The frontier of space is as much a journey of the mind as it is of distance. When Steven Hawking showed us the mysteries of black holes, all of a sudden, time and space could collapse and be twisted and changed in those intergalactic pressure cookers. If not for the wonders of radio astronomy, these ideas would remain just ideas but slowly science is catching up with theory. As far back as before the times of Christ, the wise and thinking people of societies of the time were looking at the stars and finding ways to track and chart them. We who love the hobby of astronomy can chart a proud history of astronomers that tracks across millennia and through virtually every culture in civilization. So it is critically important that you get just the right telescope for where you are and what your star gazing preferences are. To start with, let s discuss the three major kinds of telescopes and then lay down some Telescope 101 concepts to increase your chances that you will buy the right thing. The three primary types of telescopes that the amateur astronomer might buy are the Refractor, the Reflector and the Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. - Collimation is a term for how well tuned the telescope is to give you a good clear image of what you are looking at. You want your telescope to have good collimation so you are not getting a false image of the celestial body. - Aperture is a fancy word for how big the lens of your telescope is. But it s an important word because the aperture of the lens is the key to how powerful your telescope is. A meteoroid is actually a small piece of space rubble, usually dust or small rocks that come from either a comet or the break up of an asteroid in space and that eventually plummets toward the earth. There are some interesting details about the life of a meteoroid that make the viewing of shooting stars even more fun. You have to drive five trillion, eight hundred million miles per year to get all the way across that fast. - Scientists calculate that the Milky Way is 14 billion years old. These little fun facts should get a pretty spirited discussion going about the origins of the universe and about the possibility of space travel or if there are life on other planets.