TELESCOPES UNDER £500 ($600)
Celestron FirstScope
From: Amazon Cost: £67.88 / $71.95 Grab an ideal budget telescope for any budding astronomer out there. It’s a tabletop model with a
76mm reflector optical tube and is very lightweight and portable. Its stylish finish means it’s a great little telescope for any young person who wants to grow their passion for astronomy.
StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
From: Amazon Cost: £378.50 / $449 The wide 130mm aperture on this Newtonian reflector unit makes it a great option for viewing lots of the night sky, including galaxies, nebulae, planets and star clusters. It’s one of our favourite telescopes for beginners, as it works in conjunction with the StarSense app on your mobile phone.
Celestron PowerSeeker 60AZ
From: Amazon Cost: £78.99 / $79.95 You can pick up this model for a bargain. This is definitely a starter scope, aimed at kids and beginners, with a straightforward altazimuth mount and a relatively small 60mm aperture. Still, it offers some good lunar views and it’s relatively well-powered for its very low price.
Orion StarBlast II 4.5 EQ
From: Amazon
Cost: £250 / $240 This telescope has a solid build. It comes with an impressively long list of accessories including two eyepieces, a 2x Barlow lens, Orion’s Star Target Planisphere and Telescope Observer’s Guide for planning your observations, a moon map, a red LED light to preserve your night vision and a red-dot finder.
Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 102AZ
From: Amazon Cost: £379.99 / $455.58
This works with the StarSense app, which means stargazing is made that much simpler. The app can point out and name the objects you’re looking at, and the telescope itself is light, meaning it’s easier to transport wherever you want to use it.
Sky-Watcher Heritage-130P FlexTube
From: Wex Photo Cost: £195 / $210 This is a tabletop model and great for astronomers to use at their own leisure. Because of its tabletop design and size, it’s great for carrying around wherever you’re on the move to and it’s easy to use and set up too, so you don’t need an in-depth knowledge of how telescopes work to be able to use this model.
Orion StarMax 90
From: Amazon Cost: £221.29 / $319.99
This is a tabletop telescope, so it can rest easy on your desk and you can use it at your own leisure. There’s no setting up a tripod and it’s quick and easy to use as well as set up. The telescope comes ready to use out of the box and offers a decent-sized aperture and goodquality optics for the price.
Celestron Inspire 100AZ
From: Jessops
Cost: £229 / $300 This refractor telescope comes with plenty of accessories, including a smartphone adapter that will allow you to take images of the night sky. However, given that the refractor boasts a focal ratio of f6.5, you’re limited to short-exposure photography here. But it is a nice piece, all the same.
Celestron AstroMaster 102AZ
From: Amazon Cost: £296.86 / $299.49
This refractor has a decent-sized aperture and a lightweight, portable design.
It’s easy to operate, with a panning handle that allows you to sweep the night sky and slowmotion controls for fine movements.
It’s light, so easy to manoeuvre around a backyard or dark camping spot.
Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ
From: Amazon
Cost: £199 / $170 An excellent entrylevel telescope, this reflector model boasts a powerful 127mm aperture and comes with an equatorial mount. These mounts take a bit of getting used to, so we’d advise testing it out in the daytime before using it in the dark. That aperture should make it easier to spot deep-sky targets.
Orion SpaceProbe II 76mm reflector
From: Amazon Cost: £110.49 / $129.99
A reflector that offers wide-field views but performs well with lunar and planetary observations, this is a good option for young stargazers. It comes with everything a budding astronomer needs, including 10mm and 25mm Kellner eyepieces, a reddot finder and
Moon map.
Orion Observer 80ST
From: Amazon
Cost: £140 / $180 We were impressed with the views we could achieve with the refractor telescope. We were able to view Jupiter with its belts and moons, Saturn with its rings and, with the right eyepieces, even the tiny blueturquoise disks of faraway Uranus and Neptune. We were unsurprised to discover a degree of false colour, but this didn’t ruin the viewing experience.