Getting your hands on a really decent astronomical telescope is, unfortunately, a very expensive business. You won't get anything worth having from Argos or Dixons. It's been well said, even by professional astronomers, that the best tool for the amateur is a decent pair of binoculars. If you're on a tight budget I should like to recommend the Olympus 8x25 PCI binoculars. My wife got me a pair last Christmas (I looked 'em up on Which? first!) and ever since then they have been glued to my chest. They have exceptional optical quality for the dough (you can get 'em for about £65). You can wear 'em with specs on too, something I didn't believe possible until I got these (They have good "eye relief" apparently!), and something that always used to put me off binocs. For stargazing you don't want anything above 8X unless you're prepared to muck about with tripods, but I reckon that's best left to the telescope dudes.