The best place I have found to learn about scopes is a website called "Better View Desired". It pops up on a Google search.
There you will find reviews of a great number of binos and scopes, in a fair amount of detail. He uses them for weeks or months before he writes.
The author has (or maybe had) a slight bias towards Nikon IMHO because he did work for them at birding festivals, but despite that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of scopes, binos, 'through the lens' photography etc. I have seen him lecture and he is really good.
My own experience is that the cheaper scopes, which includes anything less than $500, are disappointing once you get them out of the showroom. Eventually I bought a Bausch and Lomb Elite Scope, which cost around 1K eight years ago, and I have been very happy with it since. This line is nitrogen purged, has fully coated lenses and so forth, but is light enough to carry around. It does ok for looking at the moon and planets, though it's a birding scope really.
Birding festivals are really good places to look for scopes and binos. At the Titusville Fl. Festival, for example, there were 6 or 8 displays of all the latest stuff with cameras to go with them if you want.
Rankjo
