Seeing Jupiter or Saturn for the first time through a telescope is an experience that most of us will never forget. It's incredible to see a speck of light in the sky resolve into a detailed orb in space.
It's important to temper your expectations, planets seen through a beginner telescope are small, and the view is limited by atmospheric conditions and experience, but with the telescopes in this collection you can see the rings of Saturn, and the cloud bands on Jupiter. They're also great for looking at the Messier objects (a list of 110 interesting objects in the night sky).
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 best value in this collection is the PowerSeeker 80AZS. This is a short tube telescope that's widely used for visual observing, and as an accessory on more advanced astrophotography rigs. It's an inexpensive telescope that delivers better views than the price suggests.
The SkyWatcher Star Travel telescopes are very nice optical tubes on sturdy mounts. These are excellent options for visual astronomy. They're also great for nature or bird watching, and they're very easy to connect a DSLR to for some basic astrophotography.
The NexStar 6se and 4se are great goto (computerized telescopes). These use high quality optics to put together a compact and powerful telescope for viewing objects in the solar system and beyond. These are great scopes for the serious beginner, there are all kinds of accessories that can help this telescope to grow with you.
Last, but not least, we have the Heritage 150 and 130 models. These are bigger aperture telescopes that can deliver very bright views. They are extremely compact for their mirror size and are easy to take camping. All you need is a sturdy table and these will open the night sky to you. The Virtuoso 150 and 130 build on these excellent optics with a motorized mount that will find and track different planets and night-sky objects.
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) refractor will give ideal planetary views with 100-140x magnification. For most of the telescopes on this list that means a 5mm eyepiece.
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.
