Please help me find a telescope for my 9 year old son

That scope is the bees knees Kerry. Lots of us have had or still have one. One thing some will say though is that it does take a bit of practise to follow how it is used. But, since it is all manual, that WILL come easy, even for a 9 or 10 year old I reckon (my 11 year old niece managed my Skylux 2 years ago no problem after a few short lessons). Go for it I say!

There is a "Law Of Nature" which is not widely appreciated.

The law is this:

"The bigger the photo in a Lidl catalogue the less likely they are to be selling it when you arrive."

Lidl skirted on the borders of false advertising when the put ONE dinghy in every shop a few weeks ago.

The dinghy was the "biggest draw" of course.


Peter

Have people noticed this in the past with Lidl telescopes? Is it a possibility they don't have ANY in?

Seanie - are you talking about the one for 70 euro? What would he be able to see with it? Is it decent?

Kerry - the ETX70 is computerised. In other words, when it has been set up correctly, the hand controller (included) can point the telescope to any of 1000's of objects stored in its database. The technology is usually called GOTO (type in the object and the telescope goes to it...). That said, there is still a lot of manual setting up to do and the scope can still be used manually if the user wants to.

The Skylux is manual. You have to manually point it at whatever object you want to look at. Of course, if its the moon, that's easy to find in the sky. But trying to find the planets would require consulting a sky atlas - there's no harm in that either. Its a good discipline to learn the night-sky.

The ETX is the better of the two scopes. But the Skylux is still a good scope. If you managed to lose out on the ETX, get the Skylux and either go get him some good astro books (we can give you tips here), a subscription to an astro magazine (Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Sky at Night etc) or go and hit the spa. After all the research you've done you deserve it! He's very lucky...

The 3 type of scope in a nutshell:

Newtonian - a long tube scope containing two mirrors.
SCT (Shmidt-Cassegrain) - a short tube scope with two mirrors and a corrector plate.
A refractor - no mirrors, only lenses.

The ETX70 and the Skylux are refractors - lenses only.

Cheers
Dave

I have an ETX 70 Kerry.

Its a lovely scope for a kid.

Highly recommended.

Peter.

Kerry - I think all the stores got them in - but some got more than others. You really need to get in the queue.

Both the Skylux and the ETX are very similar in terms of what you'll see with them. The ETX is probably a better overall quality package. The difference in the prices is mostly down to the GOTO ability of the ETX.

Hope this helps...
Dave