[Tepix]

Great advice! Start with good binoculars for $100-200. I would get a used telescope. Many of them are as good as new and here in Germany you get them for 50-70% of the regular price.

I bought an 8" SC myself used for 550€ including a mount with tracking.

[mikesabbagh]

binoculars cant go too far, the diameter is too small to allow enough light to be concentrated into your eye. With binoculars, u can look at the moon. boring. with a telescope, well u can see the planets live and take amazing photos

[Tepix]

With pretty much all binoculars you can see Jupiter's moon, which is a real eye-opener.

[necheffa]

With a nice pair of coated binocs you can see some of the closer star clusters. Of course Andromeda is always a good view. And the occasional bright comet too.

The nice thing about binocs is they are easier to bring out than the scope. Plus they give the wife something to look at while I find cool stuff with the scope.

[buescher]

You can see a lot even with a pair of pocket binoculars. Easy targets are the moons of Jupiter, the Pleiades, and the Orion nebula. A good pair of binoculars will resolve the naked-eye planets to small disks and the stars to points.

[wang_li]

Orion has considered this problem... :)

https://www.amazon.com/Orion-2x54-Ultra-Angle-Binoculars/dp/...

[davidcuddeback]

That's a wider FoV, not a larger diameter objective. I was thinking more along the lines of...

http://www.jerryoltion.com/binoscope.htm

Or on a more serious note, binoculars do come with pretty large objectives, but they get to be expensive when you get past 100mm. Here's one with 150mm objectives. And since binoculars have two objectives, that has the light-gathering capability of an 8-inch telescope.

https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/telescopes/bino-telescopes/...