[X] My Assistant

[lyford]

I seem to be finally outgrowing the Sears 60mm refractor I still have from my childhood.

I realize it would never win any awards for its optics, but I have been able to see Saturn nicely, as well as the red spot and moons of Jupiter.

I am looking for something that would at least offer comparable viewing, but under $400 U.S. if possible.

One question I have is this:

Can an astronomical telescope be used as a spotting scope?

We do like to camp and would love to be able to bring the scope to view the stars and wildlife (not at the same time of course).

Following Phil Plaits links, I stumbled across this beast - which seems like it has some decent reviews (but horrid iMac circa 1999 colors):

iOptron Refractor

I also liked the portability of the Meade ETX-80BB for camping, but I am worried it won't live up to the reputation of it's bigger brother.

[mcaplinger]

Can an astronomical telescope be used as a spotting scope?

With varying degrees of difficulty, but I'd say that a spotting scope makes a better astronomical telescope than vice versa. Though you are unlikely to get much more than 45x mag even with a high-end spotting scope. For just casual observing, I'd say a <$200 spotting scope would be fine, though it obviously depends on what you want to look at and what your budget and degree of pickiness is. There's a lot to be said for a cheap refractor and a good pair of binoculars.

I've got a $100 60mm Meade plastic refractor, and the optical quality is adequate, but it would make a poor field spotting scope (hard to transport, image inverted, not very robust).

Goto scopes are kind of a gimmick, IMHO, especially small ones with not enough light-gathering power to see most of what they can point at. I'd avoid the smaller Meades; I had an ETX-90 and it was OK for casual use, but not 4x better than a cheap refractor. A friend has the Celestron NexStar 5 and that's about as small as I'd go for a semi-serious telescope, but I'd hate to carry it around in a camping situation.