Many of us may cower from the concept of Black Friday itself, but each year we see more and more telescopes, binoculars and other pieces of astro kit included in the price reductions, meaning it can make for a good opportunity to bag your first telescope or perhaps get a telescope upgrade.

Or if you’re a naked eye observer, you might want to make that first leap into observing with magnification via a good pair of binoculars before you commit to a full-blown telescope and mount system.

Black Friday can also be a great chance to get a good first telescope for a child or young astronomer just in time for Christmas.

If you’re buying a telescope for the first time, however, it pays to know what you’re looking for. There are numerous products available online during Black Friday that we wouldn’t recommend, no matter how low the price dropped!

For advice on telescopes, read our guide on how to choose your first telescope or our pick of the best beginners telescopes and best telescopes for kids.

Most telescopes come with mounts these days, too. Get all the info you need with our guide to telescope mounts.

And for advice on binoculars, read our guide to stargazing with binoculars and our pick of the best binoculars for astronomy. There’s plenty more binocular advice in our guide to budget binoculars, too.

When is Black Friday 2021?

Black Friday normally falls on the last Friday of November, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US.

Black Friday 2021 is on 26 November, but sales will most likely begin a week or more before.

If you’re on the lookout for a Black Friday deal, there are usually a good number of bargains to be found at the start of the week.

Black Friday telescope deals

While the main Black Friday deals haven’t been announced just yet, a few are starting to filter through. Here’s what we’ve found so far. Stay tuned for more as Black Friday approaches.

Sky-Watcher Explorer-130M

Sky-Watcher is a trusted and reliable telescope maker, and the Explorer-130M reflector has been reduced in price by Wex Photographic. It’s a great choice for observing the Moon, the planets and deep-sky objects and comes with 10 and 25mm eyepieces, x2 Barlow Lens and a red dot finder. Plus, the telescope package includes a tripod and a motorised equatorial mount that can locate and track objects as they move across the sky.

This would make for a good first telescope for beginners – Newtonians often offer the best observing power for your money – as well as amateurs who feel they’ve got all they can out of their small refractor and are ready for an upgrade.

Celestron AstroMaster 76 EQ Reflector

Celestron is perhaps the most famous brand name in amateur astronomy, and with good reason. The company was set up by US astronomer Tom Johnson in the 1960s, and since then has been producing simple telescopes for beginners and more high-end instruments for experienced astronomers and astrophotographers.

The AstroMaster 76 EQ would make a great first telescope for beginners and young astronomers, and is currently available as part of Amazon’s Black Friday offerings. The telescope comes with an equatorial mount and tripod, an accessory tray, 10mm and 20mm eyepieces and a finderscope.

No tools are required for setup, which makes it a good grab-and-go telescope, as well as one that can be packed away for transport and easily assembled at a dark-sky site (and one that won’t take you too long to set up ready for Christmas morning!)

The AstroMaster also comes with downloadable software featuring a database of 36,000 astronomical objects, printable sky maps and images.

• Buy now from Amazon, eBay, PicStop

Sky-Watcher Heritage-130P FlexTube Parabolic Dobsonian

A tabletop Dobsonian makes for a great first telescope or even a first telescope for a child or young astronomer. You simply set it on a tabletop or other sturdy flat surface and it’s ready to go.

The Heritage-130P FlexTube is an example of a good tabletop Dobsonian, and is currently reduced in price by Wex Photographic.

It weighs just over 6kg and comes with a carrying handle, making it suitable for transporting. It comes with a 10mm and a 25mm eyepiece and a red-dot finder.

This is another great beginners’ telescope from Sky-Watcher, and is suitable for close-up views of the Moon, for observing the planets and also deep-sky objects.

Black Friday binocular deals

Here are the best binocular deals available so far for Black Friday 2021.

Celestron Outland X

These binoculars weigh just under 800g and boast good colour correction, which during testing allowed us to take some beautiful glimpses of stars like Herschel’s Garnet Star (Mu (μ) Cephei), the brilliant white of Alderamin (Alpha (α) Cephei) and the yellow of Zeta (ζ) Cephei.

The Celestron Outland X is sold as ‘multi-coated’ and we found the anti-reflective coatings on the lenses were effective. Plus, as is the case with most 50mm roof prism binoculars, the minimum interpupillary distance is limited by design. Here it’s relatively large at 61mm.

The Celestron Outland X is currently on offer across a range of online retailers.

Where to look for Black Friday telescope and binocular deals

Keep an eye on the following retailers for potential bargains on telescopes as Black Friday approaches.

• Wex Photographic
• 365Astronomy
• Currys
• Amazon
• eBay