Buying a telescope?

With Christmas just around the corner a lot of people have been asking me, ‘what type of telescope should I buy as a present this year’? My advice, as always, is unless you seriously plan to use your telescope then buy a pair of binoculars instead.

Telescopes come in basically two different types. A refractor telescope is the type that you look through, they have a lens at the front that collects the light and concentrates it to an eyepiece at the other end. The other type is a reflector telescope that uses a curved mirror to collect the light and then reflect it back up the tube to another mirror set at 90° that deflects the image into an eyepiece.