Telescopes, mounts and glass, read on their published figures
The box prints a magnification,
and the telescope does not have one.
Refractors, reflectors, Dobsonians and folded tubes; equatorial, alt-azimuth and GoTo mounts; star trackers, binoculars and planetary cameras — and the eyepieces, Barlows, diagonals, filters and adapters bought the week after. Compared on the lines that decide what a night actually shows: what the aperture collects, what the focal ratio frames, what a mount is rated to carry before a camera goes on it, and which band a filter really passes. Priced on the Amazon store in your own country.
- Categories covered
- 46
- Products reviewed
- 108
- Accessories & spares
- 120
Every family, from the mirror to the coin cell
Pick the job you are doing
23 families that gather light, carry it or record it, 23 that shape, filter and protect it. Each hub compares one family and opens with a direct answer to “which one should I buy?”, followed by the published specification most often misread when buying it.
- Refractor telescopes A sealed tube, a lens at the front, and colour to account for
- Reflector telescopes The most aperture per euro, and an alignment to keep
- Dobsonian telescopes A big mirror on a box that costs almost nothing
- Catadioptric telescopes A long focal length folded into a short tube
- Smart telescopes No eyepiece at all — a sensor, a phone and a stack
- Travel telescopes The one that fits in the bag is the one that gets used
- Telescopes for children A steady mount beats a big number on the box
- Astronomy binoculars Two eyes, a wide field, and no setup at all
- Monoculars Half the weight, half the glass, one eye
- Spotting scopes Daylight optics that double for the Moon
- Equatorial mounts One axis against the turning sky — once it is aligned
- Alt-azimuth mounts Up-down, left-right, and nothing to align
- GoTo mounts A database, two motors, and an alignment that has to be honest
- Star trackers A camera, a lens and one motor against the rotation
- Planetary cameras Thousands of frames, and only the sharpest kept
- Guide scopes A small tube whose only job is to watch one star
- Finder scopes The part that decides whether pointing is a pleasure
- Star projectors A ceiling instead of a sky, and two very different kinds
- Telescope eyepieces Magnification is a division, not a number on a box
- Zoom eyepieces One barrel across a range, with a field that narrows
- Eyepiece sets A spread of magnifications, or four that overlap
- Barlow lenses It multiplies the focal length, and the eye relief survives
- Nebula filters They pass the lines the gas emits and block the rest
- Solar filters Full aperture, in front of the telescope, and nowhere else
- Moon filters A full Moon in a large telescope is genuinely too bright
- Light pollution filters Useful against some lamps, and honest about the rest
- Colour planetary filters Each colour suppresses a contrast so another one shows
- Filter wheels Change the filter without touching the focus
- Focal reducers Shorter focal length, wider field, shorter exposures
- Star diagonals A right angle that saves the neck and flips the view
- Extension tubes The cheapest fix for a focus that cannot be reached
- T-ring adapters Two threads and one flange distance between camera and sky
- Phone adapters Alignment in three axes, held by one clamp
- Collimators A reflector out of true performs like a smaller telescope
- Bahtinov masks A diffraction pattern that makes focus a symmetry, not a judgement
- Red dot finders No magnification, both eyes open, and pointing becomes obvious
- Polar scopes The pole is not where Polaris is, and the reticle knows it
- Dew control Glass cools by radiation below the air, and the night wins
- Telescope cases Internal dimensions, not the class of the shell
- Telescope covers For the instrument that stays outside between sessions
- Red torches Twenty minutes of dark adaptation, lost in one white flash
- Planispheres A disc, a date and an hour — and no battery at all
- Counterweights Balance is what lets a small motor move a heavy tube
- Dovetail bars Two widths, no compromise, and one saddle to satisfy
- Observing chairs A seated observer sees more, and it is not about comfort
- Eclipse glasses Read the standard the listing cites, and the maker’s instructions
How this site works
What every page here undertakes
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Ordered by what makers write down, not by what they pay out
Commission has no say in where an instrument ranks. When a modest telescope on a steady mount is the sensible first purchase and the larger one beside it is not, the page says so plainly — and when a dearer eyepiece earns its cost because the maker publishes an eye relief that lets you keep your spectacles on, the page explains exactly that.
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The number that settles it, in the unit its maker used
Aperture kept apart from magnification, which is a division and not a property of a telescope; a focal ratio written as the quotient it is; a mount’s payload quoted as the maker quotes it, for observing, without being silently promoted into a photographic rating; a filter named by its bandpass rather than by a three-letter label. Each appears in the maker’s unit with its source named. A figure no maker published is marked as missing, never filled in.
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Pointed at whichever Amazon store serves where you are
The button opens the same reference on the Amazon store for the country you browse from, priced in your currency. When a model has no offer there — and telescopes, mounts and cameras are stocked very differently from one market to another — the page tells you, instead of sending you to a dead listing.