looking for a telescope...

i am looking to buy a telescope for my fiance's birthday present.  i am going to do one of those cheesy "name a star" things online for him and give him a telescope which i think will be really cool for us to have.  we like nerdy things like that :)

 

anyways, does anyone happen to know anything about telescopes or have experience with them? i only want to spend around $100, because this is our first one and if we end up not using it a whole lot, then i haven't lost $400!!!!!

so, if you know anything, please help me out!

WalMart has some cute little ones for kids and such I imagine would work just fine.  The only other telescopes I know of cost around a thousand dollars.  :\

Unfortunately you cannot buy a good telescope for $100 - department sore telescopes are junk. For $100 your best bet is binoculars, which are a terrific way to get started by the way.

For a little under $300 you can buy a good beginners telescope that will last for quite a while. Something like this goes for $270:

http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~cat egory_id=dobsonians/~pcategory=telescopes/~pr oduct_id=09185

 

thank you for the link! i will definetly test it out :)

I am minoring in astrophysics in school right now. One of the first things we were taught is if you are unwilling to spend at least 800$ on a telescope, you are better of with star-gazing binoculars. I'm not sure where you'd find them, but thats what my prof said.