Beginner Deep Sky Visual Telescopes

These scopes will give incredible views of the planets, mind blowing views of the moon, and some really interesting views of deep sky objects like galaxies and nebulas. They're also great for looking at the Messier objects (a list of 110 interesting objects in the night sky).

For a bit of context, the human eye is capable of seeing approximately 10,000 stars on it's own. That number goes up to 50,000,000 when you use a 10 inch telescope. That's 5,000x more! That extra light gathering power delivers extraordinary views of objects in our solar system, and will also start to reveal structure and detail in distant galaxies and nebulae. You will never outgrow these scopes, they are perfect for visual astronomy.

In order to get the most out of these telescopes we recommend a good quality high-power eyepiece. As a general rule of thumb we recommend 25-35x magnification per inch of aperture. For example, a 100mm (4 inch) telescope will give ideal planetary views with 100-140x magnification. For most of the telescopes on this list that means a 5mm eyepiece like this.  

Planetary and lunar viewing are dramatically improved when contrasting filters are used. For example, using a blue filter on Jupiter will highlight the cloud bands and red eye. Using an ND25 filter on the moon will give reveal much better detail and contrast on the lunar surface. The FS2 filter set includes an ND25 filter for looking at the moon, and three colour filters that can be used on the planets and other night-sky objects.

Our top recommendations are the Celestron StarSense Explorer telescopes. These are great telescopes that help you to navigate the night sky by leveraging a cell phone to tell you what you're looking at and to help you find other planets or stars in the sky.

The SkyWatcher dobsonian telescopes use similar optics to the Celestron and come in classic versions, and flextube (collapsible). These are more portable but may need to be collimated more frequently than their solid tube counterparts.  

Collimating a dobsonian is a manageable, and should be done regularly.  We have a great instructional video on collimating newtonian and dobsonian telescopes here.  We also have a great tool for getting the job done here.  

The NexStar 8se is the most popular and commercially successful telescope in the world. It combines schmidt-cassegrain optics with goto (computerized) technology to deliver a fantastic viewing experience. These are perfect scopes for the serious beginner, there are all kinds of accessories that can help this telescope to grow with you.