Buying a Telescope One of the great challenges in purchasing a scope is that there are so many to choose from.
Some scopes are best for viewing planets, while others are more adept to observing deep sky objects.
Do not be fooled, department store scopes are a curse to budding astronomers. Quickly manufactured plastic lenses and shoddy mounts ensure that the owners of these scopes will end up both bored and frustrated the first night out. If you cannot afford to purchase a quality scope now, purchase a pair of binoculars instead. Learning the constellations, and brighter deep-sky objects is easier with binoculars. By the time you have saved enough money for a quality scope you will have learned your way around the sky and will be better able to find, and appreciate objects in your new scope.