Holiday shopping season has really kicked into gear and if you have a stargazing fan on your gift list you have a lot of choices. Maybe that stargazing fan is you!

I would be very leary sending you to one of the big discount or “big box” stores. There’s a lot of junk out there and this is not a wrap on these stores.

It’s just that the buyers for these stores simply don’t have the time to research all the scopes out there. I think the best thing to do is buy online from one of the major telescope brands.

My favorite telescope brands are Orion and Celestron. Go to their websites and you’ll find many, many choices in types of telescopes and many different price ranges.

If you don’t know much about telescopes your head can start spinning in a big hurry. Let me try to help a little bit. Also, both the Orion and Celestron websites have information that’ll help you buy the right scope.

The are three basic kinds of scopes out there: refractors, reflectors and Cassegrains. All three have their advantages and disadvantages.

Refractors are what more people think of when it comes to telescopes. The light from whatever you’re viewing comes in one end of the telescope through what’s called an objective lens and you view from the other end of the scope through the eyepiece.

In the case of refractor telescopes the wider the objective lens the better. Refractor telescopes are sold by the diameter of their objective lenses. You need at least a 60 mm refractor. Anything smaller is basically a toy in my book.

Reflector telescopes gather light with a concave parabolic mirror in the back of the scope that bounces the reflected image to the front of the scope where another flat mirror directs the image to an eyepiece on the side of the scope.

The wider the mirror the better the more light you can gather. All reflector telescopes are sold by the diameter of their mirrors in inches. You really need at least a six inch reflector for serious backyard stargazing.

I have to tell you that reflector telescopes are my favorites, especially Dobsonian mounts, better known as Dobsonian or Dob scopes. I truly believe that if you’re strictly interested in a good quality image and you don’t mind scopes that are a little bigger and bulkier, go with a Dobsonian. My biggest Dob is a 20 inch. I love it love it love it!

A third type of telescope is a Cassegrain, which is more or less a hybrid of reflector and refractor telescopes. They tend to be more expensive because they’re a little more portable and generally have more bells and whistles.

What I’d like to do in the rest my column this week is give you some of my own personal recommendations.

Now if your star watcher is a young person just getting into the stars, you want to be sure you buy smart.

You don’t want to spend a whole bunch of money on a scope because if stargazing is just a passing fancy you could be buying a very expensive cloths rack or a new closest occupant

For kids under 10 years old I really like the Orion SkyScanner 100 mm TableTop Reflector. It’s $100 and easy for kids to use. It’s not too big or not too small.

For older kids and adults just getting into amateur astronomy, I have two recommendations.

On the less expensive end, I really like the Celestron 80 LCM computerized refractor telescope. You can get one of these for about $300.

It’s a portable scope with an 80 mm objective lens and fully computerized hand controller with a huge database that really helps the user locate hard to find celestial targets like fainter galaxies, star clusters and nebula.

On the higher end of an intermediate scope, my best recommendation is, hands down, an Orion brand SkyQuest XT8i Computerized IntelliScope. You can buy it from Orion for $530.

It’s an eight inch Dobsonian scope that’s just wonderful! It also comes with a computerized celestial object locator that is such a great help. More importantly, I just love the optics in this scope. Images are so crisp and clear!

By the way, you really need to take long continuous views through your scope. I’m talking five to ten minutes at a time so you can really get use to the light level of whatever you’re spying on in our universe. It makes a big difference!

Now if you really want to do it right, go a step higher and get an Orion SkyQuest XT8g GoTo Dobsonian Telescope for $850.

It’s the same eight inch Orion Dob I described above, but as a wonderful addition it’s got a “go to” motor set up that actually slews the telescope to whatever celestial object you punch up on the computer.

Once it finds your target it’ll track it across the sky, so whatever you’re viewing stays in your eyepiece.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a 20-inch Dobsonian reflector that also has a go to motor.

My Dobs come from Starmaster Telescopes in Kansas. I think their great people to work with. Check out their website at www.starmastertelescopes.com.

Orion Telescopes even has a monstrous 50-inch Dobsonian Reflector … for a mere $123,000 dollars. Talk about astronomical!

Cassegrain telescopes are wonderfully advanced telescopes that are more expensive but more portable than Dobsonian reflectors. They’re also sold by the size of their light collecting mirrors.

Just like reflector telescopes, you really need a six- to eight-inch scope or larger.

No matter how good or big your telescope is, you’re never going to see Technicolor images visually like those you see in photographs.

For that you need to have a telescope-astronomical camera system with a Cassegrain type telescope. For sure it will run you into bigger bucks.

I’ve got to tell you though, that’s what I’m into now and I love it. I do business with Starizona in Tucson, Ariz., for all my astrophotography supplies.

Dean Koenig, the owner, is a genius. One of his creations is his “Hyperstar” lens that has absolutely revolutionized astrophotography. Check them out at www.starizona.com or if you’re ever in Tucson stop in. I love it there and I know you will, too.

I recommend that along with a telescope, also get them a good astronomy stargazing book or some software so your stargazer will get to know the constellations and where to look for star clusters, nebulae where stars are being born, galaxies and other stellar targets.

There are many good books out there like “Nightwatch,” by Terrence Dickinson, “David Levy’s Guide to the Night Sky” and if can suggest with all humility, “Mike Lynch’s Pennsylvania Starwatch.”

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” that you order on the website: http://www.starrynight.com/

There’s also similar apps you can get for smart phones like Google Sky that’ll do the same thing. What a technical age we live in. It’s hard to keep up with things but it’s fun!

Happy Shopping!

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