FAQ's

I am interested in buying a telescope. How should I go about making a selection? Retailers advertise magnification, I’ve heard others say aperture is more important. Which is correct? I own a telescope. How should I go about setting it up and using it? I own a telescope, but I can’t find anything with it. What’s wrong? I can find objects in my telescope, but they don’t look anything like the pictures. What’s wrong with my telescope? What does “star-hopping” mean? What does a scope with “GoTo” mean and should I care? What accessories should I have in order to be able to do meaningful observing? What kind of equipment do I need to image deep sky objects? What is a nebula? What is a globular cluster? What is an open cluster? What is a binary star? What do these object designations mean...M__, IC__, NGC__ ?