Which Telescope?



Hi all,

I'm looking for a little advice. I'm currently obsessed with the night
skies, the origin of our Universe, and everything going on in our
Solar System - but I want to experience some of it first hand. To that
end, I'd like to purchase a telescope.

I've had a look at a few telescopes, but there is a huge range in
price, and I have no idea if I'll be able to do what I want to do (see
what I want to see) within my budget.

I don't know what kind of magnification I'd need to be able to see
much, and therefore don't know how much I need to spend to be able to
do so (have a look at Mars, see Saturn's rings, anything else that's
interesting and visible from the earth).

Any suggestions? For instance, would I be able to see much with the
"Meade EQ114 Equatorial Reflector"? It's a cheap entry-level
'scope...or would I need to spend a bit more?

My budget would probably be £200...enough?

Would a second-hand scope be a good idea?

Thanks in advance,

DSt.

.



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