Thinking of buying a telescope? Thinking of treating yourself or maybe a child to
such an educational present? Beware the gift actually meets with your expectations and encourages the consumer to learn.
Unfortunately there are a lot of terrible telescopes on the market and even much more of them within the shops at Christmas time. These poor high quality telescopes are frequently sold in department and low cost stores exactly where the staff don't know one finish from your other and are merely not experienced enough to provide you with any real guidance.
These telescopes frequently are available in extraordinary looking boxes total with artists impressions and pictures of faraway planets and nebulae all in crisp clear color. The reality is far removed from those pictures! Most of these cheap low cost store scopes are made with poor quality glass, mirrors and eyepieces. If that's not bad enough, they also include flimsy mounts that shake and vibrate so a lot they spoil what little see you may have had achieved anyway.
One particular warning you need to heed is to view out for that kind that come with large bold lettering boasting of 600x magnification or other big quantity. An professional would not believe like that because magnification isn't the goal, achieving a great see is the prime objective.
An over-magnified image is just a fuzzy blob and as a result pointless to possess. Also you won't be seeing a lot color other than that from the close by planets, these beautiful pictures of nebulae are usually photos taken from your Hubble Space Telescope!
Also don't get fixated around the size with the scope simply because those larger scopes tend to not perform at their greatest within the cities and suburbs exactly where mild pollution is such an problem. Keep in mind the smaller the scope the simpler it is to use so it'll tend to get used much more and there's no stage investing money on the scope that doesn't get used a lot!
Now if you would really like some actual advice on how you can choose a telescope or want some recommendations on good but low cost scopes for different situations then take a look at the articles linked beneath.