Inexpensive starter scope

[rblunden]

My brother is looking to buy his son an inexpensive starter scope (£80) max. My nephew has a form of autism and a fairly low attention span, so it would need to be something reasonably easy to set up. It also needs to be portable. I wondered about the Skywatcher Heritage 76 Mini Dobsonian, and my brother was looking at the Celestron 21035 Travel Scope 70. Any thoughts or other suggestions? Thanks.

[ollypenrice]

The budget is low so buying second hand would make sense. Might you not get more fun out of a pair of large binoculars on a cheap second hand camera tripod? The Revelation 15x70s are excellent and you might already have a tripod?

Olly

[rblunden]

Thanks for the good suggestions, Olly. However I forgot to mention that this will be a birthday present (15th January) and that the idea of a 'telescope' has been firmly implanted.

[jgs001]

It might be worth considering something like Startravel - Skywatcher Startravel 80 OTA (I know it's a little bit over). The reason being, it looks like a "proper" telescope (expectations )... you point it up and look in the back end of it... and if you have a semi reasonable tripod it'll work nicely. If no tripod and the looking like a "proper" telescope isn't an issue, then the mini dob is probably the best bet.

[arad85]

It's going to depend on what he is more interested in seeing. Both scopes are fairly short focal length, so you won't get much detail out of the planets. The refractor will also be an achromat, so you will get blue fringing on the moon (at least). This may not bother your brothers son though! Personally, at that price point, I'd probably go with the refractor - no secondary obstruction, no collimation issues, longer focal length so higher mag. from longer focal length eyepieces...