Equipment Overview
Binoculars: almost everyone has a pair somewhere. Even cheap ones can be fun to look through. The moon looks awesome, you can see Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings. The Milky Way from a dark site is amazing...
Types of Telescopes
- Refractors use lenses to bend light
- Reflectors use mirrors to "bend" light
- Catadioptrics (SCTs & Maks) use combinations of lenses and mirrors.
Mounts tend to come in Altitude-Azimuth, Equatorial and Dobsonian mounts. Here's a brief discussion of EQ and Alt-Az
Dobsonian Reflectors
Dobsonian Reflectors are mirrored scopes (typically Newtonian Reflectors) mounted on simple, stable, and sturdy bases. The bases tend to be heavy, but they're sturdy and inexpensive.
The photo below shows and inexpensive refractor on the left and a 12" dobsonian reflector on the right.
The Orion Starblast 6i, is what is known as a table-top dobsonian. It is small, short, and relatively light. The Starblast comes in two flavors: computerized and non-computerized. Its light-gathering power, ease of use, portability, and easy-to-use computer make it a nice "Lendable" Scope.
Here's a page on "Fun Gear!" and here's one on "Window Scopes".
Here are some links for scope-buying advice.