Help please - recommendations for 5 year old

[Physopto]

Hi Laurencommins,

I see you are getting the help you wanted. As I expected the ideas are ever expanding. Astronomy is a great hobby but can become a money pit if you are not careful. The advice you have been given is spot on but a wee bit more costly than I was under the impression you originally wanted to stick to. As has just been said talk to a good vendor such as FLO they will not steer you in the wrong direction.   But do take your time and mull all the ideas over. 

Best of luck.

Derek

[Yearofthegoat]

On Monday, May 02, 2016 at 12:12, happy-kat said:

For sharing then this mount has tracking which means the object will stay in view, is very portable and all can use.

The virtuoso mount is being used by a member on here for their young family favorably. 

I think that might be me

 

I have a daughter 6 and son 5 and we use a Heritage 90 Virtuoso.

The tracking is great because otherwise you have to nudge the mount a lot. Jupiter goes across very quickly at higher magnifications, for example. That puts the little ones off as they can't really do that properly yet. So tracking is a key consideration.

The choice of tube is up to you but with the 90 Mak it's a bit like looking down a microscope which is somewhat more natural than looking in at the side. Not a huge issue though.

We've observed Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon and the little scope has been great. It's fairly robust and easy to set up  again if the children knock it out of alignment. It will likely last a good while too.

HTH!

[Dave In Vermont]

No one design of telescope excells at all things. But a reflector - the one you look into at the side - have a wider field-of-view than the Maksutov - the microscope-type. What this translates to is that the side-viewing Newtonian-Reflector is better for seeing more of the area of space you're looking at. Such as open star-clusters. While the rear-view Maksutov-Cassegrain are great for observing finer planetary details with their narrow field-of-view.

A Newtonian-Reflector:

A Maksutov-Cassegrain:

 

Hope this clarifies things a bit,

Dave