Anyone own a telescope?

coasterqueen wrote: We are looking to purchase a telescope as our family Christmas gift this year. The girls are just as fascinated by the stars and moon as I am and so Dh and I thought this would be the perfect family gift. We are just not sure where to start when looking for one.

We do not want to spend a lot of money, but we want something that is decent and can see more than just what the naked eye can see.

Any thoughts, tips, suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated.

MommyToAshley replied: We have one, but DH wants to get a different one. So, we are also in the market for one, but haven't started researching one yet. We're going to get one that we can connect our camera to this time so we can also take photos.

Ashley has always been fascinated with the stars, the moon, and astronomy in general. She can tell you more facts about the planets than I can. She shares this interest with DH. I'm not as much into it as they are... so when they watch those shows on Discovery science, I get my "me time" LOL!

Cece00 replied: We dont, but that is a really good idea!

luvmykids replied: We have one, got it at Walmart. I didn't shop around or anything though so I don't know if it's a great one or not. We can see a lot with it though.

coasterqueen replied:
Can you describe what you can see? Honestly we aren't wanting to spend a too terrible amount of money. We want to get a good, fun family gift BUT we only have so much money to spend and don't want to take it away from other areas.

We contemplated between this and a karaoke machine. The girls voted for the K. machine, but we ended up deciding on the telescope.

luvmykids replied: I think this is the one we have, ours looks a little different but that might be just because it's older but it's the same brand and seems to have the same specs Telescope

I'm an amateur so I haven't seen much as far as planets go, I think we've seen one or two but I don't know which ones It's really good for the moon though, and lots of little stars that you can't see without it. It makes the constellations a little easier to see/identify too.

I need to dig it out, we got it when we lived in the city and I'm sure we'd be able to see a lot more now since it's so much darker here at night.

coasterqueen replied:
Thanks Monica. I'll look at that link.

You'd definitely be able to see more now that you are outside the city. For us, that's one thing we love about the country. The night sky is 10x more beautiful outside the city.

luvmykids replied: I was looking at that link again, I don't think ours is quite this "advanced"...it doesn't have the programmed stuff the one in that link has. Ours did come with a guide and has some auto focus settings that make it easier to zoom in on things but it's not the same as the one in the link as far as that goes. I'd love to have that though, I think we'd use it a lot more if it would automatically find things.

Bamamom replied: We have this one and it is great.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4183991

Portable, lightweight, and it has the autostar so you can really see stuff and know what you are looking at. And it's very affordable IMO.

Hope that helps.




BTW - sorry, don't mean to hijack your thread - but how do you make the link be words?

luvmykids replied:
Click on the "http" button, paste your link, then it will open another window where you can type whatever you want about the link

My3LilMonkeys replied: My mom has one, but hers is more of a higher end pricewise than what others have posted here - but it is great. She can see the moons of Jupiter and stuff like that.

Farelle replied: We had a HUGE one that I really hated!! I think it was a Solaris? It worked ok when I could actually figure out how to use it but the things that you had to turn to move it really stunk and it NEVER locked in place so we'd take like 1/2 an hour to locate something and then switch places and it would move on it's own.....we sold it. If I were to get another one I would either get the one with the computer that is attached, as it's very hard to locate things sometimes or just a smaller one. We were able to see the moon fantastic! and some planets but nothing really more than that, excpet for a few meteors during peak times. It is very cool!! I would like to get a new one. Let us know what you end up getting.

coasterqueen replied: Thanks everyone. I'm going to show Dh these scopes and see which one fits us best.