I know you all love newbies.

And I know you all love to give advice to them, so lets have at it. I have yet to get my first real telescope, and at first I was trying to save up for either an Intes 5 in. or a Stellarvue 4 in. (don't worry about how much I'm into this stuff, I'm majoring in Astronomy and will be attending Univ. of Hawaii to give you guys an idea) but quickly found out how good my abilities are at saving money (as in, they're not). So I'm wondering if any of you can make any telescope recommendations that are airline portable for less than $500 (preferably the whole package deal, OTA, mount, tripod, eps, etc., but not totally necessary). Anywho, thanks again to all who respond and don't hesitate to respond regardless of how much or how little knowledge you have. Let'er rip!

I'd save up for one or both of the scopes you mentioned, and go online on UH network to Hawaii's telescopes and get a vitual tour of the heavens. I would think the UH's astronomy department's got a direct link to one or more of the biggies!;-)

Maybe you can find a used setup here on Astromart' classifieds...maybe Orion's got a refractor or Mak-Cass w/mount you could use. My cheap scope is a Celestron 114GT. The OTA might be airline portable(never felt the need to jet my scopes around), optics, eh, ok. As I remember it was a couple hundred bucks. Good luck.

>>don't worry about how much I'm into this stuff, I'm majoring in Astronomy and will be attending Univ. of Hawaii to give you guys an idea..

You will find out if you are into "this stuff" if you stay up all night looking at the stars because its a new moon and still have to work the next day......

jon