Celestron

Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope

$335.95, Amazon

I recently had the extraordinary experience of looking through a large telescope while on Atlas Obscura’s trip to Chile’s Atacama Desert—one of the best places to stargaze on the planet—and now I’m hooked. I want a telescope of my own. But I don’t want to spend a fortune, and I don’t want something that’s going to require a huge amount of technical expertise to operate.

Celestron’s NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope was designed precisely for people like me. Its built-in SkyAlign computer system makes it easy to find and track objects in the sky, and with a light-gathering power that’s 30 percent greater than the next size down, it produces crisp images that are plenty bright for a novice. It comes with a downloadable 10,000-object database, and it’s on sale right now at Amazon. If you too have been yearning for your own telescope, take a close look for yourself.

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