It’s time for my annual holiday telescope buying guide. It’s important to make the right buy for whatever age or level.

Avoid buying telescopes at most brick-and-mortar stores, especially the big discount and warehouse stores. They’re notorious for junky telescopes. The buyers for these stores have so much on their plates that there’s no way they can possibly research telescopes to ferret out bad telescopes from good ones.

I hate to see you buy a cheap telescope as a gift to someone, especially a kid. It can make the big difference as to whether or not that young mind continues his interest in backyard astronomy or throws in the towel,

In my opinion the best telescopes are made by Meade, Celestron or Orion telescopes. Meade and Celestron scopes can found on www.telescopes.com and Orion telescopes are at oriontelescopes.com.

Get them a good stargazing book or some software too. There are many good books out there like “Nightwatch: a Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe” by Terrence Dickinson, “David Levy’s Guide to the Night Sky,” and “Washington Starwatch” by yours truly. You can find it at many bookstores as well as www.voyageurpress.com.

The best software I’ve seen is “Starry Night Enthusiast 6.3,” which can be ordered at www.starrynight.com.

There are three basic kinds of telescopes; refractors, reflectors and cassegrains. The most important quality you’re looking for in all telescopes is light-gathering ability. That has everything to do with the aperture. The wider your scope, the better.

The magnification range on any type of telescope takes a back seat. You can change the magnification or power by changing eyepieces. Any decent telescope will include several eyepieces. Most of the time though you won’t need more than about 200 times power to get a good look into the universe.

The refractor scope is the kind of scope when most people visualize when it come to telescopes. The minimum diameter of the objective lens should be at least 60mm but preferably 70mm or greater.

The main advantage of refractor is portability. Reflector telescopes were invented by Sir Isaac Newton, and I think they’re the best all-around telescope as far as ability and price. You get a lot of optical bang for your buck.

Reflectors are sold by the diameter of their mirrors in inches. The minimum diameter reflector telescope for a serious backyard astronomer should be at least six inches (from less than $300 to $400). For another $100 or so you can buy an 8-inch diameter reflector that’ll bringing in nearly twice as much light as a 6-inch scope.

A cassegrain telescope is more or less a hybrid between a refractor and a reflector. These are more expensive then reflector and refractors of the same aperture. The advantage is that they are very portable, but I’ve never found one that gives as good as an image as a reflector telescope with an equal aperture.

I think Dobsonian mounts are the best and easiest to use. An equatorial mount is more complicated, and you’ll definitely spend more money. You can get mounts with a small computer to direct the telescope to whatever you program it to find. Some purists think it’s cheating, hopping from star to star to find that faint galaxy. I think it’s just fine. Use the technology available. That’s why it was invented.

Just make sure though that the telescope you buy has good optical ability. That should be your first priority. Some telescopes on the market will skimp on optics for the all the bells and whistle.

Mike Lynch is an astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.

The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members. Go to www.everettastro.org/.