When you give a good telescope for Christmas, you're giving the rings of Saturn.

Astronomical telescopes have always been popular Christmas presents, but the problem is that Santa doesn’t always know enough to give a telescope that isn’t worse than nothing at all. Don’t be that Santa.

When you give someone a piece of junk masquerading as a telescope, you give them a headache, an annoying dose of flusteration and maybe a bad attitude for life. Well, OK, maybe just a headache. Don’t be that Santa.

When you give someone you love a good telescope, you’re giving them a lifetime of stargazing, a window into infinity, a chance at a hobby that will never grow old. Yes, be THAT Santa!

Here are five great gift ideas plus one killer bonus if you REALLY love somebody.

 

 What a great first telescope! LightBridge Mini.

 

1. Tiny. Affordable. Capable. The Meade LightBridge Mini. $60

Don’t the let the price and size of this Newtonian reflector with a built in Dobsonion Mount fool you. It’s not a toy.

This is the smallest member of Meade’s extremely popular table top LightBridge series. It weighs only four pounds and travels already set up. It stylish tabletop design allows it to be displayed as a decorative piece in your home, yet on a moment’s notice you can haul it off to the deck or on your next evening outdoor dinner or campground, or bring it along in your RV. It’s truly a grab-and-go telescope

It offers a generous 82mm aperture with a compact 300mm (f/3.7) focal length. The 360° swivel mount and a simple point-and-look design make navigating the sky effortless. You’ll enjoy 82mm of light gathering ability for clear, bright images of the Moon, and planets like Saturn and Jupiter.

The Mini 82 features a one arm Dobsonian-style mount with two eyepieces for low (26mm) and high (9mm) magnification, a 2x Barlow lens to double the magnifying power of each eyepiece, a red dot viewfinder to help you aim the telescope, and the Autostar® Suite Astronomy planetarium DVD with over 10,000 celestial objects.

It’s not just an astronomical tool, but also a conversation starter. With its sleek, compact design, it’s both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

This telescope offers some serious optics but in a small, rugged housing that is perfect for both beginners and pros alike looking for portable viewing power.

 

Bang for the buck. SmartStar R80

 

2.  Computer driven tracking for under $300. The iOptron SmartStar R80

The iOptron SmartStar R80 is one of the most recommended first telescopes around. It is a permanent resident on best-telescopes-for-Christmas lists because it is so easy to set up and get down to business tracking nightsky objects.

It may not be the brightest telescope, so seeing distant star clusters isn’t its strong suit, but what it can do is get you into the sky you’re looking for. That’s a big deal with beginner astronomers.

The R80 is a refractor with an 80mm objective and a 400mm focal length. It comes with K10 and K25 eyepieces and a 1.25”,45-degree diagonal. It comes with a Cube alt-azimuth mouth and a sturdy aluminum tripos with adjustable height control

Best of all, it comes with an 8405 GoToNova hand controller with 5,000 objects stored.

 

 A serious tool that's hard to outgrow. NextStar 4SE

 

3. The Legendary “Orange Tube” for under $450. The Celestron NextStar 4SE.

The two scopes above are very good gift ideas, but the Celestron Nextstar 4SE is where things get serious. It’s a Maksutov-Cassegrain with a 4-inch aperture and its excellent light gathering abilities are right in the sweet spot of price vs. performance. This telescope is very often a piece of equipment that lasts a lifetime.

With this telescope you’ll get impressive views of the Moon and planets, along with deep sky objects like the Orion Nebula, while retaining a compact form factor. With the 4SE you can see the best the solar system has to offer, like Saturn’s rings, the could bands on Jupitor and the geographic features on the surface of Moon in stunning detail. When it comes to deep sky objects, take your 4SE to a dark-sky site and you’ll see hundreds of pinpoint stars in the Hercules Globular Cluster, the spiral arms of the Whirlpool Galaxy, and more. 

Of course, it’s what’s inside the mount that really counts. Sturdy construction from high-quality components give NexStar SE the pointing and tracking accuracy needed to observe and follow your favorite targets with push-button ease. Use the included NexStar+ hand control to locate over 40,000 celestial objects, or take a Sky Tour and let your telescope show you the best objects currently visible.

Aligning the 4SE is simple and painless, too, thanks to SkyAlign. This process makes alignment as easy as 1-2-3: just center three bright objects in your eyepiece and press ALIGN. For even easier alignment, attach our StarSense AutoAlign and your NexStar SE aligns itself.

Beginners love SkyAlign because even if you’re unfamiliar with the night sky you can align your telescope on any three bright objects. And experienced amateur astronomers its convenience.

The NexStar SE can grow with you, too. It is compatible with all the high-tech accessories advanced users love. Provide GPS coordinates to your telescope with SkySync, or add automatic alignment functionality with StarSense AutoAlign. And if you want to explore the world of astroimaging, the 4SE is a perfect choice. Its built-in wedge allows you to track long exposures. You can even remove the telescope’s secondary mirror and replace it with a DSLR or astronomical CCD camera for wide field images captured at f/2 using a Fastar/HyperStar lens assembly. Or, if you’re interested in imaging the Moon and planets, pair your NexStar 4SE with one of Celestron’s Skyris cameras.

 

 Cutting edge performance. Classic looks. Omni XLT 120

 

4. Big boy refractor for $650. Celestron Omni XLT 120.

Refractors have been taking some unfair hits lately, mostly because of cost per unit of aperture/brightness, but they do have advantages. They track easier, have a steadier image and tend to give better performance in poor light conditions. Their optical alignment, which is more direct than reflectors, offer near permanent alignment. And the long focal ratios of refractors mean you can use simpler eyepieces with longer focus. Plus, they just flat look cool in an old school way.

The Omni XLT features the stable platform of the CG-4 mount and high quality optics.  Using aspheric shaping technology in conjunction with hand-figuring the optics, the Omni XLT presents an image with virtually no spherical aberration. Celestron's famous StarBright XLT coating system further enhances light transmission.

Each lens is hand selected with only the finest grade of optical glass, and the 25mm multi-coated eyepiece gives you 20mm eye relief and 50 degrees of field of view.

The CG-4 German Equatorial mount -- with setting circles and slow motion controls allow you to accurately locate and track sky objects, assisted by precision ball bearings in both axis of the mount. The heavy-duty pre-assembled stainless steel tripod, with an accessory tray and bubble level and beefy 1.75-inch thick legs, is about as steady a platorm as you're going to find. And you need no tools to set this bad boy up.

Size does matter in this game, and the Omni XLT gives you 4.72 inches of aperture and a focal length of 39 inches. That's a focal ratio of 8.33. And the magnification ranges from 17 X to 283 X. 

 

 Touch a button, instant astronomer! SkyProdigy

 

5. "The Smartest Telescope in the world" for $1,000. The Celestron SkyProdigy. 

Technology, technology, technology. The SkyProdigy is the product of a culmination of decades of telescope advancements.  Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. It combines electronic motors, an intelligent on-board computer, a digital camera and StarSense™ technology to create an automatic, instant alignment telescope that requires no input from the user.  Simply turn it on, push a button and enjoy the view!  It’s that easy.

SkyProdigy’s automatic alignment process takes only a few minutes, and you will be ready to select from thousands of objects in its database to view.  Not quite sure what to look at?  Select the Sky Tour option; this feature offers a customized list of the best objects in the sky to view for your exact time and location anywhere in the world!

No knowledge of the night sky is required.  One touch innovation turns anyone into an instant astronomer!

Celestron’s SkyProdigy telescopes use an integrated imaging camera and patented StarSense Technology to automatically align with the night sky and determine where the telescope is currently pointing. The camera automatically captures an image of the sky, which is processed internally to positively identify stars in the image. Once a positive match is found, SkyProdigy determines the coordinates of the center of the captured image. The process is automatically repeated two additional times so that the system has three known alignment points that can be used to make an accurate model of the night sky. With this information, the user can select any celestial object in the hand controller’s database, and SkyProdigy will automatically move itself to the correct position.

Keep in mind that the SkyProdigy’s internal camera does not have an external output allowing users to view or save captured images. The captured images are used internally solely for the purpose of self-aligning the SkyProdigy telescope. 

 Boom. Just. Boom. LS 8" ACF

 

BONUS gift idea for the truly Badass Santa: The Meade LS 8-inch ACF. Just $1699.00, that's $300 off the regular price.

With the LightSwitch (LS) you set it up --It's easy -- and then you flip a switch. And then ... you experience a unsurpassed view of the heavens. It has 78% more light gathering capacity than the last king of the hill, the LS 6-inch.

Building on the popularity of Meade's ETX series telescopes, the new ETX-LS' innovative LightSwitch Technology alignment system eliminates the frustration experienced by users when aligning traditional telescopes, as it automatically aligns itself, the instant you hit the switch, for optimum night sky viewing. Engineered with a built-in Integrated Sensor Module (ISM) which includes GPS and Level North Technology (LNT™) sensors and the ECLIPS™ CCD Camera, the patented LightSwitch Technology alignment system replaces the "human eye" for the only hands-free alignment available in any consumer telescope.

Upon activation, the scope's electronic sensors calculate the current time, date and location for the telescope and then verify the locations of two stars to build a 'real time' map of the night sky. The telescope is now aligned and ready to use without any input from the user. Equipped with an easy-to-use interface and a sensitive, wide-angle digital imager for taking vibrant, high-resolution, low-noise images of objects in the night sky, users are able to store images on the SD card or view them immediately by using the scope's video output function. With the built-in speaker and video-out jack, The Astronomer-Inside guides the user to the best objects in the sky and delivers a celestial encyclopedia of audio and video content that takes the user on an interactive guided tour of hundreds of night sky objects.  

Seriously, if you give this telescope as a gift this Christmas, well, Santa Claus just doesn't get any more badass than that.

--ATWB