My daughter has shown an interest in outer space and I’m going to buy her a telescope. After I decided that, I realized that I have no idea where to go, what kinds are available, or even what I can see with one. Any thoughts on the above?
Any good astronomy guide (I like the Audubon Society’s one) will give detailed descriptions of how to use a telescope and what can be seen in each visible constellation.
You can probably buy a telescope in any department store, but for a good-quality one, go to a specialized store or shop from a specialized website. You can also ask your local astronomy society or planetarium for recommendations.
Thanks. So what is the difference between the department store telescopes and the specialty shop ones? Is it worth the price difference (whatever that is) for a six year old and her Daddy out there on a Saturday night? Will I be able to wow her more with the more expensive one? (And maybe wow myself in the process ;))
I’m sure that with patience you can wow yourself, and if it’s something you’re already interested in, perhaps a quality telescope is a good long-term investment. If she’s six, though, perhaps a lower-end one would be sufficient to engross her in astronomy until she’s old enough to understand what she’s seeing a bit more deeply.
(A close-up of the moon and maybe Venus or Jupiter, I’d imagine, would be easier to grasp than a binary star or interesting nebula.)
Remember that for good stargazing it’s important to get out of the city and try it from a sufficiently dark area.
I got a good special off of Meade’s web site for about 40 bucks. You can see the four largest moons of Jupiter very clearly with it. If your eyes are good you can also see the bands of Jupiter’s atmosphere and the big red spot. You can see the moon very clearly with it. I’m hoping to be able to see Saturn’s rings with it but the last time I went looking it was too cloudy.
The same telescope goes for about 100 bucks elsewhere. Check the specials section of Meade’s web site. Sometimes you can get a good one for a good price.
Sky And Telescope Magazine has a pretty decent guide:
Choosing Your Equipment —> Choosing Your First Telescope —> How to Choose a Telescope
I live in a humid, light polluted area, thus have no use for a big scope which will only serve to make the city’s sky glow brighter, so I settled on one of these. I’ve built larger scopes in the past, but this 4.25" unit is easily portable. I can use it in town to watch comets as they pass through, and throw the thing in the truck when I head out cross country, to darker skies.
For more diverse opinions, see:
Forum: Astronomical Observing, Equipment and Accessories
For a six year old, I would not recommend an astronomical telescope as a gift. It takes a lot of care and patience to get to see anything that is interesting at all - anything apart from blackness and the occasional star, that does not look any different from how it appears to the naked eye - and, once you have seen it, that is pretty much it. Aligning the telescope right, focusing it (without messing up the alignment), and even just looking through it right, are not easy matters, even for an adult. (And don’t imagine you can set it all up yourself, then go get her to come have a look. Chances are that by the time you get back, the planet will no longer be in your field of view.) Of course, if you pay enough for it, some of these functions can be automated for you, and you can have a motor that will follow an object across the sky, but you would be talking quite about a lot of money before things become really simple.
Amateur astronomy is very much a hobby for adults, and, even then, only adults of a certain, very patient, personality type.
A few years back I bought a telescope (admittedly a cheapie one, but I am glad it was) for my daughter who IIRC was about 11 at the time. The first time we used it we did, after a lot of fiddling about and adjustment, manage to get a view of Saturn, that was just barely big and clear enough to see that it had rings. OK, seen that!
A few days later (after I had spent some time in the daylight trying to better get the hang of the thing) we spent a couple of hours trying to get a glimpse of Jupiter, and utterly failed. The telescope was packed away in the closet, and never used again. My daughter was very patient with the whole process, all things considered. I cannot imagine a six year old being anything like so patient.
I did, late on, manage to get a view of Jupiter with a powerful, top-quality pair of binoculars, and could see the Galilean moons (but not much in the way of banding), but, again, once you have seen it, you have seen it (and, as still as I tried to hold the binoculars, the image still swung about wildly the whole time). There was a bit more to see with the binoculars on the moon, but it really only held my attention for half-an hour or so, my daughters for much less (and I suspect, a six year old’s much less still).
If your daughter is interested in astronomy, that is great, but I think there are several better options than a telescope for encouraging her. How about a visit to a planetarium, or a nice planetarium program for your computer (my daughter got a good bit more value out of the Starry Night program than out of the telescope), or even a well illustrated, age appropriate book? If she is still interested by the time she is a teenager, then get her a telescope.
I agree with njtt.
However, if you do want to go outside and look at things, there are devices available that you can just point at a celestial object and it will tell you what it is. As best I can tell, they’re called personal planetariums. Celestron SkyScout and Meade MySky seem to be two of the brands, but there may be others. Expect to pay a couple hundred buck or so.
Cheap telescopes are usually quite a disappointment. Even more expensive ones really require a lot of effort to get any sort of pleasure out of.
The single most important thing you can do to get an real idea of the nature of space, and our place in it is go somewhere where the sky is really dark. The naked eye in a truly dark sky beats any telescope in a light polluted area in terms of sheer pleasure in observing.
The next best addition is a pair of binoculars. One of the less realised things about observing the sky, a lot of things that are worth seeing are not all that small, they are just dim. A pair of binoculars makes for easy sky surfing. And they are generally useful too. Not just something to leave in a cupboard afterwards. Whilst they won’t help much with planets, planets are rather overrated in my book.
A mattress to lay down on, a pair of binoculars, and a really dark sky, and you can have a really pleasurable evening just wandering about the sky. Add a planisphere and a sky atlas so you know what to look for, and how to identify something , and you have the makings of a very pleasurable and educational experience. For a six year old you will want either lightweight binoculars (which rather compromises things) or some sort of support for them. There are binocular supports marketed for just this purpose. You can spend any amount of money on binoculars.
True, very true.
Last year we holidayed on the Cork coast, at the southern end of Ireland. On the way back from the pub late at night, the sky looked extraordinary. After years of seeing it through an orange haze of street lights and neighbours lighting the exterior of their house at night, the night sky looked just fantastic.
Even just keeping your head pointed upwards more often on a night walk helps. You see quite a few more shooting stars and satellites passing by that way.
It might also be a better ‘investment’ to join (or attend at first) a ‘viewing club’ or whatever it might be called where a bunch of hobbyists get together once a month or whenever and share their eqpt with others. Kind of a showing-off of what their stuff can do usually, and most often, the folks love it when newbies ask questions and actually listen/learn from them. Or find an observatory within acceptable distance that allows visitors, or has public-viewing-nights now and then. Things like these will give MUCH better viewings than what you could get from a ‘dept store’ scope or a ~consumer-priced scope, trust me. Been there/done that. My 11yr-old daughter had about 10 minutes of patience with my scope (forget model, but a lower-end one, ~$200) then no more interest ever). I’d get it focused and by time she got her eye to it, the object had shifted. Kids care little for understanding/dealing with Earth’s rotation and what needs to be done for sighting things. The need to move scope the opposite direction of what she thought really perplexed her, and I gave up on trying to explain why (for now anyways).
Those point-and-learn things (per dtilque’s post) are pretty cool for learning what is up there, but may not be worth it to you (or her). Seeing things in a real observatory, with a pro running the eqpt, can sometimes change perspective in a big way, and maybe even start a lifelong interest.
Even though you did not ask, there is a great free software program (imho) called Stellarium, iirc, that can help ID those specks in the night sky. I use it to help answer questions my daughter has every now and then, and for finding planets’ locations occasionally myself.
I think a child can gain something by taking a look at the moon through a telescope. Children can appreciate the great distance of the moon and realize how much better it can be seen using the telescope. Beyond that, it would take a lot of patience and deep interest to make further use of a telescope (for viewing stellar objects anyway). So you shouldn’t spend much on a telescope unless you have an interest yourself. As mentioned previously, a good pair of binoculars can be useful to have around for viewing things on earth, and double as means of observing the sky as well.
Telescopes are pain to lug around and set up.
There are some good inexpensive telescopes that are extremely portable.
Here is an option that can be taken anywhere.
With this telescope you can see the rings of Saturn the Orion Nebula and the Galilean moons.
Still, I would recommend a good pair of binoculars. There are limited objects that can be seen with a cheap telescope. If you go real cheap, they are basically usless.
Binoculars are a life long gift. I have 10X50 pair that are awesome for astronomy.
I agree that binoculars are better, at least at first, but if you do decide to buy a telescope, make sure to never buy one that’s sold based on what it’s magnification is (like, one that says “Magnifies 200X!” or the like on the box). You can get any magnification you want, with the right eyepiece. It’s not magnification that’s important, but quality: A low-quality telescope with high magnification will just turn a small indistinct fuzzy blob into a large indistinct fuzzy blob.
For telescope quality, the goal is to get something with diffraction-limited optics (quality better than that will just be wasted, due to the wave nature of light). Anything made by Meade, Celestron, or Orion (the three biggest telescope companies) will probably be diffraction limited.
The next thing to decide is the aperture, or size of the optics: Larger is always better, subject only to the constraints of how easy it is to transport, and how much you can afford. Above 3 or 4 inches, you’ll mostly only be able to get reflecting designs (that use a mirror for the main optics), not refractors (that use a lens).
And you’ll also have to decide on a mount and drive: The cheapest telescopes have a simple altitude-azimuth mount, and no drive. This is perfectly fine if you know what you’re doing, and can find what you’re looking for yourself and nudge the scope every so often to keep it pointed at whatever it is you want. They’re also the easiest to set up. The next step up is a computerized alt-az drive, which (once it’s set up) can automatically track a spot in the sky, and will probably come with a database of interesting objects, that you can just pick an object by name or number, and it’ll automatically point to that object and track it. These do, however, require some setup before use, either by letting it know your date, time, location, and direction of North, or by manually pointing it at a few specific bright stars so it can figure out those things. Finally, if you want to do astrophotography, you’ll need an equatorial mount and clock drive. Equatorial mounts tend to be heavier, bulkier, and more expensive than alt-az mounts, and you have to know which way is North and what your latitude is to set them up, but tracking with them is simple: They just need a clock motor on one axis, not a computerized system (though computers are cheap enough now that it hardly makes a difference).
I’ll add my two cents to the cheap ass advocates. Daddy needs to go out at night by himself and learn where a few of the easiest constellations are. You can download a free star map here, or you can use google star map app if available. It should only take a few hours.
Then take the kid out and see what the two of you can see. Don’t forget the cocoa 
Oh, as to the question in the subject line: You can get charts to show you the locations of many interesting objects, but it’s perhaps even more fun to just find them yourself. Once you learn the constellations, just point your binoculars or scope at a random point in the vicinity of Sagittarius, and look around a bit. Interesting objects are so abundant in that part of the sky that you’ll just stumble across plenty of them.