Step 2: Is your child ready for their own telescope? Otherwise, the color fringing will be unmanageable. If you must get a refracting telescope-and they are seldom worth the price when bought cheap-make sure it uses an achromatic doublet instead of a single glass lens at the front. Avoid these!įor a cheap telescope, you’re not going to get a good quality product if you go for something that is pretending to be a serious observing instrument-it puts all the effort into looking good without actually being good. They’re sold because they look like what the popular conception of a “real” telescope looks like. The constant in these telescopes is that they are usually long, thin tubes, sometimes with singlet plastic lenses, and they have a thin, shaky tripod with a wobbly mount. Celestron, Meade, and Orion all sell these poorly designed telescopes, and sometimes these brands partner with other reputable educational organizations like National Geographic or the National Parks Foundation to sell branded telescopes that are really no good. Some such telescopes are sold by reputable or well-known brands. These are often referred to as “department store refractors,” but reflectors can enter this category as well. They have awful optics, awful accessories, and awful mounts.
Focal Length: the distance between the objective and the point where an image is formed, and in many designs, this is approximately the length of the telescope tube.Catadioptric: A telescope using both mirrors and lenses, usually in the form of a reflector with corrector lenses.Reflector: A telescope using mirrors, with the only lenses being in the eyepiece.Refractor: A telescope using lenses for the objective and the eyepiece.Eyepiece: An accessory added to the telescope to form an image, using lenses.Aperture: The diameter of the objective.Objective: The primary image-forming element of the telescope.Steps to Follow While Getting That First Telescope For Your Kid Step 0: Understand basic terminology In selecting the best telescope for a child in particular, there are some extra important steps to follow. How can we tell apart the hobby-killers from the genuinely good telescopes? The best way to avoid disappointment is to do plenty of research beforehand, and never trust Amazon reviews. So often, parents will excitedly watch their kids open their brand new telescope on their birthday or Christmas, but then watch as it becomes disused in the basement. There are lots of telescopes marketed towards children, and while a few of these are good, the sad truth is that many of them are absolute garbage.