Customer Reviews

National Geographic Digital Telescope

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This telescope is suitable for younger children as a learning tool. Older children would benefit more by starting out with a much more substantial telescope. If you're not sure that the young child you have in mind is really interested in astronomy, then this refractor telescope is suitable for introducing such a young child to astronomy. It is cheap enough to determine that the child is realy interested in going out in the night sky and looking at stars and planets and such. It is a real telescope, and could also serve as a good prop in a science project for elementary school. Once the child shows a consistent interest, you'll want to invest in a much better (and more expensive) model and brand - a reflector scope. On the otherhand, if the child doesn't show much interest, you haven't wasted a lot of money, and he or she can use the scope as a bookshelf ornament or as a regular scope to spy on the neighbors across the way or see birds in a far off tree.

The best thing about this telescope is the digital camera that comes with it, which can be used on your next telescope when your child outgrows this one. The positive aspects are that your child will easily learn to put the telescope together and take it apart, set it up, and change lenses. It can also be used as a high powered telescope for terrestial use. They will be be able, after a few viewing sessions, to put the moon or a bright planet in view. It comes with a right angle prism, a 20mm eyepiece (low power), a 4mm eyepiece (higher power), and a 2-power tube (doubler) which can be used in combination with the eyepieces and digital camera.

Among the negatives are no fine adjustment knobs and no finder scope. The lock knobs on the short, table-top tripod don't hold the the telesope in place very well. The entire assembly is very light and easy to disturb. The slightest touch introduces vibration into the view. The focus knob control is coarse and it easy to pass the focus point you're looking for. The pieces fit together well, and are held in place by set screws, but the overlap isn't much and the assembly is too easy to disturb when trying to manipulate the barrel to find the object you want to view.

You can see the craters of the moon clearly with this telescope, but not much else really clear. It's lack of a finder scope makes aiming the barrel around a trial and error effort. You first use the 20mm lens to find objects to view, then you can drop in the 4mm lens to magnify - but the oject has to be in the center of view, or the 4mm lens will not be in alignment.

If your child is already keen on astronomy, and you have no doubt about it, then skip this model for a more advanced and stable model.