Customer Reviews

Celestron Firstscope 80EQ 80mm Refractor Telescope

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Good beginner to intermediate scope. Optics are clean,concise and crisp. Even with poor seeing moon, and planets focused sharply. Splits double stars cleanly- shows nice color of stars.
Mount is average- stable - and lightweight to carry. Viewing things at the zenith is hard with many refractors, and this is no different. Finder is not that good. Overall a good scope for the money. Will show better views of double stars, the planets and the moon then any reflector. Ring nebula easily found in semi darkness- M13 looked nice as well.

This scope is as very basic starter scope. Here's why:

1. The objective is 80 mm, just over 3.1 inches, so it is jsut adequate to bring in the light necessary for a beginning look at the universe. It is adequate for the moon, and beginning views of the larger planets. The planets will appear as small disks. One will be able to see Saturn's rings, and Jupiter's moons, but the images will be very small. Some deep sky objects will be visible, but faints and fuzzy.

2. The mount will vibrate when touched, which will cause the image in the eyepiece to "shiver", which is very frustrating to the observer.

If additional funds are available, I'd opt for a larger scope with a better mount. Kids will be satisfied with this scope however.

Jim "Konedog" Koenig, astronomy buff

Dear Amateurs, You can increase a certian ammount of planetary detail with the use on colored filters. While your aperture ( scope size ) will impact your light gathering and with the use of filtering decrease light even further you maybe able to increase your contrast to bring out additional features. Also, whenever you use a inexpensive telescope, barlows can give you additional options with your eyepiece collection (they double what you use) but also an extender can be a valuable asset! For example, lets say your 80mm refractor is an f/ 8 and the focal length is 640mm with an extender you increase your ratio to f/16 and Focal Length to 1280mm...YOU just turned your scope into a super planetary Refractor! Don't forget, beyond our solor system are double stars and amazing clusters, YOU can see them if you look! Don't get caught up on reviews from people who don't understand the sky. An 80mm scope can unlock the sky just enough for you to get started, after all there are billions and billions of objects to see!

Clear skies, James Edwards