Want your kids to become engaged in stargazing and astronomy? Well, what better tool to do so with than a telescope for kids?
If you just so happen to be looking for such a telescope, then maybe our 3 picks from 3 different price ranges will interest you!
Reviews
Best Telescope for Kids – Great Value
Up first on our review is Aomekie’s 40mm refractor telescope, which is a good option if you have a limited budget, or if you aren’t sure whether your kid will become interested in astronomy and don’t want to spend too much money to begin with.
Overall, this telescope is better suited for shorter-distance observations, which is evident from the specs and the kind of accessories this thing comes with.
First of all, this telescope has a smaller 40mm aperture, which is going to be quite enough to observe the Moon and well-illuminated land objects not too far away.
Secondly, this telescope comes with short-distance 12.5mm and 20mm eyepieces with 32x and 20x zoom respectively. The smaller magnification of this telescope also means that it is going to have a wider field of view, which is going to particularly contribute to how landscapes appear.
Aside from the two eyepieces, this telescope comes with a 90-degree diagonal, which is going to allow for a more comfortable observation of the sky and landscapes.
To aid with locating targets, the Aomekie telescope is equipped with a 5×18 finder scope. To also help your kid find their orientation easier, this telescope comes with a compass located right next to the finder scope. And aside from that, the Aomekie telescope boasts 360-degree horizontal and 150-degree vertical adjustment.
Lastly, what this telescope can also boast are lightness and portability. It can be easily taken apart for transport, and since it comes with only 5 parts, your kid shouldn’t have any issues with disassembling it.
Best Telescope for Kids for a slightly higher price point
This Aomekie kids’ telescope is going to perform better than the telescope we’ve just reviewed due to its larger 70mm aperture. Thanks to it, this telescope is going to deliver a clearer view of dimmer and farther celestial and terrestrial objects.
Being the biggest difference between the two Aomekie telescopes, the aperture isn’t the only thing that is better in this model.
First of all, this telescope has much better magnification. While the focal length of this telescope is shorter – 300mm vs 400mm in the 40mm Aomekie telescope – it has higher magnification thanks to its eyepieces with shorter focal length. The included 6mm eyepiece delivers 50x zoom (300mm/6mm = 50, which is how zoom is calculated in telescopes), while the larger 20mm eyepiece has 15x magnification.
This isn’t all though. Aomekie includes a 3x Barlow lens with this telescope, which triples the magnification of the eyepiece it is paired with without affecting one’s eye relief or ability to focus. As a result, you can get 150x magnification out of this thing!
This telescope also comes with a 5×24 finder scope which has a larger lens than the 40mm Aomekie telescope’s finder scope had. As a result, the 5×24 finder scope in this model makes locating low-light objects easier.
Aomekie includes a 1.5x upright eyepiece with this telescope as well, the purpose of which is to invert the upside-down picture delivered by the telescope (which is a normal thing for telescopes). Aside from that, the upright eyepiece offers additional zoom of 1.5x.
Aside from that, Aomekie ships this telescope with a moon filter which brings the brightness of the moon down to make its details more visible. Plus, it comes with a phone adapter to allow your kid to take photos or videos of what they are observing.
One thing that is worse in this telescope is its limited vertical adjustment – only 90 degrees vs the 150 degrees that the smaller telescope had. This may not be a big issue for your kid, but it’s a thing that you should nonetheless know about.
Best Telescope for Kids – Quality Build
Lastly, we have the Emarth 70mm telescope, which is kind of a middle-ground model between the two Aomekie telescopes we reviewed.
On one hand, the Emarth telescope has a larger 70mm aperture, so it’s going to offer low-light performance comparable to that of the 70mm Aomekie telescope. On the other hand, it has a lower magnification, so it is going to be a better fit for short-distance observations.
Now, before we proceed to numbers, it seems that Emarth has made a couple of mistakes when writing their product description. At least, this was the case at the moment of this post’s writing.
For example, they claim that their 10mm and 25mm eyepieces have 51x and 128x zoom respectively, which doesn’t make sense given that this telescope’s focal length is 360mm. Below, we’ll provide you with the numbers that should be correct, given that the measurements Emarth has provided are true.
Plus, Emarth has posted a few photos of another Emarth telescope model, which isn’t the model we are talking about. The right model looks very similar to the 70mm Aomekie telescope, so keep that in mind.
So, using the magnification=telescope focal length/eyepiece focal length formula, we get 14.4x and 36x magnification for the 25mm and 10mm respectively. There is 3x Barlow eyepiece available for this thing for increased zoom, but out of the box, thing telescope is going to be more suitable for shorter-range observations.
While the zoom is lower than in the 70mm Aomekie telescope, the optic quality seems to be higher in this model. It is equipped with a BAK-4 prism with a higher refractive index rate and a circular exit pupil, which allows for more uniform light transmission across the entire field of view.
Lastly, what your kid may also like in this telescope is its height-adjustable tripod, which should make this telescope easy to use whether on a support or on the ground. The other two telescopes on the list didn’t have such a feature, so the Emarth telescope is the most versatile one among the three.