Best Telescope Accessories Under $50 (2026)
Eight telescope accessories under $50, ranked by impact per dollar: a moon filter, collimation tools, a smartphone adapter, a 2x Barlow, a red dot finder, and more — plus the cheap add-ons to skip.
Most of the frustration in beginner astronomy has nothing to do with the telescope itself. The Moon is so bright it leaves an afterimage in one eye. The finder forces you into a neck-craning crouch every time you aim. The mirrors have quietly drifted out of alignment, so planets look like fuzzy blobs no matter which eyepiece you use. Every one of those problems has a fix that costs less than a tank of gas — and with evenings getting darker again and Saturn heading toward its best showing of the year in early October, late summer is exactly the right moment to sort out the small annoyances before the fall observing season arrives. This guide rounds up eight telescope accessories under $50, ordered roughly by how much improvement you get per dollar.
How This List Is Ranked
One note before the list: this is deliberately not an eyepiece guide. Eyepieces are the single most valuable optical upgrade for most telescopes, but they deserve their own treatment, and we cover them separately in our eyepiece upgrade guide. What follows is everything else — the filters, alignment tools, aiming aids, and protection that make the telescope you already own easier and more pleasant to use. And if you are still shopping for the telescope itself, start with our top picks rather than accessorizing a scope you don't have yet.
Ranking a moon filter against a carry bag is inherently apples-to-oranges, so read the order as impact per dollar for a typical beginner-to-intermediate owner. Cheap items that solve problems almost everyone has sit near the top; pricier or more situational items sit lower, even when they are excellent at what they do.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
1. Celestron 1.25" Moon Filter — around $11
The Moon through even a small telescope is genuinely dazzling — bright enough to wash out fine detail and leave you with one dark-adapted eye and one that isn't. A moon filter is a simple neutral-density filter that threads into the bottom of any standard 1.25" eyepiece and cuts the transmitted light down to a comfortable level. The payoff goes beyond comfort: with the glare tamed, low-contrast detail along the terminator — crater walls, rilles, mountain shadows — becomes noticeably easier to pick out.
Celestron's version passes roughly 18% of incoming light, a sensible middle ground for common beginner apertures. The honest limitation: on very small scopes (under about 80mm of aperture) the Moon isn't overwhelming to begin with, and on thin crescent phases the filtered view can be dimmer than you'd like. It is a one-trick accessory, but the trick is one you'll use on most clear nights the Moon is up, which is why it tops this list at the price of a sandwich. We go deeper on it in our Celestron moon filter review.
2. Starboosa Smartphone Telescope Adapter — around $13
Sooner or later everyone tries to hold a phone up to the eyepiece freehand, and the results are always the same: a wobbly, half-vignetted smear. A smartphone adapter fixes that by clamping your phone so its camera lens sits centered and steady over the eyepiece — the afocal method, which is the simplest entry point into astrophotography there is. With the phone held rigid, night mode or a short exposure will get you a recognizable, shareable Moon photo on your first attempt.
The limitations are real but livable. Initial alignment is fiddly — expect a few minutes of nudging the clamp until the camera is centered — and the method really shines on the Moon and, to a lesser degree, bright planets, which render small. Deep-sky objects are out of reach without tracking and longer exposures. For a broader look at what phones can and can't do at the eyepiece, see our smartphone astrophotography guide.
3. SVBONY Laser Collimator — around $22
This one is for reflector owners only — and for them it may be the most important item on the page. Newtonian telescopes rely on two mirrors staying precisely aligned, and ordinary bumps and car rides knock them out. The symptoms are maddening because they masquerade as a bad telescope: stars that never quite snap to a point, planets that look soft at every magnification. Collimation is the fix, and a laser collimator makes it fast: drop it into the focuser, adjust the secondary mirror until the beam hits the primary's center mark, then adjust the primary until the beam returns to its origin. Two minutes, done in the dark.
The caveat with budget lasers is that the laser itself can be slightly misaligned from the factory — worth checking by rotating it in the focuser and watching whether the dot traces a circle. And if you own a refractor or a Maksutov/Schmidt-Cassegrain, skip this entirely; those designs rarely need user collimation. Our step-by-step collimation guide walks through the whole process.
4. Moon & Planetary Filter Set — around $25
Color filters are the classic planetary observer's accessory: threaded Wratten-numbered filters that screw into the eyepiece barrel and boost contrast on specific features. A red or orange filter darkens Martian deserts to make surface markings stand out; a blue filter increases contrast on Jupiter's cloud belts and the Great Red Spot; a yellow-green filter can firm up lunar contrast. A set of four for around $25 is a cheap way to experiment across all of them.
Expectations need tempering here more than anywhere else on this list. Color filter effects are subtle — a nudge in contrast, not a transformation — and they scale with aperture, so a 6" scope gets more from them than a 90mm one. Most observers end up reaching for one or two filters from a set regularly and leaving the rest in the case. Go in expecting a modest, real improvement on Mars and Jupiter nights and you'll be satisfied; expect Hubble and you won't.
5. SVBONY SV197 Cheshire Eyepiece — around $28
The Cheshire is the laser collimator's low-tech sibling, and many experienced reflector owners trust it more. It's a sight tube with crosshairs and an angled reflective face that catches ambient light — no batteries, no electronics, and critically, nothing inside it that can itself drift out of calibration. You look through the peephole and adjust the mirrors until the reflections and crosshairs line up. What you see is ground truth.
The trade-offs: it's slower to learn than a laser, and because it relies on ambient light, it works best in daylight or with a lamp pointed at the tube opening, rather than in the dark mid-session. The two tools actually pair beautifully — use the laser for quick touch-ups at night and the Cheshire to verify everything periodically — and together they still come in under $50. If you only buy one and you're patient, the Cheshire is the more foolproof instrument.
6. 2x Barlow Lens — around $35
A Barlow sits on the border between accessory and eyepiece, but it earns its slot here because of what it does to the rest of your kit: inserted between the focuser and any eyepiece, it doubles the effective magnification. Own two eyepieces and a 2x Barlow, and you effectively own four focal lengths. Better still, it lets you reach high magnification with longer-focal-length eyepieces, which keep their comfortable eye relief — a far nicer experience than squinting into a tiny 4mm eyepiece.
Two honest caveats. First, a Barlow adds glass to the light path, so bargain units can introduce a touch of softness or edge color; at this price point, stick to a known optical brand rather than the cheapest listing. Second, a Barlow cannot beat physics: useful magnification tops out around 2x per millimeter of aperture, and the atmosphere frequently caps sharp viewing at 150–200x regardless. Doubling a magnification that's already at the limit just produces a bigger blur.
7. Astromania Red Dot Finder — around $40
The straight-through optical finderscopes bundled with many beginner telescopes are a genuine ergonomic hazard: to aim near the zenith you end up crouched under the tube with your neck at an angle nature never intended, looking at an upside-down star field. A red dot finder replaces that with a zero-magnification reflex sight — a small window with a projected red dot showing exactly where the telescope points. You aim with both eyes open, the sky looks like the sky, and putting the dot on a target takes seconds. The deluxe-style units add adjustable brightness, which matters for preserving night vision.
The limitation is the flip side of the design: with no magnification or light-gathering, you can only aim directly at things you can see with the naked eye. Faint targets mean star-hopping from a bright anchor star, which is a skill worth having anyway. Check that the mounting base matches your telescope's finder shoe, and remember to switch it off — a dot left on overnight is a dead battery by the weekend.
8. 30" Padded Telescope Bag — around $46
The least glamorous item here might change your observing habits the most. A telescope that lives assembled in a padded bag by the door is a telescope that actually goes outside on a random clear Tuesday; one stored in pieces in its original cardboard box mostly doesn't. A 30" padded case swallows most small refractors and tabletop reflectors — including nearly everything in our under-$200 beginner telescope guide — keeps dust and dew off the optics between sessions, and adds pockets for eyepieces, filters, and the red dot finder you just bought.
Be clear about what soft padding does and doesn't do: it protects against knocks, scrapes, and dust, not crushing. It's ideal for closet storage and car trips to a dark site, but it is not luggage for the airline hold. Measure your optical tube (with any protruding focuser or finder) before ordering, because 30" is a hard ceiling.
Cheap Accessories to Skip
Just as important as knowing what to buy under $50 is knowing what to leave on the shelf. Three categories come up constantly:
3x and 5x Barlows for small telescopes. These sell on big numbers, but as covered above, aperture sets the magnification ceiling. On a typical 70–130mm beginner scope, a 5x Barlow mostly manufactures large, dim, blurry images. A quality 2x is the sensible ceiling.
Eyepiece-end "solar filters." Occasionally bundled with imported telescopes, these small dark filters screw into the eyepiece and are genuinely dangerous: they sit at the focal point where concentrated sunlight can crack them without warning, with your eye on the other side. Safe solar observing uses only certified full-aperture filters that cover the front of the telescope. Never use an eyepiece-end solar filter, at any price.
Aluminum-case eyepiece-and-filter mega kits. A briefcase of five eyepieces and six filters for $60 looks like value, but it's quantity over quality — most of the contents will disappoint. The same money concentrated in one or two good items serves you far better.
FAQ
Do I really need a moon filter, or can I just live with the glare?
The Moon's brightness through a telescope won't harm your eyes, so a filter is purely about comfort and contrast. On scopes under about 80mm you can reasonably skip it. On 114mm and larger apertures, it's one of the best few dollars in astronomy: the glare genuinely hides fine terminator detail, and it ruins your dark adaptation in the observing eye for a good while afterward.
Should I buy a laser collimator or a Cheshire eyepiece?
If you own a Newtonian reflector, ideally both — the pair still totals under $50. The laser is faster and works in the dark; the Cheshire has nothing internal that can go out of calibration, so it serves as the trustworthy reference. If you're choosing one and you're patient, take the Cheshire. If you own a refractor or a Maksutov/Schmidt-Cassegrain, you need neither.
Will a 2x Barlow make my telescope more powerful?
It doubles magnification, but magnification and resolving power are different things. Detail is fixed by aperture — roughly 2x per millimeter is the useful magnification ceiling — and the steadiness of the atmosphere often limits you before the optics do. A Barlow is a flexibility tool that multiplies your eyepiece collection, not a way to exceed what your telescope can physically resolve.
Do color planetary filters actually work?
Yes, but subtly. A red or orange filter measurably improves contrast on Martian surface markings, and blue helps Jupiter's belts, with stronger effects at larger apertures. They will not transform a mushy view into a sharp one — collimation, cooldown, and steady air matter far more. Treat a filter set as an inexpensive experiment, not a required purchase.
Which accessory should a beginner buy first?
Match it to your pain point. If you own a reflector and views seem soft, collimation tools come first — nothing else matters until the mirrors are aligned. If aiming the telescope is the misery, get the red dot finder. If you mostly observe the Moon, the $11 moon filter is the easy win. And if your telescope rarely leaves the house at all, the bag might quietly be the most valuable item on this page.
Affiliate Disclosure
