*Delurking* I could use some telescope purchasing advice, if anyone's interested in helping. My astonomy knowledge is quite limited.
My 9 year old son asked for a telescope for Christmas (amongst a million other things). My mom bought him a $37 Toys-R-Us one which I think is likely little better than a toy, so I convinced her to return it and said I'd get him a better one. I'd love to encourage him in this direction and don't want to get something crappy that would turn him off, but at the same time, we've already bought stuff for him, my budget is quite limited, and I don't want to spend several hundreds on a telescope he might quickly lose interest in. A lot of the advice I found web searching basically says any telescope under $250 is junk and to buy a good set of binoculars instead. But then that's usually followed up by saying that you need to spend at least $100-$150 to find a decent set of binoculars. The problem with that advice is that binoculars likely won't really capture his imagination/interest and that $100 (or maybe $150) is the most I'd want to spend. But then most of this advice seems to be directed against toy/department store refraction telescopes marketed based on "675X" super-magnification, while the ones I'm looking at are reflection-type and make no such claims: the Celestron PowerSeeker 114EQ and PowerSeeker 127EQ are both around $100. The few reviews I could find seem to be a mixed bag of people very delighted and very disappointed, which leaves me wary. Alternately, the Celestron Firstscope is quite cheap ($50), has some (almost suspiciously) good reviews, and seems aimed at kids. But it's a tabletop model (which seems like it'd be awkward if you'd have to bring a table with you to a park or into your back yard), and a few pictures I've seen of its output view make me wonder if the magnification is at the "why bother" level. We don't need to spot nebulas, etc - I'd just like him to be able to resolve enough extra detail looking at the moon, stars and other naked-eye objects that he might be motivated to explore further. Is that possible with a scope under $150? Or am I wasting my time? Would $200 or $250 do much better? Is giving him no telescope better than giving him a disappointing one? Thanks, -Bryon
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