Right, a book is good. The two most often recommended books are "Turn Left At Orion" and "Nightwatch".

I've got Turn Left at Orion. I like it. I'd heartily recommend it.

I've not actually used them while out at my scope. I have however used "Stellarium" which is a great free program.

www.stellarium.org

I would recommend initially hitting the moon and planets. The next easiest objects to find will usually be the "Messier" objects. I've printed these charts out and used them to find stuff when working in my front/back yard.

http://www.astro-tom.com/messier/messier_finder_charts/messier_maps.htm

A dobsonian scope like the Orion XT6 won't have a drive. Those would primarily be for GEM mounted scopes. I've not found that slightly adjusting the scope is that difficult.

OH yes, I think a Dob is the way to go with a first scope. A light bucket.

Ok, I got searching, I should have never done this, can you really build one??

http://www.rainwaterobservatory.org/...nian_scope.jpg

Yeah, but go ahead and get that one you had planned to get, then work on building one in your spare time.

People build when they want a really large scope. It's a buttload of work, I've heard, but you can get a lot of scope for much less that way.

Just one word about lunar observations. Observing the full moon without an aperture limiter can hurt the eyes, Remember it is reflecting ALOT of sunlight. Besides you don't get any real resolution off of a full moon. Waxing / waning especially along the terminator gives some spectacular sights.

Exactly, either an Aperture mask or probably better, a neutral density filter.

http://www.graaa.org/

Go to their star parties, they look to be 20-25 miles away from you. Period. Buying a telescope is like buying a car, you MUST test drive them first.

1) All telescopes are $500+ telescopes, no matter what the price tag says. just as all 911SCs are $20K cars once you get done with them. The $200 telescope will need $300 of extras to fulfill an interested astronomer, while the $500 telescopes come with enough bells and whistles (I'm talking eyepieces, books, notes, flashlight, maps, etc).

2) A telescope is worse than useless if it's too heavy/awkward to use, or if the batteries drain too fast, or if you can't quite find a stool the right height to see through the eyepieces, or any of a million other things. It becomes VERY easy to never take it out again in the cold and the dark if it's not 100% comfortable and fun.

3) Amateur astronomy takes MONTHS if not YEARS of dedication before you can play like the big boys. It'll be fun and educational all that time, but you won't be seeing galaxies colliding and fun stuff for a long time and lots of money.

4) Don't get a CCD. just don't. That's cheating, and they're actually more of a pain than anyone can imagine.

5) Every amateur will tell you to get binocs first, but very few of them did (just like we ALL say "get a PPI!" but we don't always do it ourselves). Take that info for what it's worth.

6) It's very VERY easy to damage a telescope to the point of it being garbage without really doing much to it. Buying used equipment sight unseen is VERY bad news. 90% of the used telescopes out there were impulse buys that sat in the closet getting knocked around until the wife threw a fit and someone had to sell. The other 10% are amateur upgrading, and are excellent buys. Can you always tell which is which on E-bay/Craigslist? Neither can I ;)

http://www.graaa.org/ <--- Watch their For Sale, buying used equipment from a club is much safer
http://www.grmuseum.org/
http://spacewatch.wordpress.com/


When someone would ask me directly, I'd say this:
#1 choice, 7x50 binocs, one or more of the books mentioned in posts above, and a star map like this (this map kicks so much butt, I LOVED mine):
http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~category_id=maps_and_charts/~pcategory=accessories/~product_id=04150

#2 choice, a 6 inch dobsonian with the book and map as above, a 32mm eyepiece (plossl at least), and a variable brightness red LED flashlight.

#3 choice is a wide field refractor like this:
http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~category_id=optical_tube/~pcategory=telescopes/~product_id=09947
on a basic Bogen tripod, with the same above accessories, and 2 or 3 40mm to 50mm eyepieces for big wide sweeping views. Again, I had one of these, and it was my main photography scope. I took some great ultra-wide field film images by piggybacking it on whatever larger telescope was around at the time.

For a beginner, I prefer a camera type tripod (up/down, left/right) over a tracking mount. A newbie doesn't have a deep enough sense of the astronomical coordinates, and mucking around with them will just make things more complex. An easy to use camera tripod and a wide field scope is fun to slowly sweep areas of the sky, catching things and they go by. You'll see more nebula by wandering aimlessly than you will be hunting down coordinates, trying to align the scope, and then finding that you got something slightly wrong and are lost in the sky.

Magnifying the Moon doesn't make it any brighter than looking straight at it. In fact, if you have it magnified such that it is bigger than the field of view, then it's DIMMER than looking straight at it.

It just "feels" brighter, but it is not, and won't hurt your eyesight in any way shape or form.

If you do so choose I have a line on a 16 inch primary mirror. Prolly get a very good price.

Oh, if you decide to go down THIS slippery slope :D

http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Telescope-Richard-Barry/dp/B000S3RN6I/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236804503&sr=1-9
This one is a good all around book, but is a bit light on the details

http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Telescope-Second-English/dp/0943396042
This one s for the guys that build handmade Ferraris in their basements. You cannot go wrong with this, since he even shows you how to machine your own tools.

http://www.obsessiontelescopes.com/publications/index.html
If you want to build a BIGGGGG scope...

http://www.astrosystems.biz/index.htm
Here's the 50/50 point between buying and building...

You guys are great! You directed me to an org right in my back yard. Like I said the last telescope I had was 40 years ago! Actually I used to watch the jets at 30k feet:D

Another option to consider would be a father/daughter event - see what perks her:
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/nop/

And later...
http://www.astronomycamp.org/

If you do these, you'd be playing in my old stomping grounds :D There's also:
http://skycenter.arizona.edu/

Or, where I moonlighted (oh, a pun!):
http://www.astronomersinn.com/
(They changed ownership after I left, I cannot attest to the quality anymore, it used to be called SkyWatcher's Inn)

Mike - are you a U of A grad?

Isn't there also a similar program around Palomar?

I was a U of a staff. I worked and did research on Kitt Peak, Mt Lemmon, Mt Biglow, and worked on scopes at Mt Graham and Mt Hopkins.

I'm sure that Palomar has something, but Kitt Peak is special, it's the National Observatory. Part of it having federal oversight and funding is that it must be accessible to the public. It's one of the only observatories that's open all day long to the public, and has public access (under circumstances) at night.

You'd never get to drive up and eat lunch at Keck, for example.

This is my friend's 25" Obsession (and the trailer he hauls it in) at Shingletown, CA star party, '05.
http://www.obsessiontelescopes.com/telescopes/25/index.html

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1236808233.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1236808251.jpg

Oh - can't cause eye damage looking at the full moon no matter how powerful the telescope.

"Beer Down" !!

KPNO is definitely special - in many ways. Incidentally, when I was a kid I was fortunate to know Larry Braymer (Questar). Amazing what he could do in a little shop in New Hope. Later I managed to spend way too little time with Ewen (sp?) Whitaker at U of A. His office was an experience.

Craig - many, many kudos on what you are doing for your daughter. Bravo.

Join a local club or at least attend a public viewing night. You'll get lots of opinions and a chance to see everyone's kit. Maybe the club will have loaner equipment or a club facility.

I spent my youth in the GRAAA (grew up in Grandville). It's a good group of people, and they have a well stocked observatory between Cascade and Lowell (cgarr's side of town). The last time I was there they had a 12" Newtonian in one dome on a huge mount, 6 or 8" high-zoot refractor in another dome and a 17" Dob in a shed out front, all available for reservation and use by the members. I hooked up with them to help decide on which scope to buy and I ended up buying nothing but gas to get to the observatory to use their stuff (when it wasn't cloudy).

Now I'm here in New Mexico with great skies but no similar club.

Why do I feel a new expensive hobby for my wife to hate coming down the pipe......?