Google the name John Dobson. He died almost 2 years ago now, a great human, a great thinker/ponderer. My family and I have been blessed to know him and share our home and lives with him a handful of times over the last thirty years when he travelled to our area to speak, teach and wonder. He conceptualized and created the Dobsonian Mount used with Newtonian style reflector scopes. He revolutionized what the average person could witness for his or her self, some of the incredible wonders of the cosmos.

That looks like a 4 inch commercially built Dobsonian low and to the rear of that group in the picture. Dobson's fundamental design lets you build a scope maybe 4 or 5 times that size for the same money as that one probably cost I'll bet.

If you get a notion check it out many, many parent/child projects within the community. Your boy is at the perfect age to nurture an interest that will last him a lifetime. If you think about it, all the scopes and technology are great, but anybody can wander outside most any night and look up and wonder at beauty of it all.

I once heard him answer why he did what he does and he described himself as "on a momentous quest to understand how insignificant he was".