>>12261415Backyard astronomy fag here.
Looking at the planets is fun and all, but honestly gets old pretty quick. It takes only a few minutes to look at whatever planets are visible on a particular night and then you want to move on to something else.
Binocs won't give you a great view of planets, but you'll be able to see all kinds of cool shit, star clusters, double stars, even some brighter nebula and galaxies on a dark night. The thing is, binocs are much cheaper than a decent telescope and they teach you how to navigate the night sky when you are first starting. They are just easier to use as well, telescopes are heavy and often sensitive to movement etc, binocs you can just grab and go. Some of my favorite nights are just resting on a blanket in my backyard with some binocs and point at random areas of interest.
That all being said, if you really want to move up to a telescope right off the bat I highly recommend starting with a 4-6 in refractor that is relatively cheap (200-300$) Celestron is kind of jew-y but they do make some good starter models in this range. I have a Celestron 4 in that is pretty good for a refractor, you can easily see Saturns rings/Jupiters bands, ice caps on Mars, etc. With all telescopes though eye pieces are honestly more important than the scope itself. I recommend getting 10mm, 15mm, and 20mm, high quality eyepieces with wide fields of view. Going smaller than 10mm will probably give you blurry views, depending on the focal length of the scope. A lot of people swear by televue eyepieces (they are nice, tbf), but personally my favorite eye piece is my 16mm Explore Scientific 80 degree wide view.
Once you have some decent eye pieces and you can navigate the sky pretty good then move up to a 8-12 in reflector on a Dobson or equatorial mount. Personally I like Dobson mounts better (you dont have to do autistic setup).
TBC
