Anyone in here know about telescopes?? Advice?

Wow for that price range you could see Uranus

The width of the main lens is important. The wider the main lens, the better the resolution. This is because of diffraction from the main lens.

Also, the wider the main lens, the larger the amount of light that will enter the lens. More light is better.

However, because we're on the ground, underneath a thick, turbulent atmosphere, any lens larger than 10 cm in diameter will not yield any better resolution, because of the atmospheric turbulence.

Any lens larger than 10 cm is only useful for increasing the amount of light.

So, anything larger than 10 cm is probably overkill.

Here's a web page, with reviews on various telescopes.

http://www.weatherman.com/scopes.htm

I'm not a telescope expert, so I just did a google search for the phrase "good entry level telescope".

Here's one company that someone recommended: Celestron.

http://www.telescopes.com/brand/celestron/8197+8267.cfm

This one looks nice, to me. Its lens is 114 mm, which is 11.4 cm.

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/reflecting-telescopes/celestronastromaster114eqreflector.cfm

Again, I'm not a telescope expert. I owned a telescope when I was a kid, but I don't currently own one.

I'd do that google search, and see what the experts recommend.

P.S.: Here's a nice wikipedia article on telescopes, the diffraction limit, and the atmospheric turbulence limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_limit

This one looks pretty good too.

http://www.telescopes.com/telescope...lestronastromaster130eqreflector.cfm#navbar=a