Whats the best telescope on the market?

The best aperature for your buck is a dobsonian (open truss 8" for around $600). You can get a quality scope from Meade or Celestron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian - for pics and a desript'n

Choose a good quality scope with at least 70mm (2.8in) of aperature to reveal some surface features on Mars. Realistically, you'll want 4-6 inches of aperture.The cheapest models (cost, not potential quality) are dobsonians (as above) and newtonians.

If you can afford it, step up to an 8" schmidt-cassegrain (about $1400 - $2500 US, depending on options). These are slick machines!

Beware of the department store small junk refractor scope! These are typically sold with "600 x" magnification all over the package. A small scope (less than 4") has a highest usable magnification of 120x to 200x under good atmospheric conditions.

Here's some quality manufacturer's websites:

http://www.meade.com/

http://www.celestron.com/c2/index.php

http://takahashiamerica.com/catalog/

If you're looking for books on the subject, I would recommend

"The Backyard Astronomer's Guide" by Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer. It gets into telescopes, observing, how and what to buy (telescopes, eyepieces, photography etc) rather than just fancy Hubble pictures.

Good luck

Best Telescope On The Market

Best telescope is impossible.

If you want large aperture and price you should look at dobsonians.

Reflectors are the best in terms of price and quality but refractors are better but cost a lot more for equivalent apertures.

For mars and the like, a good 4.5"-6" telescope could see and resolve mostly anything in the Messier catalog including most planets.

For mars, buy a set of color filters. You should get red to enhance the Mares and yellor or green to see dust storms and polar ice caps.

You must buy Edmund Scientific's Astronomy books.

The high-quality and most powerful telescope in the marketplace is made through telescope applied sciences at Wirrel, they rate (with the housing and COMPUTERS) many thousands of kilos / greenbacks. If you ever discover a telescope for £500 that may see planets in one more galaxy allow everyone recognise, all of us wish one. For that money you're going to get a newbie's telescope, get a webcam and an adapter to suit it and also you could get pix of Jupiter whilst you expand just a little of talent

For about $400 you can buy a used 8" Schmidt Cassegrain by Meade or Celestron which will allow you to do some serious observing of planets, nebula, star clusters, and a good number of galaxies. Most of them will also have tracking ability for astrophotography.

There really is no best telescope though because like cars, different telescopes are designed for different things.

Read up on different types of telescopes and familiarize yourself with terms like aperture, focal length, focal ratio, catadioptric, Schmidt Cassegrain, Newtonian, Dobsonian, reflector, refractor, achromatic, apochromatic, German equatorial mount, and Goto.

Stay away from department store telescopes and brands like Bushnell, Tasco. "Department store" telescopes typically have less than perfect optics, flimsy mounts, and horrible eyepieces. They try to sell you on power when in reality, power does not give you good views, aperture does.

Good brands are Celestron and Meade (but not their department store line), and Orion. If it's new and under $200 it's generally a department store line.

this website has good prices and different models.

http://www.meade.com/