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

Everything else
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Arise!

So for my sons 7th birthday I got him a telescope.

It would not be entirely inaccurate to say I got myself one too. I’ve long wanted one.

I was wanting to get a Newtonian scope, but due to being for a 7 year old wasn’t wanting to over invest. I wound up with

Now, yes, it is a very much beginner scope. There are better ones out there. But this was at the price bracket we were willing to go. If, in the future, this is something he enjoys doing with me we will go bigger. With all the national parks we visit this would also do well. The idea of doing a Great Basin stargazing trip is tantalizing.

Well it has been perpetually cloudy for the last month and a half since we got it. Tonight was the first clear night since his birthday. So I took him in the back yard.

Now there wasn’t any great targets. The moon is below the horizon, and Uranus and Mars low enough at the time that the ambient neighborhood light and houses made them unviable.

But I did manage to get a view on the Pleiades. So that was fun! For a first time backyard adventure, we had a good time. And my insistence on Newtonian was worth it, the design definitely works better for limiting light pollution. I can’t wait to take him out to get better targets soon!

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Awesome!

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So I’ve kind of gone all in on upgrades. I had picked my scope intentionally, knowing that the 76mm aperture would serve me decently, and the 300mm focal length allowed decent magnification. There are limits, nebula are a bit too dim to see from my suburban spotting locations, but I can get decent views.

Now I pumped @Tman for a bunch of tips, to good effect! The included eyepieces are underpowered being 20mm and 10mm cheap lenses. Only 15 and 30 magnification. And the 10mm has a very narrow opening. But he helped explain how the optics and magnification worked, and I was able to use that with some research to really know what to look for.

But I’ve spent more on eyepieces than I did on the telescope, and now compliment it with some 6mm and 4mm wide angle aspheric lenses, and a 3x barlow that I can remove the lens and screw directly onto the other eyepieces to make it effectively a 2x barlow. Awesome! Tons of flexibility on setup, good views.

Last night I stayed out until about 1:30 scanning the skies. I was hoping for nebula, but no dice, and some globular clusters in scorpio constelation, but trees meant the low angle was not working.

But, man, Jupiter and Saturn. I got the 4mm yesterday and tried it out. I got to 150x magnification, which is at the approximate detail limit of the aperture field I have. I could see the rings of Saturn, with some slight separation from the planet, and I also saw the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter.

We leave Friday to go on vacation to some national parks, and I can’t wait to use it with my son out there.

For the record, here is the lenses I got, and man this Svbony Plossl is incredible. Worth the price for sure.

That 6mm lens is just chefs kiss. I know there are better, more expensive, lenses out there, but I got this for $25 on Amazon Prime Day, and so worth it. The wide FOV makes tracking objects and locating targets so much easier. Plus a good star map app (a must for modern stargazers) and life is good.

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Since I’m bumping the thread anyway, most likely Amalthea, the fifth largest moon, and the last satellite to be discovered by direct visual observation.

I know this because I was trying to determine my scopes limits and was reading up on the moon sad a result. And I am certain of 4 moons, and there was a possible fifth (but given my scope size and magnification probably not, most likely just visual disturbance due to viewing through gaps in leaves over a low suburban horizon)

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That’s amazing. So I didn’t know you could mix so many lenses. Did I read that right you’re using 3 lenses together?

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No. The Barlow is an attachment, so I only have 2 in a row.

Technically the Barlow acts to increase the apparent focal length of the telescope, which implicitly increases the magnification of the eyepieces.

But only a single eyepiece at a time otherwise. It is just that the Barlow is a tube with a lens at the bottom that, if I remove the lens from the tube, can be screwed in directly onto any of my eyepieces for a 2x effect rather than the 3x effect I get when using the Barlow as a unit.

I tested by, no joke, focusing it on a park bench and counting the bars I could see. It was one of those ones with the metal strips set vertically, so by using different combinations I could gauge the magnification. By testing I was able to determine that the Barlow lens alone provides 2x magnification, and the full tube a shade over 3.

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Here, some pics to demonstrate.

Full collection

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Left to right: The 20mm and 10mm came with the scope. The 10mm is completely outdated by the superior 6mm wide angle. Given the optics they give the same FOV, but the 6mm is at higher magnification. So I see the same objects, just bigger! And the 4mm, and finally 3x Barlow

The 20mm is 15x magnification on my specific scope. The 10mm is 30x, 6mm 50x, and 4mm is 75x

You can attach the Barlow to a lens as seen here

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On my 6mm with this setup I get about 150x magnification

The Barlow lens is a separate item on the bottom.

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And can be attached directly to an eyepiece

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On my 4mm with this setup I get about 150x magnification as well. If I use the full tube I get about 225, but at that point on my scope it starts to smudge the image. You can do it, but the view isn’t really any better. I’d need a bigger diameter scope to get anything usable at higher magnification.

Now my specific scope has an issue with the Barlow. You may notice the black tube in the middle. Well that’s because it didn’t have enough back travel to get quite in focus with the 3x Barlow. I needed about another half inch. So I ordered an extender tube. This, effectively, gives me another inch of focal adjustment towards the mirror, which then gives me perfectly clear views. That’s the trick with a Newtonian scope, you are a bit more limited in focal adjustment compared to a refraction scope.

Hey, whatever, it works. And I was able to get what I needed to make the most of it.

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I’m curious about making this work for my nieces telescope. When I feel a bit better I’ll look up what she has and maybe ask for some recommendations?

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For sure. If she got the scope in your initial post then the lenses I have would provide a very comparable experience. Slightly brighter and slightly higher magnification, but not a huge differential.

But, seriously, that 6mm lens is absolutely magnificent.