I'm sometimes asked to recommend a cheap telescope for a beginner and find myself asking several questions in return. You see there are so many factors involved other than the budget one, it really can be a difficult question to answer! One overriding factor is how and where the telescope is likely to be used.
If for instance the purchaser is hoping to get into astrophotography, he can forget the notion of getting a cheap telescope, they are simply not going to be of use to him. On the other hand if the purchaser wants to use the telescope for land viewing, spotting passing whales and so forth, the question becomes much simpler to answer.
Most purchasers however are looking to do a little amateur astronomy and this is where the question gets a little tricky to deal with. Unfortunately those cheap and nasty telescopes you see in department stores or on eBay have raised expectations to an unrealistic level. Those pictures you see on the boxes those scopes come in are completely unrealistic, they are usually artists impressions of planets and hubble pictures of faraway nebulae and certainly not what you are going to see through your new telescope!
As a general guideline I tend to recommend small refractors (up to apertures 90mm or so) as being suitable for beginners as a quick an easy scope to use, minimal maintenance or set-up time required for casual observation of nearby planets and of course excellent lunar views. They are also more suitable than reflectors in the city and suburbs where light pollution is an issue.
On the other hand if you live away from the suburbs and are not too concerned about a little bit of maintenance or some set-up time then the largest reflector you can afford and handle would be the way to go - they offer excellent deep sky views if you have a good dark sky location to view from.
Check out the beginners telescopes from brands like Celestron and Orion at TelescopeChoice.com for some bargains.
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