Discovering astronomy

[Vidar]

Last weekend I finally received my Galileoscope. It's an inexpensive telescope made for the 2009 year of astronomy. I paid a mere €34.- including shipping and handling for it.  Putting it together takes a bit of puzzling over the instructions, but it's still very doable.
Tonight I pointed it at the moon, and the results were very satisfying. I could make out much more detail than with the naked eye. You can actually see individual craters along the edge of the dark side of the moon.
I haven't posted any pictures (yet) because I haven't figured out how to attach a camera to the scope yet.
Also, I need to buy a tripod for more steady observing at the sky. My hands aren't very steady, and the image tends to dance around quite a bit if I don't force myself to be very calm.
All in all, I can recommend the Galileoscope to anyone who wants to do a bit of casual amateur astronomy on a tight budget.
Unlike most cheap telescopes, someone went through the trouble of creating a telescope that is a good as possible, for the lowest possible price. The quality of the telescope surprised me in a positive way. The lenses correct for chromatic aberrations, so the image is nice and sharp, and the whole thing feels  reasonable sturdy for what amounts to a plastic tube with delicate bits in it.
You can buy one at https://www.galileoscope.org for a mere $30, or anonymously donate one for $24.

[eryogigasee]

Stellarium is also a useful tool for amateur astronomy.  As an open source planetarium project it helps with learning useful navigation points; as well as naming objects in the sky, predicting where they'll be at certain times and linking in constellations to make navigation easier.  It also beats trying to use a paper map.

It also runs on most OS's reasonably well too.

As for the camera, my parents happen to have a telescopic lens and fitting rings specifically designed for it. I suspect you may have to remove the eye piece and use the camera focus to compensate in some way, but I've no doubt you've found a solution by now...