>>612575Depends on what your budget is and what your limitations are. For a starting stargazer you would likely want a pair of binoculars. Read something like Binocular
Highlights by Gary Seronik to get you started. If you plan on going out hiking and camping you want to get a pair of 10x50 binoculars or 10x42 because of their small
foot print. If you don't mind the weight get any celestron skymaster 15x70 or 20x80 binoculars. The bigger they are the more light gathering ability they will have but
that comes at a price, the bigger you go the more likely you will need a tripod to hold them steady, a good monopod will do the job as well and will be much lighter
to carry. If you go the telescope route things become much more expensive. Don't throw away your money on sub 100 dollar telescope, you want a decent reflecting
telescope that's at least 4.5 inches in diameter. Things get expensive depending on what you want. If you want a go-to telescope that drives itself to what you want
to see you are looking at spending 250+, i personally would not go that route. Half of the fun is guiding yourself through the night sky without a computer's aid.
Telescopes aren't that portable, the only one that comes to mind for portability is something like the Edmund Scientific Astroscan telescope and it's also one of the
most robust designs out there; It can take a beating. Before getting any telescope you might want to read up on telescope and navigation, i'd suggest a book called
Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consolmagno. Tell me your budget because telescopes get much more complicated than binoculars.
