Best home use telescope

Do you want to buy the best home use telescope but don't know where to begin? How can you tell what telescope is best for a beginner? Newcomers to astronomy are confronted with a seemingly overwhelming assortment of various types of telescopes, brands, and price ranges.

It can be challenging to navigate through the terminology of actual astronomy and figure out which is most suited to your viewing needs if you're a newbie.

When buying your best home use telescope, there's one basic thing to keep in mind: make sure you choose an equipment you'll actually use.

If your initial telescope is too large and unwieldy, or needs a lot of tinkering, you'll be thrown back, it'll be difficult to transport, and it'll end up in the garage or garden shed, never to use it again.

Take a look at our selection of the best home use telescope for beginners in astronomy.

Celestron StarSense Explorer LT 80AZ

best telescope for viewing planets and galaxies price

The StarSense Explorer LT 80AZ is our finest budget refractor telescope. Its StarSense technology allows it be an excellent telescope for beginners.

The scope has an aperture of 80mm, or little more than 3 inches, although that is not the best feature of this type.

Celestron's unique StarSense technology pairs your smartphone with this amazing telescope to assist you in finding any object within its reach. Simply download the app, enter your unique code, and the phone securely connects to the telescope, using your camera and built-in star charts to determine where it's pointing.

Then, ask the app to display any viewable night sky object, and the phone will direct you in positioning the telescope such that the object you're searching for is dead center in the eyepiece.

There will be no more star-hopping, technical alignment, or guesswork. This is a great approach for new astronomers, both young and old, to get started with enjoyable stargazing right away.

Telescope for home use

Bare in mind that this is a beginner's telescope. Because the 80mm lens doesn't let in a lot of light, you'll be gazing at the Moon and brilliant planets for the majority of your time. Gas clouds and brighter galaxies, as well as a slew of double stars, will be revealed by the Explorer model.

Because of its f/11 focal ratio, it is a 'slow' scope, which means greater magnifications and narrower fields of view for any particular eyepiece. This is appropriate for a telescope that will be used almost entirely on the brightest and nearest objects.

2 eyepieces, a 10mm and a 25mm, are included in the box. These provide magnification of 36x and 90x, respectively. A 2x Barlow lens doubles these magnifications, allowing you magnificent views of Saturn's rings, Lunar craters and Jupiter's finest moons.

This is an excellent tiny starting telescope for those on a budget who just wish to see the best of the night sky without having to learn how to steer the stars manually.

Pros

StarSense technology
Simple to set up
Excellent for novices

Cons

Mount vibration
Eyepieces of poor quality

Celestron AstroMaster 114EQ - Best home use telescope

The AstroMaster 114EQ scope is the best affordable telescope in the reflector category.

This Newtonian reflector telescope with a four-and-a-half-inch aperture is backed by an equatorial mount. It is a highly popular beginner's telescope.

This model is somewhat sluggish, featuring a focal ratio of f/8.7. In practice, though, it's been built to be a "jack of all trades," capable of detailed, high magnification images of planets as well as wide-field views of gas clouds and galaxies and low magnification. All of this makes it suitable for newcomers to stargazing.

Under a dark sky, this model exposes a large number of celestial objects. Brighter objects work best with a narrower scope, so the Moon, Saturn's rings, and Venus' crescent are all excellent possibilities for study.

The AstroMaster performs admirably for deep sky objects (DSOs), but it is limited by physics: its 4.5′′ aperture only collects enough light to see brighter DSOs. However, there are many of these to discover. Objects like the Great Hercules Cluster and the Andromeda Galaxy are well within its grasp.

This AstroMaster has two eyepieces, a 10 mm and a 20 mm, with magnifications of 100x and 50x, respectively. Because there is no Barlow lens and the eyepieces are simple, you'll probably want to replace or at least supplement what's included for more possibilities.

The mount is the one thing to keep an eye on, like with a number of telescopes at this price point. It's durable and capable for the job at hand, and it doesn't require any equipment to put up, but it's not perfect. When you adjust the scope or change the focus, expect some vibration.

Overall, this is an excellent best home use telescope that can display both deep sky objects and planetary and moon detail. It's simple to set up straight out of the package and simple enough for kids to use.