Choosing
Nobody buys a second telescope for the same reasons as the first. It is bought because the first was too heavy to carry out, too small for faint objects, too slow to set up, or would not track. Each of those points at a different instrument.
A larger Dobsonian is the most aperture per unit of anything, and the honest question is where it will live and how many trips it takes to move.
A short refractor or a folded catadioptric goes out on a weeknight. Used regularly, either shows more over a year than a large instrument used twice.
An equatorial with a drive, or a computerised mount. The tube may not need to change at all — which is the argument for buying the mount rather than a whole telescope.
That is aperture and sky darkness together. A larger tube helps; a darker site helps more, and costs the price of the petrol.
203 mm aperture · 1200 mm focal length
A 203/1200 Newtonian on a Dobsonian base — the largest aperture in this group, sold with an accessory set and a mount with nothing to align.
Best for: The observer who has decided that aperture matters more than portability
≈ €529
8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain · computerised GoTo fork
An eight-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain on a single-arm computerised fork mount, with a 40 000-object database and the maker’s SkyAlign alignment routine.
Best for: An observer who wants serious aperture that still fits in a car boot
≈ $1499 / £1500 / €1537
50 mm aperture · 360 mm focal length
A 50/360 refractor for children and beginners, supplied with two eyepieces, a 1.5x erecting lens, a Moon filter and a folding tripod that packs into a bag.
Best for: A child’s first telescope that has to fit in hand luggage
≈ £17
80 mm aperture · 400 mm focal length · Bluetooth PushTo
An 80/400 refractor whose built-in sensors report where it is pointing to a free phone app, which then guides the observer to a target with on-screen arrows.
Best for: A beginner who wants help finding objects without the cost or weight of a GoTo mount
≈ €259
80 mm aperture · 600 mm focal length
An 80/600 refractor on an alt-azimuth head, supplied with two eyepieces, a 5x24 finder, a phone adapter and a backpack.
Best for: A first 80 mm that has to travel in a rucksack
≈ $100 / £70 / €130
Only if the first telescope was limited by aperture rather than by how often it was carried outside. A larger tube that stays indoors shows less than a smaller one that does not.
When the limit was focal length in a manageable tube — planets and double stars at high magnification, from a small space.
It does a different thing. It stacks exposures and shows a processed image on a screen; it does not put photons in your eye. Several observers own both for exactly that reason.
Any figure written into the body of this page was true on the day it was written. The amount shown next to each instrument is requested from the retailer as the page loads, and it is that amount, not the text, that stands.
Telescopes and mounts are discounted over and over through the year — hardest of all in the weeks before Christmas, which is exactly when most of them are bought — and a struck-through figure on its own says nothing whatever about what the same model was charged at four weeks ago. UniverTrack keeps a week-by-week record for each retailer, so a discount is measured against a figure somebody genuinely paid instead of one invented for the sale — and it says when the moment to buy has genuinely arrived.
