Real telescopes for very young children

[jnb]

I've been asked what I would recommend for a first telescope for someone with young children (4-6 years old) at a budget of about £100.

Now I know what I'd recommend at higher budgets and I know what I'd recommend for older children but I thought I'd throw it open to the collective wisdom of SGL

Opinions?

[umadog]

Other than making sure they can look through it, I'd more or less forget the children in this equation. The adult would have to do, or at the very least supervise, everything. So the adult should choose what works best for them. At 100 quid the choices would look the same with or without the kids being considered.

[happy-kat]

The heritage 100p falls within budget with a little to spare

[gkec]

Contrarily I would say do consider what children expect and go for a refractor.  Pointing is a lot easier than with a Newtonian.  Even for the adults!  A Skywatcher  ST80 on a mount is slightly over £100, and I'm always vary wary of spending other peoples money, but I think it is a good scope and looks cool and is very portable.

[Dave Lloyd]

+1 for the st80. A "real" telescope for little ones. I think it might have to be an alt-az mount though.

[Rocket_the_Raccoon]

At that price, I would suggest:

- a 60mm or 70mm refractor, easier to maintain and to aim at objects plus no need for collimation.

- the ones from Meade and Orion have a red-dot finder which will be MUCH more useful then the single-element, dim, narrow-field 5x24mm that comes with the Celestron equivalents

- personally, I would prefer a long focal length one rather than a short-tube. Economical optics performs better at slower focal-ratio, and for the moons and the planets (which are prime objects for scopes like these), a 70x given by the stock 10mm eyepiece is better than the 40x on a short-tube using the same eyepiece.

- unfortunately, at that price range, your alt-azimuth mount would probably has only vertical slow-motion only. An AZ-3 mount equipped 70mm refractor would cost around 50% more.

Hope these helps.

[happy-kat]

Picking up on the comment above at Firstlight Optics in the UK (can't see where OP is) the Skywatcher Mercury 705 on the AltAz3 mount is £95 this has slow motions control in both left right and up down but they would be to strong for a 4 year perhaps to turn.

Though the Mercury is f7 so perhaps not as slow as Rocket_the_Racoon above was mentioning, it is on a good mount (I find it useful for my purposes) with a 500mm focal length and 70mm aperature.

This is a review from a 12 year olds use (written by parent). here.

I have one it is a lot of telescope and mount but there is chromatic aberation with it, more than with my ST80. a 10mm eyepeice gives x50 with the Mercury.

[Alien 13]

As already mentioned the heritage 100p and SW mercury 705 with AZ3 are the only two I know of that hits the £100 budget both have advantages over each other but for a 4-6 year old the refractor has a better chance of remaining on a selected target when swapping observers.

Alan