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Justin, forget what you think a telescope should look like. Also ignore magnification numbers, its a selling point that means nothing really. Like PMPO on stereos. The correct option for the situation (regardless budget) is a dobsonian. Anything from Kmart/ AustGeo etc stores ignore totally. Bintel (the BINocular and TELescope store, specialise in guess what???? they dont need to force a product on you for a sale like retailers will, they will give you honest and accurate advice.) a six inch dobsonian will blow your relative away and if storage space, moving it outside and physical health is a concern its the best choice, but an 8inch dob is a step up, but not essential. The reality is most people end up with several scopes to use and the old trusty dob is always perfect for a quick viewing session and for sharing with friends. Equatorial mounts are bad bad bad for viewing and likely put them off entirely because the eyepiece is rarely ever in a comfortable position to look through. Refractors you really need quality optics out of the budget and they are poor for viewing fainter targets a 6" dob will readily show. Ignore computerised/goto setup as they require fiddly set up outside every night they are used to align them to the sky so the computer can actually work, and you have to be very precise with aligning, again it just may turn them off the idea altogether.
Shopping list:
- 6" dobsonian
- star map book
- latest Astronomy Australia annual book (bintel have), this not only has lots of charts but tons of beginner information to learn aspects of the sky, published each year it also includes monthly things of interest in the sky throughout the coming year
optional:
- quality 8mm & 32mm eyepieces with good eyerelief
- binoculars, not 50mm but smaller light easy to use, handy for scanning the sky, which helps compare what you see in the sky with a skymap and whats in the eyepiece. I use one all the time when using a telescope (Pentax 8x25 which are superb, better than my "normal sized binos" and on par with my small Leica binos too), you dont need astronomy binoculars, just good eye relief "bright" binos, bigger ones are nice but heavy which is a hassle to hold and use. Again comfort here can disappoint the user from using them further. Optics (refractors, binoculars, eyepieces, lenses ALL have optical distortions that can harm the view and also put people off using them, so above all ignore the specs which seem impressive and follow advice to get quality optics instead. Speak to bintel they dont sell crap brands that are all over ebay and they will give you great advice. Sure you can buy bigger but just buy what will actually work and give your relative actual pleasure to use instead of frustration and discomfort. Over time they will decide themselves what they enjoy looking at in the sky and which direction to go with upgrades and other books etc. But if you give them something poor now because you see it on sale somewhere and it looks good, I'll bet they wont use it more than twice because its wrong for their needs/knowledge/experience. Give them a brick instead.
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