Best Telescopes for the Money

A photon leaps off the sun and, about 500 seconds later, bounces off our Earth. Light has been dancing and rebounding from faraway and nearby celestial objects for more than 13 billion years. It’s time you caught some of it for your very own. That’s what telescopes do; they gather light. But which telescope you choose to collect that radiance will vary according to your needs and budget.looking carefully at a variety of telescopes, we selected the ones that have enough horsepower to drive many years of satisfying observation but that don’t break the bank. You can read our in-depth review of the best hobbyist telescopes here. Celestron SkyProdigy 130 is the first consumer telescope to offer fully automatic alignment. Once set up, it takes just 3 minutes under the night sky for the scope to find itself. Then you can drive this high-quality Newtonian reflector using the wired remote keypad. The SkyProdigy comes with two 1.25-inch Kellner eyepieces (25mm and 9mm). The nicely machined focuser can also accept 2-inch eyepieces.SkyQuest is an 8-inch (203mm) Dobsonian telescope. It’s a big light-bucket with an excellent-quality primary mirror that’s great for hauling in the old tired photons of distant galaxies and nebulae. As long as you don’t intend to take long-exposure astro-photos, the SkyQuest is a fabulous tool. Also, be aware that it’s a bit of a kit: You must screw together the altitude-azimuth mount, fit-up the tilting optical tube and do a few more bits of assembly. But it’s fun to do and the result is a wonderful scope you can use for decades. Celestron’s NexStar 130SLT gives best views of celestial objects of any telescope in its price range. It does not automatically align itself (as its close cousin the SkyProdigy 130 does) but it sets up quickly enough. It’s wired NexRemote keypad lets you fly precisely around the sky, or will autopilot you to any of 4,000 objects in its database. Given its low price, you may have budget left over to buy at least one good 2-inch wide-field eyepiece, for an astonishing “space-walking” visual experience. And, if you want to take portraits of planets and other denizens of deep space, this telescope will accept small cameras.