My niece wants to buy a telescope for under $200 - suggestions?

After the Jupiter hoopla she is really excited and wants to delve more deeply into Astronomy. She has a little under $200 saved up and wants to get something in July. Anyone here have any suggestions? She was looking at this one: the Celestron 21082 which has an 80mm refractor.

My concern is that this may not have much magnification and she wants to be able to see better details on the moon, some colors from Jupiter, Saturn’s rings etc. I also have no idea of the difference between their fatter models vs. their skinnier long models.

Thanks!

I don’t, but maybe this is helpful? Recent Scott Manley video on telescopes.

Ohhh thanks!

Yes, that is a very, very good resource. Scott Manley knows his shit.

Short answer: The Celestron she’s looking at sounds great for the price point.

To your specific concerns, magnification is not an issue. That’s a (mathematically) simple issue of ratios. A bigger telescope doesn’t get you higher magnification. Rather, it gets you more light gathering power which makes very faint things look brighter in the eyepiece when you’re looking at them. For planets and other stuff (relatively) nearby or very bright (moon), that’s really not a big deal. You want something stable so it doesn’t wiggle around when you’re looking and with good lenses so things at the edges don’t blur or look otherwise weird (chromatic aberration). That is, a basic 70mm or 80mm refractor with a decent eyepiece and tripod is going to be absolutely great for that purpose.

My suggestion is to go to Orion (https://www.telescope.com/All-Telescopes/2162.home) and look at their “How to choose a telescope” link, then peruse what they have available.

Disclosure: I have a 10" Orion Dobsonian I’ve been very happy with for a decade or so and a Celestron 9.25" SCT for a little less than that.

I would have suggested a decent spotting scope or binoculars, because without spending more there are limited astronomical targets that will be anything more than points of light – the moon and crescent venus with some clarity (except you can’t see features on venus), plus smudged dots for mars and jupiter, jupiter’s moons for sure, and maybe saturn’s ears, plus a few nebulas if the sky is dark.

Whereas with a portable spotting scope or binoculars there’s all kinds of interesting terrestrial things to look at as well without having to lug this big tripod and mount everywhere you go. And without a good mount and a clock drive you can’t take astronomical photographs of anything except the moon, really.

I can’t make any recommendations but I am using a 70mm refractor from Meade and can share what I can observe with it to help with her expectations.

I live in the Greater Toronto Area, and look at stuff in the front and back yards with the telescope. That is to say, I am observing from a very light polluted spot.

The moon is absolutely not a problem and in fact is a bit too bright.

Jupiter does not show much detail. I can just barely make out a couple of darker bands around it. The four Galiliean moons are easily visible.

Saturn is small, but the rings are clearly visible as separate from the the planet body. It does not look like a ball with ears. However, I am not able to make out the Cassini division so it looks like just one big ring to me.

Mars is just an orangish dot. My understanding is that Mars is quite far at this point and the view should be a bit better when it gets closer to Earth.

How much better do you think detail would be in a less light polluted area?

Better, but not significantly. IMO, low atmospheric humidity is equally important. I’m on the NC coast at the moment and we have had a few rare days of low humidity. I dragged out my dad’s old and vastly underused telescope (which needs a serious cleaning) and could see Jupiter pretty clearly, along with 5 moons. Not sure what the 5th was, but it was much closer to the planet. Craters on the moon were extremely close up, clear, and well defined. The humidity/haze here normally would prevent most of that viewing.

I put on the lowest power eyepiece and held my phone up to it and took this photo. The highest powered eyepiece gives a lot more detail:

You saw 5 moons?! Jealous!

Very cool and thanks for the info/sharing.

Related to how small we are compared to Jupiter, and to seeing Jupiter and its moons with simple optics from Earth - here is a photo of Earth and the Moon from 1/10 the current Earth-Jupiter distance taken a while back by the OSIRIS-REx mission

More on-topic:
Some good suggestions here for viable $200 and under telescopes. Assuming she winds up with something with decent optics and mechanics, the real determinant of her success or not is her own level of excitement about simple backyard observing. In junior high, I received a 4 1/4" Edmunds Scientific reflector and spent an enormous amount of time using it in my suburban backyard. Bought myself some fancy star atlases to go with it (I remember one in particular with acetate overlays for different kinds of objects). Of course, I lived in California, so spending hours outside on a winter’s night was not a big deal.

I have this one and I am very happy with it.

When it’s not raining…

@gruntled

I had the exact same telescope – lived in NH so had a decently dark sky but the winters were cold and that telescope was heavy to move around (especially when I was 12…)

Anyone here with hands-on experience with this?

While I have no experience with this, there is a link in the link you sent which points to cloudy nights & there are hundreds of posts talking about it. Reading through it, it seems pretty positive experiences overall.

I like that it uses standard eyepieces. It looks like a nice portable telescope although I’m not a huge fan of red-dot finders. I prefer a Telrad finder, but that’s most likely b/c I’m colorblind and that red dot is really hard for me to find some nights.

Do telescopes with motors come cheap? The biggest thing keeping me from really getting into backyard astronomy is having to move the damned things constantly to keep objects in view.

You mean a telescope that auto-tracks, right? Search for “goto” or “computerized” telescope. They’re not necessarily super expensive as telescopes go, but the range in price (and quality/features) is huge. As cheap as maybe $300, as expensive as a new car.

Yeah, thanks.

There are some nice options, like Celestron AstroMaster (should be about 200$ with a kit).
Also Orion makes pretty good telescopes within your budget. A friend of mine uses 10015 StarBlast (it was about 180$ several years ago).

But personally, I’d recommend you to consider a good pair of binoculars, really. They’re easy to use, to carry around anywhere and have a huge field of view (you can see more “stars” or star asterisms with them). They’re also good for some bright Deep sky objects (a few dozens), like open star clusters, Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies etc.

UPD:sorry, just noticed that it’s an old request. Guess you’ve already bought one. Would be glad to hear about your final decision!

It depends (your goals/your level/your budget etc). Ours is Celestron NexStar 130LST (specs are here), and as for now it costs about 400$ per telescope, I haven’t checked this. But need to mention that we are no more than amateurs (and nerds). Of course, there are more advanced (and fancier) models.

And need to mention, that cheap ones are usually have bad mounts - ours tripod is way too light, for instance, and sometimes it’s shaking. So you might want to replace it with something more sturdy (these guys have some good alternatives). But since we’re using it rather occasionally, it doesn’t bother us that much.