My interest in astronomy began when I was in junior high, which was the perfect time because I was enrolled in metal work and had access to the workshop in school. That allowed the little craftsmen within myself to build a four inch relfector telescope under a hundred dollars.
The construction started with a little visit to the one and only
astronomy shop in Vancouver (wonder if it's still around today),
there I purchased the mirror, eyepiece, and the tube. Then, under
the inspiration of a number of "Build Your Own Telescope" books
I hopped on to a marine hardware store and bought myself the lead
weights and lead pipes. (Pipes are great for its sturdiness)
And
then it was woodworking time to build the simple wooden joints and
a trip to the metal work shop to build that not-too-simple bushing
with a lathe (the most joyable machine in the shop). Tada, in a
few weeks my scope was up and running, and my grades... well, I
made up for that.
The little monocular is the finder, if you use that, you'd be literally trying to find a needle in a haystack. When magnification is about 50 to 100 times, the width of your view is only about the size of a fingertip. Different magnifications are determined by the eyepieces used. The higher the magnification, the smaller your viewpoint is and the dimmer objects become for a trade off in size.
The scope is mainly used for viewing plannets, the moon and the few star clusters and galaxies that are bright enough for the scope to catch. Then you can project the sun's rays into a large piece of paper much like a projector and view sun spots with it. Then I got hold on a little SLR camera plus an adaptor, and a few pictures were taken. Boy it was tough to make a good photo. Wish I can put some of them online but they're sitting up in Vancouver, Canada, and I'm now down at San Jose, California.