This page is a work in progress. In the meantime, please check out the excellent resources provided by Jotabout Labs' own Mike Portuesi on Mike's Astronomy Page.
Call it "aperture fever", "eyepiece envy", or whatever else you like, but one of the first things you'll encounter as an ameteur astronomy is the desire to acquire more and better equipment. It's a frequent topic of discussion at astronomy club meetings or star parties. It's certainly a major subject of articles and reviews in astronomy magazines such as Astronomy and Sky & Telescope. In and of itself, it's actually quite interesting to learn about the latest and greatest technology. But therein lies the beginning of the slippery slope. Resist!
The most important equipment to own is not the most expensive. Rather, it's the equiment that you're actually going to use. What is the point of having a 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope if it's too big to fit in your car, or too heavy to set up by yourself? Yes, it would give you better images of dim objects like galaxies or nebulae -- especially if you are attempting astrophotography (of course that's a separate hobby unto itself) -- but it's not going to do any good sitting in your garage.
At this point, it's worth digressing a bit on the distinction between scrimping and frugality. With astronomy equipment at the low end, you will generally get what you pay for, so scrimping on your equipment is generally a bad thing. More specifically, this means that you should probably avoid buying telescopes you see on offer in department stores and many photography shops. My general rule of thumb is to avoid anything that is made of plastic or comes in a box covered with pretty astronomical pictures.
Seek out a store or web site that specializes in astronomy equipment. Of course, the best sources of information are fellow amateur astronomers. They're frequently spotted at astronomy club meetings, so consider seeking out a club in your area and attending some meetings. Many clubs have loaner telescopes, so joining a club is probably the least expensive way to try out various scopes. If you're lucky enough to have a local vendor of astronomical equiment, their staff should also be a good source of information, so visit them and try to reward their efforts by buying from them rather than through mail order, if at all possible.
You should be strive to be frugal in your purchases -- if for not other reason than to leave you with enough ready cash to be able to buy the fancy stuff later once you decide what you're really interested in observing. You might consider spending a little bit more up front, but you probably shouldn't be looking at the top-of-the-line models to start. Certainly not as a beginning amateur.
What does this mean? Well, for starters it means that you should probably be considering telescopes in the classical "sweet spots". The most important metric for a given telescope is its light-gathering capability, so the following measurements refer to the aperture of the telescope designs. The sweet spots for telescopes (at least in my opinion) are:
For information regarding the different telescope designs, click on the following links:
{links to telescope designs}Of these, the most expensive quality optics will be associated with the refractor design. It's more expensive to build high quality lenses (the functional bit of refractors) than it is to build good mirrors (the functional bit of reflectors). If you're particularly interested in lunar/planetary observing or in studies of binary/multiple stars, then consider splurging on a large refractor. Otherwise, you should probably consider one of the other telescope designs. The Schmidt-Cassegrain and Maksutov designs are good multipurpose telescopes, but the greatest value for money comes from the Newtonian/Dobsonian design. These give you the largest apertures for the least outlay.
Here are my personal recommendations:
{list of useful links here}
Cheap astronomy equiment is bad.
Inexpensive astronomy equiment can be good -- sometimes quite good indeed.