Telescopes & Astronomy

Buying your first telescope? These are easy to set up and use, and show the Moon, planets and brighter star clusters and nebulae. Browse our team's picks for adult beginners, telescopes for kids, or compact tabletop telescopes.

Our bestselling ranges for beginners and families. Celestron StarSense Explorer telescopes use your smartphone to show you where to point. The Celestron PowerSeeker series are affordable first telescopes for the Moon and planets. Saxon DeepSky Dobsonians give you plenty of aperture for your money for viewing galaxies, nebulae and star clusters.

A large mirror on a simple, stable base gives you the most aperture for your money. Dobsonians are quick to set up and show faint galaxies, nebulae and star clusters in detail, which makes them a favourite for beginners and experienced observers alike.

What do you want to look at? Choose telescopes for general astronomy, for daytime, land and sky viewing such as birds and landscapes, or for astrophotography.

Refractors are low maintenance and sharp on the Moon and planets. Reflectors give more aperture for your money. Cassegrains pack a long focal length into a compact tube, and Go-To telescopes find and track objects for you.

A telescope's aperture, the diameter of its main lens or mirror, decides how much light it gathers and how much detail you'll see. Bigger shows more, but is heavier and takes up more space, so choose a size that suits how and where you'll observe.

Ready for more? Larger Dobsonians, computerised Schmidt-Cassegrains and equatorial setups show fainter objects and finer detail, and many can grow with you into astrophotography.

Larger optics and heavy-duty equatorial mounts for experienced observers and astrophotographers. Already have a mount? Choose an optical tube assembly on its own.

Capture the Moon, planets, Milky Way and deep-sky objects. Start with a ready-to-go astrophotography bundle, or build your own setup from imaging telescopes and tracking mounts, then add cameras, autoguiding and filters.

Get more from your telescope with extra eyepieces and Barlow lenses, filters for the Moon, planets and nebulae, diagonals, finderscopes, collimators and dew control.

Alt-azimuth mounts are simple to point and use. Equatorial and tracking and Go-To mounts follow objects across the sky. We also stock tripods, counterweights and wedges.

Find your way around the sky with star charts and maps and books, keep your night vision with a red light, and protect and power your gear with cases and bags and power supplies.