Wow. I had no idea. Thanks that sounds like a pretty important feature to have.

I'd be afraid to grab something used. It's not something where I would know if its damaged. Maybe the mirrors or lenses are out of alignment, or something else.

Look online for astronomy forums- they buy and sell things, just like die-hard fans of anything else.

I had a neighbor who was into astro-photography on a much larger scale than I had thought. I had seen him with a telescope, but one day, I saw what looked like a 40 gallon water heater sitting on top of a shopping cart. That was no water heater, it was his new Newtonian scope.

Ya, that's why I said in a previous post, put out a WTB on your favorite site or like he said, an astronomy forum. I got my scope used from a guy that had already upgraded to a better scope. These guys are like anybody that has a serious hobby, there is always something better out there to buy! If you buy used from one of these guys they'll likely spend more time than you want to spend, showing you how to use the scope.
Also, chances are there is a local astronomy group that has a site in the country that they meet and camp and watch stars where you can learn all you want.

And if you hear banjos.....

For the non-GPS units you have to make one-time adjustments to the mount for your latitude and longitude.

Then when setting up you have to align the scope to one of the "pole stars" - Polaris in the northern hemisphere, Sigma Octantis in the southern.

Once this is one you have to point the scope, using the manual motor controls, to 1, 2 or 3 well known and easily found stars.

Once this is done the computer in the scope controller can point the scope to tens of thousands of different objects. You usually select the desired object from a menu on the scope controller.


While the above might sound difficult it's not - once you've done it a few times it becomes easy.


The newest scopes with GPS and a "pole star finder" feature can automate the majority of this.

Frederick

I ran across a dude with a telescope on a hike as it was getting rather dark. I guess I was a little ignorant as to the capability of these things. I was amazed he could show us Saturn with it's rings as well as Jupiter. As someone else mentioned, you could even see the little dots that are it's moons. Freaking amazing.

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At that price range I'd be looking for a decent set of binoculars...