OK, lets get this back on topic here.

The first thing you need to do is decide what you want to look at. Then fit that in to your budget.

You want to look at the moon, perhaps a few planets. Then invest in a good pair of binoculars. I suggest a pair of 50x10 You really don’t want to go over 10x, you simply wont be able to hold them steady. The first number is the lens size. The higher this number the better. This gives you more light gathering. This will allow you to see the moon and nice detail, and resolve planets to a small disk. Jupiter will be around the size of a pea held at arms length. You wont really see cloud bands or the great red spot. But you will see the 4 major moons as points of light. You will also be able to look at large star fields, such as defused clusters. In dark skis you will see Andromoda galaxy and the Orion nebula, but not in much detail.

If you want to look at planets, and perhaps some of the brighter Messier objects then you will need to get a setup with tracking and goto. Start around 90mm to about 125mm. Here you will start to see wisps in the nebulas, but don’t expect much.

If you want to go deep sky you will need to start looking at 8” or larger. Price really starts to clime here. Once you get to 10” it goes threw the roof. Also, these scopes get heavy. My OTA alone was 65 pounds. Here you will see planets in detail. I have pictures of the ice caps on Mars, and bands on Jupiter. I also got a picture of Pluto. Great detail can be seen in nebulas and galaxies. I had also photographed several comets showing detail in the tail. I have pictures of all this if you want to see.

The rule is, if you can’t afford a lot, but binoculars. Fine your local astro club and find out when they have a star party. Go there and talk to people. Look threw their scopes. Don’t be disappointed you won’t see color; it won’t look like the pictures on the boxes, or in the magazines. I hope this answers your questions.

Dan, he'* looking for a STARTER scope USED to learn from.

Let'* steer him to something that meets his basic needs and budget, and let him develop his hobby from there.

That'* why I pointed him at Astromart. He will find the answers he needs there. My last post also gave him all the information he needs to decide.

How about looking for the local astronomers club. Here in SW PA, we have a local astronomers club and they host star parties where you can learn about telescopes, and the hobby of astronomy. I hooked up with them when we held our Field Day (ham radio emergency preparedness event) in conjunction with a star party. Loads of fun. Saw my first Iridium flare that night, and it was quite cloudy out too. Also got to hold a space shuttle tile and have a torch trained on the tile while I held it. These guys even have a small observatory here in Ming Park. Really cool stuff to be seen and learned with the local clubs. I know they offered to allow me to look at and thru every telescope on the property, ones owned by the observatory and any private individual'* scopes. That was really cool. It was like test driving a car to see if i liked it. To date, I have not purchased a scope, only because my time is so limited, I can't see getting into yet another hobby and not enjoy it all the way. IfI had the time, I'd be at every star party they hold....those are fun and educational too.

I have a cheap one in the closet you can have if you were local. Its called the jason Mercury 280.

I thinks its the same as this

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-JASON-CO...2em118Q2el1247

wow , theres a lot to these telescopes. i found one of these for $140
what do ya think ?

http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-Nexs.../dp/B00004ZD38

That'* another good quality scope with goto. It falls in to teh great for moon, not to bad for planets, and will show up some of the brighter deep sky. Real faint stuff will be very hard to find. I think yo uwill be happy with that one.