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Since the time of Galileo, tele­scopes have under­gone sig­nif­i­cant changes. Even the most bud­getary device today is bet­ter than devices of the last cen­tu­ry. Astron­o­my has become a mass hob­by, a hob­by for unhur­ried and pas­sion­ate about the nat­ur­al sci­ences of roman­tics.

In our review, we tried to show the best ama­teur mod­els. The price of pro­fes­sion­al tele­scopes starts from 60–100 thou­sand rubles and has no lim­it. All opti­cal ele­ments in this are made of high qual­i­ty glass. And the eye­pieces for it need to be pur­chased appro­pri­ate. It also affects the weight — pro­fes­sion­al mod­els are heav­ier. They are sup­ple­ment­ed with func­tions such as auto-guid­ance to plan­ets and stars, an elec­tron­ic find­er: thanks to it, the qual­i­ty of astropho­to increas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

But if you are not doing research work, but just going to admire the plan­ets, con­duct class­es in a school cir­cle, or want to intro­duce your child to a new hob­by, then it will be enough to choose a high-qual­i­ty ama­teur mod­el. Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da presents an overview of the best obser­va­tion tele­scopes in 2022.

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Editor’s Choice

Levenhuk Skyline Plus 120S

This tele­scope mod­el in 2022 is the best for observ­ing at the junc­tion of class­es — ama­teur and expe­ri­enced. If you have already tried to work with tele­scopes of the equa­to­r­i­al mount scheme, burn with obser­va­tions of galax­ies and want to get not just a tele­scope, but a mod­el that allows for per­son­al growth, then pay atten­tion to this New­ton­ian reflec­tor.

Most of the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem and dis­tant neb­u­lae and galax­ies will open to your eyes. Out of the box we get every­thing you need for obser­va­tions — you don’t have to buy any­thing in addi­tion. Two eye­pieces (focal length 10 and 25 mm), a Bar­low lens, an alu­minum tri­pod and even an acces­so­ry tray. Unless a lit­tle lat­er look at the adapter for astropho­to. The man­u­fac­tur­er — an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny — gives a life­time war­ran­ty on this tele­scope.

We would not rec­om­mend it to those who are just start­ing their jour­ney in astron­o­my because of the equa­to­r­i­al mount scheme. On the one hand, it is more flex­i­ble and gives an advan­tage: our plan­et rotates and the Earth fol­lows the solar orbit, objects in the sky are con­stant­ly shift­ing rel­a­tive to us. Such a mount com­pen­sates for the dis­place­ment due to its device. But before that, flex­i­ble set­tings are required depend­ing on the coor­di­nates of the place from which obser­va­tions are made. You will need a com­pass, exact coor­di­nates of the place of obser­va­tion (this is not a prob­lem with mod­ern GPS on your phone), knowl­edge of the time zone and an ency­clo­pe­dia or a vir­tu­al star map with coor­di­nates. That is, before the start of obser­va­tions, it is nec­es­sary to car­ry out a prepara­to­ry stage each time.

Characteristics

Lens diam­e­ter:	114 mm
Focal length:	900 mm
Max. use­ful mag­ni­fi­ca­tion:	228x
Mount:	equa­to­r­i­al
Seek­er:	optic

Pros and cons

The rich equip­ment allows us to call this tele­scope a uni­ver­sal device for observ­ing pop­u­lar deep space objects and our solar sys­tem, accept­able weight (10 kg), sta­bil­i­ty

Get ready to dive into the basics of optics align­ment and man­age your equa­to­r­i­al mount

Top 10 telescopes for observations in 2022 according to KP

1. Sky-Watcher BK 707AZ2

This is a very pop­u­lar tele­scope mod­el for begin­ners in observ­ing the sky. Also suit­able for stu­dents. It comes with a Bar­low lens and two eye­pieces. Thanks to their com­bi­na­tion, dif­fer­ent lev­els of mag­ni­fi­ca­tion are obtained: from 28x to 140x. Its con­ve­nience lies in mobil­i­ty. It weighs sev­en kilo­grams, so it’s not a prob­lem, for exam­ple, to take it to nature.

Due to a good increase, it will be pos­si­ble to look at lunar craters, catch comets and explore oth­er plan­ets in the solar sys­tem. Since this obser­va­tion tele­scope is made using the most pop­u­lar refrac­tor tech­nol­o­gy, chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions are inher­ent in it: at high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, a pur­ple bor­der will be vis­i­ble around objects. How­ev­er, she’s not that strong. The tool is mount­ed azimuthal­ly — this is also the sim­plest prin­ci­ple. The device can be adjust­ed hor­i­zon­tal­ly and ver­ti­cal­ly, and it also sim­ply rotates and goes to the point you need to observe the plan­ets and stars.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Synta BK 1149EQ1

You can see a very sim­i­lar mod­el in the Sky­watch­er cat­a­log. The secret is that this is the same com­pa­ny, it just changes its name depend­ing on the region of sale. But they sup­ply both brands to Rus­sia.

This mod­el is suit­able for advanced ama­teurs. The focal length is sol­id — 900 mm. In com­bi­na­tion with lens­es, this will be a wor­thy tele­scope for observ­ing many celes­tial objects — stars and plan­ets. For the price, it’s almost like a gift! Due to the fact that the lens­es are aligned accord­ing to the New­ton­ian sys­tem, the image does not have an iri­des­cent out­line, like refrac­tors.

How­ev­er, this mod­el can­not be called com­pact: on an aver­age Russ­ian bal­cony, this one will take up three-quar­ters of the space. But in addi­tion to the Moon, you can eas­i­ly look at the phas­es of Jupiter, the rings of Sat­urn and Mars. Star clus­ters and galax­ies will be vis­i­ble. But, of course, you should not expect pic­tures like those from NASA. In addi­tion to reg­u­lar lens­es, the set includes a shelf for acces­sories. We also note the smooth­ness of the course dur­ing obser­va­tions.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Sky-Watcher BK MAK127 AZGT SynScan GOTO

The price of the mod­el in 2022 is deter­mined not only by the qual­i­ty of the opti­cal sys­tem, but to a greater extent by the pres­ence of auto­mat­ic guid­ance. A con­trol pan­el with a micro­com­put­er is fixed on the site, into the base of which the coor­di­nates of many objects of our solar sys­tem are loaded. Just imag­ine — there are almost 43 thou­sand objects inside the device!

A cou­ple of clicks on the keys — and the device itself points to the desired con­stel­la­tion or plan­et. Thanks to a sol­id focal length of 1500 mm, the relief of large objects, dim stars and neb­u­lae is vis­i­ble. At the same time, the device itself is quite com­pact — this is an impor­tant nuance when choos­ing a tele­scope for obser­va­tions. It weighs about 8 kg, it can be fold­ed into a large trav­el back­pack.

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It comes with two eye­pieces of the Kell­ner sys­tem and a Bar­low lens. Through an adapter to a SLR cam­era with this, high-qual­i­ty astropho­to sam­ples are obtained.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

4. LEVENHUK Skyline Travel Sun 70

Anoth­er good ama­teur refrac­tor mod­el. There is a back­pack includ­ed. Best of all, such a tele­scope will show itself when observ­ing the city — away from a large num­ber of light sources. Due to the diag­o­nal prism, the image does not turn upside down, so it can also be used for day­time fau­na obser­va­tions. The kit includes a pro­tec­tive film — a solar fil­ter, so that it is pos­si­ble to observe spots on the Sun.

With stan­dard eye­pieces you can get mag­ni­fi­ca­tion up to 200x. Although the pic­ture, of course, will suf­fer great­ly with such a zoom. But at 140x — this is the para­me­ter declared as the max­i­mum use­ful one, the qual­i­ty will be accept­able. An alu­minum tri­pod is includ­ed, but it is not very sta­ble — keep this in mind when choos­ing this mod­el as the best tele­scope for obser­va­tions.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

5. Celestron Travel Scope 70

The first thing that lures buy­ers to this tele­scope for obser­va­tion is a back­pack. The bag is qual­i­ta­tive­ly sewn and the whole set fits per­fect­ly inside. Lots of com­part­ments, var­i­ous pock­ets for small things. Cus­tomers also praise the instruc­tions, writ­ten in an under­stand­able lan­guage. There­fore, if you decide to pur­chase this mod­el for a child, then a mid­dle-aged school­boy will fig­ure it out per­fect­ly.

The focal length here, by the stan­dards of tele­scopes, is short — 400 mm. Some of the parts here are plas­tic — so the price is less, and the weight is small — less than 3 kg. The kit comes with a clas­sic pho­to tri­pod — mediocre qual­i­ty. If you do not lay it out and stand bent over in three deaths, then every­thing is fine with him. But as soon as you pull it up, it imme­di­ate­ly los­es sta­bil­i­ty.

This tele­scope is only suit­able for observ­ing plan­ets and stars for begin­ners. For an advanced ama­teur, it will seem too sim­ple. With the help of an adapter, you can attach a cam­era to it — there are many guides on the Web on this sub­ject. There­fore, the device can be con­sid­ered as an inex­pen­sive ver­sion of a long-focus lens for astropho­to enthu­si­asts.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

6. Sky-Watcher Dob 150/750 Retractable Virtuoso GTi GOTO

Pay atten­tion to the word Retractable in the name of the mod­el. It means that the tele­scope belongs to the line of fold­ing mod­els. This means that the tele­scope is mobile and com­pact. The tube of this tele­scope is fold­able: from 42 to 69 cm. Despite the fact that the tele­scope is priced clos­er to the afford­able seg­ment of devices for observ­ing plan­ets and stars, the com­pa­ny has become gen­er­ous with high-qual­i­ty optics.

The set includes a pair of eye­pieces (10 and 25 mm), an adjust­ment eye­piece (before the first use, be sure to car­ry out this pro­ce­dure, details are described in the instruc­tions). If a pro­tec­tive cov­er for the sec­ondary mir­ror was also includ­ed in the kit to absorb city light­ing, it would be great. In gen­er­al, this is a decent tele­scope, the gold­en mean.

The com­pa­ny’s cat­a­log also has a mod­el with­out the GTi mark­ing, it is not equipped with auto­mat­ic guid­ance, but it costs less.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

7. BRESSER Venus 76/700 AZ

The set of this best observ­ing tele­scope per­fect­ly meets the stan­dards of 2022. In addi­tion to stan­dard eye­pieces, the kit also includes an adapter for a smart­phone with suc­tion cups, with which you can take pic­tures of the plan­ets on your mobile phone. But this is not as easy as it might seem at first glance, there are many guides on the Inter­net to help astropho­tog­ra­phers.

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The mod­el is intend­ed for plan­e­tary and lunar obser­va­tions. The man­u­fac­tur­er tried to reduce chro­matic­i­ty as much as pos­si­ble in order to achieve a pic­ture with­out extra­ne­ous col­ors. The opti­cal scheme is a New­ton reflec­tor.

The tri­pod is made of alu­mini­um. In the mid­dle of the spac­ers there is a shelf for acces­sories — pay atten­tion to this nuance. Thanks to the com­bi­na­tion of eye­pieces, mag­ni­fi­ca­tion up to 525x can be adjust­ed. But with such a pow­er­ful zoom, the image qual­i­ty will be low. Opti­mal qual­i­ty is achieved at 175x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion. The box also con­tains a map of the Moon and a disk with a plan­e­tar­i­um soft­ware for PC.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

8 Discovery Sky Trip ST70

Tele­scope under the brand name of a well-known tele­vi­sion chan­nel of the “sci-pop” genre. Cor­po­rate col­or, logo and deliv­ery set. In fact, these are prod­ucts of the mar­ket giant Leeuwen­hoek, which is not so bad. This mod­el is a fair­ly com­pact refrac­tor. In the box with it is a small ency­clo­pe­dia that will help an astron­o­my lover get start­ed.

The eye­piece shows the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem and their satel­lites, how­ev­er, with­out craters, satel­lites and details. You can also see dis­tant bright stars. And by installing a diag­o­nal prism from the kit, you can turn the tele­scope into a tele­scope for ter­res­tri­al obser­va­tions.

The best tele­scope for inter­est­ed teenagers and begin­ners. A nice bonus out of the box is an adapter for astropho­tog­ra­phy on a smart­phone.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

9 National Geographic 114/500

This is a col­lab­o­ra­tion of famous brands — NG and BRESSER. Small-sized mod­el for place­ment on a flat sur­face — a win­dow sill, a table. Weighs about 3.5 kg. The inside of the spy­glass is mat­te black­ened to make tele­scope obser­va­tions bet­ter. The Dob­son mount is made of chip­board, it has an azimuth scale and a built-in com­pass. There are recess­es for eye­pieces.

Too bad the legs are made of plas­tic. Due to the stiff­ness of the mech­a­nism, when turn­ing, the tele­scope begins to slide. The reg­u­lar col­li­ma­tor find­er is equipped with two lev­els of bright­ness. It’s a shame that despite the above-aver­age price, the man­u­fac­tur­er saved on met­al and made many parts from plas­tic.

The eye­pieces them­selves give a soapy pic­ture, but for lovers of this qual­i­ty it is enough, you can also buy replace­ment eye­pieces. Because the opti­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the device are on top, but reg­u­lar eye­pieces spoil the impres­sion of observ­ing the plan­ets.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

10. Veber UMKA 76/300

For seri­ous obser­va­tions of plan­ets and stars, this com­pact mod­el is not suit­able. But you can look at the Moon through a spe­cial fil­ter in the kit and some of the plan­ets of our sys­tem, with their favor­able posi­tion in the sky, is pos­si­ble. This is the best tele­scope for school­child­ren. You can also con­sid­er it as an orig­i­nal gift for an adult.

Comes with two eye­pieces and a 2x Bar­low lens. There­fore, you can change, rearrange and com­bine optics here, so the begin­ner will have some­thing to do. The assem­bly is of high qual­i­ty, noth­ing stag­gers, does not play.

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The man­u­fac­tur­er pro­vides a life­time war­ran­ty for this mod­el. You can buy a cou­ple of eye­pieces for it to increase the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, but each of them costs as much as a third of the entire tele­scope. There­fore, if you choose this tele­scope for a child, and he liked astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­tions, then it is bet­ter to buy a more pro­fes­sion­al mod­el in the future. Note that the pipe is made of good met­al, and it rotates not only up and down, but also hor­i­zon­tal­ly. In this case, the stand remains sta­tion­ary.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

Leaders of the Past

Meade Infinity 102mm

The focus­ing unit is cast entire­ly from met­al — this is a plus for the strength and qual­i­ty of obser­va­tions. Man­u­fac­tur­ers have made very grip­py han­dles, for which it is com­fort­able to choose the direc­tion. A bonus is microm­e­ter knobs, the smooth rota­tion of which helps to cen­ter the object of obser­va­tion and guide it. A col­li­ma­tor sight is mount­ed on top of the tele­scope: thanks to the red LED on the lens, it is con­ve­nient to choose the direc­tion. The man­u­fac­tur­er com­pletes this tele­scope for obser­va­tions with one of the best tripods for 2021. Made of met­al, very hard. But at the same time, they man­aged to find the opti­mal bal­ance: the entire struc­ture, togeth­er with the pipe, weighs about sev­en kilo­grams. Imme­di­ate­ly in the box with him are high-qual­i­ty eye­pieces and Bar­low lens­es. The qual­i­ty is on the lev­el, so you will only have to buy some­thing if you want to expand your fleet of optics, but not improve it in any way. There is a T‑adapter here to hook a SLR cam­era. Only the cam­era itself will also have to buy a suit­able ring, since it is inex­pen­sive.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

Celestron NexStar 127 SLT

Although not the most expen­sive mod­el on the mar­ket, it is the most pre­mi­um in our rank­ing of the best observ­ing tele­scopes. Its char­ac­ter­is­tics are also supe­ri­or to oth­ers in this review. Thanks to com­put­er con­trol, guid­ance is per­formed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. You only need to spec­i­fy the loca­tion, time and date of obser­va­tion. For the lazi­est, a star tour is avail­able. Based on the time and coor­di­nates, he him­self will show the most inter­est­ing, strik­ing things. All menus are in Russ­ian. The lens uses both mir­rors and lens­es. This allows you to get the high­est image qual­i­ty. You will be able to study not only bright objects, but also neb­u­lae, clus­ters of stars and galax­ies. The mount is made of good qual­i­ty plas­tic. Togeth­er with a tri­pod, the whole struc­ture weighs about nine kilo­grams.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

How to choose a telescope for observations

Every cus­tomer has their own idea of ​​what an ide­al tele­scope should be. How­ev­er, real­i­ty often diverges from illu­sions. Astron­o­my teacher Yuri Vlasov helped KP pre­pare advice on choos­ing a tele­scope, and also answered pop­u­lar ques­tions from read­ers.

Is proximity important?

The first thing new­com­ers ask is “how much mag­ni­fi­ca­tion will it give?”. This para­me­ter is not the main one. Bet­ter pay atten­tion to the diam­e­ter of the lens. This indi­ca­tor deter­mines the bright­ness and clar­i­ty of the observed objects. The high­er it is, the more light enters the lens­es, which means you will see more. There­fore, if you have pecked at a large lev­el of mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, but at the same time the lens itself is small, then the focal length and zoom are use­less. There is a rule: max­i­mum mag­ni­fi­ca­tion = lens diam­e­ter (mm) * 2.

What telescopes are

There are three types of tele­scopes: mir­ror (reflec­tors), lens (refrac­tor) and com­bined.

Lens telescopes

A lens tele­scope is a long and thin tele­scope. There­fore, its diam­e­ter is often small. If high-qual­i­ty, not cloudy optics are installed, then the image will be sharp, and this is impor­tant when observ­ing plan­ets. But neb­u­lae and oth­er galax­ies can only be seen through the most pow­er­ful mod­els.

mirror telescopes

Mir­ror mod­els are more pow­er­ful than lens mod­els. But they show the pic­ture upside down, and they also need to be cleaned and adjust­ed — to car­ry out align­ment. You can han­dle the ser­vice your­self. They are larg­er, suit­able for instal­la­tion out­side the city. For exam­ple, on the ter­ri­to­ry of a pri­vate house.

Combined telescopes

They are com­pact. In terms of image qual­i­ty, they are in the lead, but the con­trast in them is worse. As with lens­es, the image will be mir­rored. Keep this in mind if you are going to nav­i­gate by star maps.

Electronic components

If you want to nav­i­gate using star charts, skill is required. In some mod­ern mod­els, motors are installed that allow you to point the tele­scope auto­mat­i­cal­ly accord­ing to the coor­di­nates of astro­nom­i­cal objects stored in the micro­com­put­er mem­o­ry. The main dis­ad­van­tage of this solu­tion is the price.

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Popular questions and answers

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