Astromaster 130EQ

After much searching and investigating I picked this telescope as it had the largest aperture for my price range. It is very well built and was easy to setup and build. The guide is useful, but ended up searching YouTube for a video guide - this also included how to balance the telescope [...]). The telescope itself was supplied with 2 lenses, a 20mm and a 10mm. The 20mm is plastic and I only use it as a starting lens to position the telescope first to what I want to see. The 10mm is a good little lens and give nice view of the stars and moon. I also purchased the 'Celestron AstroMaster Accessory Kit' at the same time - this included lens filters and additional 5mm, 15mm and 2x lenses. This gives more range of magnifications to use with the telescope. Viewing with the telescope is very good. The moon is amazing, but you will NEED a moon filter - it is very bright. You can clearly see the moons of Jupiter and with my additional 5mm lens I can just about make out the markings of Jupiter. As for the other planets they have not been visible in the evenings yet - but can't wait until Saturn appears! The only fault is the StarPointer. It's not that good, but you can work around/with it. I have even had my 4 year old daughter looking at the moon - which she found fascinating as she could see the craters very clearly. Since buying this, I have also contacted Celestron support (issue with the additional lens). They were quick and put me in touch with their local distributor (Hama) in the UK. Hama were also very helpful. All-in-all this is very good for the price it costs. I wanted a good telescope that would allow me to get started in Astronomy, without using it for a short while and having to replace it when I want more. This is a good start and with the right lenses will do for what I want it for. Good quality lenses are not cheap (it's the price of the telescope itself for a set), but I can now slowly upgrade this over time now that I have a decent telescope.

I was amazed at the size of this telescope when it arrived, very impressive. One thing to remember, and I have to keep reminding myself is, the price of this telescope. When I grumble at the flimsiness of a couple of the things on it I remind myself how much it cost. As one reviewer has quite rightly pointed out, it can cost this much to buy a tripod. So the five stars is for the value for money. If you want a professional telescope start looking at a couple of thousand plus, not hundred and fifty or so. The quality of the visuals (for the price) are excellent. You get two lenses, a 20mm and a 10mm. Perfectly adequate for starters. I then acquired Orbinar Plossl 30mm eyepiece 31.7mm (1.25") which gives a larger field of view. Great for finding the planet then use one of the others to zoom in on it. The main downside of this level of scope is the ease of use. It is not brilliant for following the orbits, the two cables you use to make the minor adjustments are to be honest, rubbish! They are really flimsy and soon come off (but remember what it cost!). Probably not a good idea to go below 8mm lense on this telescope due to the limitations of this scope. I did buy Celestron AstroMaster Accessory Kit which does seem to fluctuate in price. At the moment it is fifteen pounds more than I paid a couple of weeks ago. In this box you have the filters, a 15mm and 6mm lense plus a 2x power lens. The 6mm lens probably won't get used much but the collection is worth it because to buy the items individually would cost a lot more. I now feel after an outlay of just over two hundred notes that I have all I need to be a novice astronomer!

I think it's always good to give some background info on myself first so if you're in a similar position you know what to think. I'm 18, finishing my A-Levels, about to start an Astrophysics course at Uni and i've not personally used a telescope before. I'd been toying with the idea of buying a telescope for a while, and after Christmas had some spare cash so set out to find one for >£250. I spent weeks researching and contacted friends, teachers and professors about what would be best for my situation. the feedback i essentially got was to buy a Newtonian reflector of minimum this diameter aperture. Being 18 and not wanting to overspend i bought this one. And after a combined usage of about 6 hours i think i can come up with a good review. On the upside: It's easy to assemble regardless of the instructions. I didn't look once and had it together in 20 minutes; it produces a VERY clear image and have seen brilliant detail of objects like the moon, the bands of jupiter and it's moons and more recently the Milky Way; it comes with some good extras such as the two eyepieces. On the downside; it's hard to use at first, the dot finder for example was useless (infact i took it off completely and instead screwed on my point and shoot camera and used the zoom on that to locate what i wanted to see, reduced the time to find, for example, jupiter from 30 minutes to 30 seconds) making it hard to use for beginners although with a few hours practice you'll be fine; it's not particularly transportable, to move all the bits and pieces single handed (i.e. the telescope, the counterweights and the tripod) it takes 3 trips and you need those three trips unless you want to mark every wall in your house and develop a back injury as the combined thing weighs a lot; it's also quite hard to control, the "precision" controls are pretty flimsy and i feel like i'm going to break them, not to mention the fact that you get roughly 4 seconds of visual time on any object before you have to re-align it as the object's drifted away. On the whole i gave it 4 *'s because for it's price it does the job nicely. It's not super expensive (especially here on amazon) which means you get a lot for your money, the concepts are easy to pick up and it gives you the single greatest feeling ever. The first time i saw jupiter for example it made it worth every single penny. So, if you're in the same boat as me. You want something to mess around with a couple of hours a week. And to see something really cool. Look no further, or rather not too much further (see below). For the price this was brilliant and arrived quickly all in one piece (figure of speech). HOWEVER!!!!! There are two MASSIVE things to keep in mind. Firstly, if you are like me, a beginner. You MUST!!!!!!!: 1) Buy a light filter too, otherwise you'll see for example the moon for 3 seconds and you'll come away nearly blind. I wouldn't opt for the celstron one amazon recommends, it's ok, but not great. Instead spend the extra pound and get this "Light Blue 1.25" Telescope Filter - (73% transmission)" type it into amazon and you can't miss it 2) Don't get this one. The is the 130 EQ, get the 130 EQ-MD, the MD stands for motor drive. Which means that it'll track whatever you're looking at. This means you'll be able to actually look at stuff rather than glimpse it then re-align. This also comes in EXTREMELY handy with astrophotography (see below) as it means you can have longer exposure times. It's worth paying the extra £20 for a better quality stand 3) If you're interested in taking pictures using this scope you need to buy a 1" / 1/4" adapter and a T-Ring of your particular brand DSLR camera. This is the easiest way for doing it, as in my experience afocal imaging is hard to do. Although if ALL you want to do is take pictures of stuff, don't bother with a telescope, buy a DSLR camera, a telescopic lense, a stand and an automatic shutter release. It's so much easier to do, and produces just as good pictures as the telescope a lot more easily. And secondly If you're not a beginner. Don't buy this telescope at all. This is a good scope, but having seen the quality of a picture taken on a £7000 telescope the price really does matter even at a smaller scale. pay as much as you can afford and i promise you'll be happier with it. Although i can't really advise you much on what to get.

un gran bel telescopio .ottimo prezzo qualita '

Çok iyi bir teleskop. Başlangıç için 50AZ modelini almıştım ama arasında çok fark var. Andromeda, jüpiter, saturn ve niceleri telefonumda var ama "AMAZON TÜRKİYEDE RESİMLERİ AÇSA GÖSTERECEM!" Eğer çok üst segment alıp para basmayacam diyorsanız ideal. Çok ekmeğini de yedim ürünün ;) 2 eksisi var el ile taşınmaz çok ağır. Ekstra lens alıp geliştirmek lazım. Jüpiterin 2 büyük çizgisi ve büyük kırmızı gözü lens yardımı ile gözüküyor. Ayrıca fotozeynep ile 1 günde kapınızda.

Amazing is just not enough to describe what you see and feel looking through the eyepiece. Venus was my first stop, "wow" was the word that came out when the image got focussed for the first time. I could see the phases of venus with just the 20mm eyepiece. 10mm made the image a bigger one and astonishing. Moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds but when it was well above the horizon and shining brightly, I was spell bound with its beauty. Honestly you could spend hours just looking at the moon. 10mm eyepiece gave an even closer look at the Carter's, the shadows casted by the craters and the mountain ranges on the moon. Jupiter looks like a 2mm ball with very faint bands of methane distinguishable if observed for longer durations. The four moons of Jupiter are just a very minute dots if observed very minutely. But I felty it requires more magnification power to observe Jupiter with it's methane bands and the giant red spot. (May be collimation issue is there) Couldnot see the most beautiful planet Saturn as clouds came in hope to see it when conditions are perfect. These were my first experience of amature astronomy with my first telescope. I don't write reviews at all but this Celestron Astromaster 130eq is such amazing piece that it made me to write such a review. Though there are some points which I would like to list to get the most out of the telescope. 1. Lots of patience is required to be able to see what you actually want to see, trust me patience will give you all that you want from this telescope. 2. Try to see the videos and go through the instructions manual before beginning assembly of the telescope as it's quite critical for one who has no idea of any such kind before. 3. Lot of things has to go right to get the perfect views, if not getting the perfect view wait for the perfect condition to occur. 4. The equatorial mount is very heavy and of solid built quality but the pointers are just not right and you can't be sure which degree u are setting on it. 5. The tripod is also of heavy construction but if expanded fully it feels more shakey so I don't expand it. 6. The secondary mirror was dangling loose when I first unpacked the telescope which totally dishearted me but I did manual collimation as per the instructions manual provided and it was fairly accurate but will eventually require a lazer collimation which again costs around Rs 6000/- to get more sharper images. 7. The telescope is very heavy (around 16kgs) and very difficult to move it around in assembled condition. It gave me body pains the next morning after my first setup and observations. 8. There are no cromatic abbrations as it is relfector telescope and the optics are of very good quality Those who are still reading this review and disheartened because I didn't post any pictures of moon or Jupiter for them I just want to tell that pictures just don't do justice to what you can actually see with your naked eye because human eye has 1000 times better dynamic range than any camera. Even I have gone through all the pictures posted in the other reviews. Trust me you are going to see 1000 times better with your naked eye that any of those pictures. If you want to go for this telescope go for it without any hesitation as it will finally give you and out of the world experience.

É bem preciso na busca de planetas quando se regula bem a buscadora. As lentes que vem nele é de altíssima qualidade e só fica "devendo" uma barlow para aumentar o zoom. - Antes de comprar, é importante saber a latitude e longitude da sua localidade. - Se vai comprar, compre uma barlow também. Respeitando a capacidade do telescópio - Zoom real máximo é de 260x (sem aberrações nas imagens) - Para ver a lua, fica muito bom com o filtro lunar e as lentes de 10mm e 20mm dão e sobram - A regulagem precisa é muito boa - Se for fazer imagens/vídeos, recomendo um suporte para celular ou câmera DSL

Arrivé très vite, très bien fait, très content.