This page should help you decide as to which telescope is the best to get for your own needs.
Telescopes are often sold on the strength of their magnification with numbers like 400 times magnification. However, in reality the more important factor is the diameter of the hole (aperture) in the telescope that the light enters and a lot astronomy is only done at lower magnification levels. It's also important that telescopes are limited by the environmental conditions - it doesn't matter how good the telescope is but no visual scope can see through cloud. The atmosphere and heat also plays a part and although some nights will look perfectly clear to the naked eye, the image through a telescope might look very wibbley due to heat waves in the atmosphere.
Its a bit like an owl with big eyes for seeing its prey at night, the bigger the eye or aperture, the more light that it is able to capture. The downside with increasing size is that telescopes become more expensive and difficult to carry.
Between 4 and 5 inches is okay for beginners and will let you see images of planets like Saturn and Jupiter but will struggle in looking at deep space objects such as nebula and galaxies.
Sizes between 6 and 8 inches are considered the entry point for serious amateurs as they provide a reasonable compromise between size, weight and cost.
Upwards of 8 inches become very heavy and hugely expensive and only really used by the more professional astronomers.
However, regardless of shape or size, the best telescope for beginners, is one that is used. A lot of people buy telescopes with good intentions, but find that they're too heavy to carry or difficult to set up and use or the view they give is disappointing because they can't see galaxies or nebula dust clouds.
A telescope is no use when its kept in the box - the best telescope is one that is used and enjoyed!
My Telescopes
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The first telescope I bought was a SkyWatcher Heritage 130P. It's very small, light and quick to set up and use on those nights where clouds come and go quickly. It allows you to see craters on the moon and small but very good views of planets like Venus and Jupiter, you can even see the rings of Saturn!
The advantages of this small scope is that it is quite literally a small grab and go telescope - it needs a table to stand on but there's no awkward setup of tripods. The downside of this telescope is that its size limits what can be seen and it doesn't track objects through the night sky.
Everything in the solar system and universe is constantly moving and so as soon as you've set up this type of manual telescope to view an object, it will slowly move out of the eyepiece range. It means that trying to let other people, especially if they're slow to look or experienced in looking through telescopes can be a tricky experience as by the time they've found where the eyepiece is and where to look without poking their eye out, the object will have moved out of view.
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This type of telescope is also more sensitive to changes in heat and its best to leave it for at least an hour for the telescope internals to cool down to outside temperatures.
It does have the ability to use AA batteries for power but they don't last very long and give unpredictable results, especially when cold - the scope will start to move towards an object, draining the batteries to the point of not being able to supply a constant current and that confuses the on board computer and it starts zipping randomly around the sky.
The downside of this scope is that it is large, bulky, requires a power source and takes forever to setup, meaning that the clouds might have rolled in by the time the scope is ready. It also makes a certain amount of noise when moving to find the next object in the sky. The motors aren't quiet but they're not deafeningly loud either.
The advantages of it however are huge - firstly it KNOWS where things are in the sky - you can tell it to find jupiter or the Eskimo Nebula (that can't be seen by the naked eye) and it will move the telescope to the correct position without any fuss. This telescope will open up the night sky if you don't know what's up there or where it is.
Another advantage is that at 8 inches, it can actually see deep sky objects, such as the nebula in orion's belt - or the Eskimo nebula that looks like a ring with a dot in it.
It is of course worth noting that you won't see the brilliant colours as shown in pictures on the television or internet. The light reaching your eye has travelled millions of miles and is very "weak" - all you will likely to see is a black and white image.
For example, the Nebula in the Sword of Orion's belt looks like someone has spilt milk in the sky.
Photographs that show the colours of these deep space objects are taken using cameras with a very long exposure. It is possible to attach a camera to this telescope but the design of the single arm support means that it wobbles about all over the place and you end up with a fuzzy image for those longer exposures.
Another advantage of this type of scope is that the optics, such as mirrors and lenses are much better than the heritage. This means that you can buy a better quality eyepiece and the difference in picture quality can easily be seen.
Some of the pictures I've taken so far with this telescope are below. It is worth noting that they're inverted due to the mirrors within the scope.
It's all very well looking at these fascinating objects in the sky but there will be some nights - ok - a lot of nights where it isn't possible to use the telescope as it is raining or cloudy. Therefore, a good book about the night sky is a great way to learn about what you might have seen - or what you could see if the weather \ light pollution was better.
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A good book that I can recommend is called "Universe", it's got everything you could possibly want to know about stars, galaxies, nebulas, constellations and a whole load of other scientific facts about how it is thought that the universe operates.
Stellarium is a fantastic program that can be downloaded for free from http://www.stellarium.org/. It's a planetarium for your computer and can be used to plan what to look at during an evening's viewing through the telescope. There's a fascinating option to enable the tracking of man made satellites in orbit around the Earth including the International Space Station.
Important bit:
Never ever ever look directly at the sun, especially through any form of magnifying device such as a telescope as it will cause a lot of damage to your eyes. You only ever have one pair of eyes and so they are worth looking after!
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