Telescopes

[ShaefIllini]

My dad turns 60 this week, and we are looking to buy him a telescope. We want to keep the price reasonable (<700 dollars). Do any of you out there happen to have any telescope recommendations? Thanks for the help.

[cartman]

Meade makes some good ones in that price range, that also have the option of getting the computerized object finder added on. Makes it real easy to find stuff in the sky.

Don't have any exact models to recommend, maybe someone else can chime in with that info.

[Craptacular]

I saw one of those GPS enabled, auto-object-finder telescopes on "I Want That" on HGTV the other day. I think it was more than $1000, but it looked really cool.

[cartman]

Here's a link to the ones I remember seeing:

http://www.analyticalsci.com/Astronomy/Telescopes/imagesm/ETX/etx_astro_telescopes.htm

The ETX-90EC is around $700 and has the object finder included. This model also has the option to add a special eyepiece that allows cameras to snap pictures through the telescope.

[Yellow5]

I've purchased a few from Orion (http://www.telescope.com) and have been happy with their service. I own one of their SkyQuest XT10 scopes and it is awesome.

I would stick with one of the smaller telescopes like the Celestron StarSeeker 114mm or 130mm GoTo Reflector. It does not have a GPS unit for alignment but it does have the "go to" option so once it's aligned you can find things easy. We have a smaller version of this telescope (the 80mm) and it's perfect when I want to do a quick setup to look at something. The larger scopes require more prep time and are a pain to carry around.

The Meade mentioned above is another good choice. My son has the small ETX-60 and it's perfect for someone that is new to astronomy.