Celestron Research Microscope

by Celestron

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 19 pounds
• Shipping: This item can only be shipped to the 48 contiguous states. We regret it cannot be shipped to APO/FPO, Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico.
• ASIN: B00006F2VU
• Item model number: 4060
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,464 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 23, 2002

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

This is Celestron's finest biological microscope. It uses an adjustable illuminator with an Abbe 1.25 condenser, iris diaphragm, filters, and holder. The built-in mechanical stage is 123mm x 153mm and has a movement range of 70mm x 40mm. The unit has a binocular head 45-degree inclined, 360-degree rotatable, and has an interpupillary distance of 55-75mm. Celestron supplies four achromatic objectives of 4x, 10x, 40, 100xr (oil) and two sets of eyepieces--10x giving powers of 40x, 100x, 400x, 1000x, and 15x with powers of 60x, 150x, 600x, 1500x.

Standard accessories:

• Two 10x eyepieces
• Two 15x eyepieces
• One 4x objective lens
• One 10x objective lens
• One 40x objective lens
• One 100x objective lens
• Three color filters (red, blue, green)
• Plastic dust cover
• Cedar wood oil

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good value for the money, January 12, 2006

By 

Paul "Sci Fi fan" (Boston, MA area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celestron Research Microscope (Electronics)

You get about as much as can be expected for this price range.

Having the 4x objective (see Meade for example that lacks it) is very desirable. Having a 15x eyepice to give acceptable quality 600x avoids much need to go to the oil immersion lens. Almost everything works quite nicely. I would recommend not using the oil that comes with the microscope - cedar oil. This is an older type of oil that is slightly yellow and harder to clean than modern synthetics. Buy a tube of modern low viscosity immersion oil from Edmund Scientific or similar supplier. I found this oil works great at 1000x and 1500x with this microscope and cleans off reasonably easily with isopropyl alchohol.

I would definitely recommend purchasing this microscope, but also consider the similar featured Revelation III from LW Scientific. It has very slightly superior features, at a slightly higher price, from a company that specializes in microscopes (vs. Celestron, where their customer service knows almost nothing about microscopy; they are telescope experts).

There were a few tiny initial problems with the microscope. One eyepiece had a small optical defect near its periphery. Celestron immediately exchanged it for a flawless one. The iris diaphram came very slightly off center. There are adjusment screws to correct this. The alignment error is so small I haven't bothered fixing it. The color filters, by design, are placed right on top of the (nice) halogen light source. Compare the LW-Scientific model mentioned which has fileter holder and a few other light source advantages.

FYI:

The achromat objectives have the typical (no better, no worse) amount of spherical aberation at the outer edge, giving you about 2/3 of the field of view in sharpest focus for precisely flat specimen (e.g. quality blood smear). This is not a defect at this price range. Apochromat Plan objectives that ahieve 95+% freedom from spherical aberation can cost as much or more for one lens than this microscope costs.

This microscope uses standard lens sizes so it can readily upgrade to better eyepieces and objectives and acommodate kits for specialized microscopy (dark field, phase contrast, etc.), as well accepting standard through the eyepiece digital image capture accessories.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Actually...., September 17, 2005

By 

Chris Lissman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celestron Research Microscope (Electronics)

Actually, the oil is not to prevent the objective from scratching the slide, but instead to allow the slide to be viewed at that magnification at all. With that high a magnification the refraction will be very high, and a lot of light will escape before it ever gets to the eye (the light is going through glass, then air, then glass again, distorting its path greatly). The oil that is used for these microscopes has the same refractive index as the lens glass, and so light travels through it at the same speed and doesn't run off course.

5.0 out of 5 stars NOT A DESIGN ERROR, September 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Celestron Research Microscope (Electronics)

This is in response to the post that there was an error with the 100x on the microscope. It's not that it's an error, but when you do magnifications at that level you have to do what's called oil immersion with the slides. This enables the lense to get close without being scratched. The instruction manual should say that. I promise I'm not making this up. I'm a biochem major with plenty of experience:-)