days are variations of this telescope. One example is Hubble. They are less complex to be used and operated by a beginner astronomer.
- Dobsonians – Lovably also called as the light buckets, these telescopes give quite a bang for the buck when we talk of visual observation. They are basic Newtonian telescopes. The name simply refers to the base mount. They have a simple setup but are not quite suitable for the purpose of Astrophotography.
- Schmidt-Cassegrains – These telescopes are also known as SCT’s. These are not very accurate technically. They are excellent for the purpose of Astrophotography but as expensive if compared with the same aperture Dobsonian or Newtonian telescopes.
Buy the best telescope for beginners and enjoy your experience of sky watching!
