Celestron – AstroMaster 130EQ–MD Newtonian Reflector Telescope for Beginners – Aluminized Mirror – Motor Drive to Track Stars – Adjustable Tripod – Includes Eyepieces Plus Astronomy Software Package

Long but hopefully informative review. Honestly, this thing can be easy and can be a pain to assemble at the same time. The majority of it was honestly put together for me. I got it with the motor drive, which was already set on. I did still look up on YouTube on how to put it together because instruction manuals can only show so much. So if you want to I recommend looking up "Astro Tourgide". Epically if you're a beginner! The materials used with this feel pretty tough. Doesn't feel cheap at all. The starfinder little red dot wasn't the easiest to get aligned but you'll get it after a little time. The telescope will take time getting used to and is like anything else. Chances are you're not going to be perfect at it first time. For your first telescope, you can't go wrong. You will need to buy a Barlow lens for it, I went with a 2x Barlow lens. You'll also need to buy the planetary filters for it, if that's what you're trying to do. NOW FOR THE SOLAR FILTER! Check out "Thousand Oaks Optical". Please do NOT cheap out on the Solar Filter. Do NOT try to look at the sun without the filter or even with the end cap on the telescope. I don't know if they're all the same size tube, but from what I can tell, the solar filter would be 6.50". I haven't ordered it yet but I'm about to and will update this when I'm for sure. In the long run. If you're trying to find a telescope when you're just starting out, to me this would be a good one to choose.

Pros: * Once it's set up, it produces some nice imagery. The views are relatively clear. * If you set up the red dot finder correctly (YouTube it), you can find pretty much any major star you could see easily with the naked eye. Don't expect anything more, though. * Price -- If you're using this review to determine whether to purchase one, understand: You get what you pay for. The value you get with the imagery for this price range is hard to beat. Period. Please understand that before you read the cons. Cons: * The tripod is shaky. I rate it a 3/10. It's not stable at all, and even with shock absorbers on the feet, you basically have to use this scope hands-off or it's unusable. * EQ mount. To be fair, it's a true EQ mount. However, the engineering quality on the mount is poor. If you want to aim it, you have to manually point it in the right direction. To fine tune it, you can use the RA fine-adjustment knob, but the other knob only works with limited travel. I haven't had a chance to study it and figure out where the bind is, but there's simply too much play to make it useful. I rate it 2/10. * The motor. The motor's mounting location severely restricts how you can turn the scope. Plus, when you have the motor on, you can't use the fine adjustment knob, rendering the ability to fine tune the sighting so the motor can do it's thing useless. Final thoughts: * If you're not imaging, don't get this model. Get the regular AstroMaster 130EQ. It's a great scope, but the motor is not good on this mount / tripod setup. * If you ARE imaging, don't do like I did and get the camera adapter and think you can just go and take great pictures. It's impossible for this stand/mount to balance a SLR. The mount is too unstable / low quality to hand-hold. Go with a lightweight camera -- either amscope or celstron, or get a webcam adapter. * You'll have to fine-tune the red-dot to use it. It took me several sessions before I figured out how to set it properly, and even then, it was more luck than skill. * To really get the most out of this scope, you'll need to buy some better optics. I bought a Barlow 3x and love it. Celestron has some accessory kits, so do some research. If you're really worried about the $$ of upgrading the optics, I think you'd have a hard time buying a reflector scope out of the box that's any better without spending $500. For this price range, it's a decent starter scope. My wife and I like it.

Great first reflector, I have two refractors. EQ mount will require practice if you have never used one. Good laser dot spotter scope, take the time to align it at higher magnification. Alignment wheels cannot be locked, I secure with tape after aligning. Invest in zoom and Barlow lenses; eliminates need to swap lenses while learning the telescope, and doubles your magnification. Motor drive is good, but don't use it until after you learn the telescope. You will want to upgrade the other lenses eventually, start researching early. This is a great hobby I am finally getting back in to.

To state that that I was disappointed in this telescope is an understatement. I have never been so saddened and disappointed by a reasonably expensive product in my entire life. I also wish that my poor wife and I could get the entire month we wasted back from struggling with this thing. As of now, I just feel empty inside. All my aggravation and sadness having been spent. I don't think I have ever, in my life, felt so badly about buying something. I feel like I wasted a LOT of money on what ended up being a "garage decoration." I really gave it a good struggle for a whole month of working on it every single day, trying to fix something else that was broken, putting something else on my drill press to modify or repair something else. At the end, I gave up. There's no use for more modifying, fighting, and continued disappointment. It's so bad that I refuse to curse someone else by selling or giving it away, and it's probably just going to go to the recycle center. To be completely fair, I have had a Celestron microscope for years, and it is excellent. I really love it. After having had such a positive experience with their microscope, I felt relatively confident about buying from Celestron, again. I don't know if I'll ever purchase anything telescope related from them, ever, after experiencing this abysmal horror, and this is my warning to anyone else who buys one of these. I'm really sorry, Celestron, but I have to tell the truth. Pros: The tripod is lightweight and pretty sturdy. The locking knobs for the tripod work well. Assembly took a while, but was fairly straight forward, and the provided instructions were easy to understand. I'm really struggling, here, to find another pro. There was no other pros. None. Cons: 1. The Right Ascension indicator, which is non-adjustable, broke free, and now just spins freely, so that now, zeroing it for polar alignment is just poor, sloppy guesswork. 2. While I had the mount partially disassembled, trying to see what I could do to fix the RA indicator, I noticed that instead of bearings, they use three cheap slices of plastic, like the kind you find in blister packs or product packaging. Two of them had already broken, so I had to toss them. 3. The RA and Declination indicator hash marks and numbers started rubbing off, nearly immediately. The scope cover simply falls off at the slightest touch. 4. The finderscope was mounted so badly out of alignment that the dials wouldn't adjust far enough to line it up. I ended up having to drill two holes in the tube to mount an aftermarket finder. I tossed the useless original finder into the trash. 5. The focuser isn't centered on the telescope tube, and is non-adjustable, such that, after you collimate your telescope, you're only collimated for one focus position. That one took me hours of pain to discover. Tightning the resistance spring helped a little, but at the end, it's still misaligned. 6. The soft rubber grips on the focuser tend to just slip around in a circle, instead of turning the knobs. The mirror has a mild aberration, from the factory, such that a 1/3 section of a star looks vaguely like a streak. maybe that's also a symptom of the focuser, as well. 7. The factory 20mm eyepiece is all but useless. I don't even know why they included it, except to add extra "challenge." The worm gears on the equatorial mount grind and seize, grind and seize. You'll never get lined up on what you're looking at. The right ascension knob also gives plenty of declination, because there's so much slop in it, and vice versa. 8. The lock knobs are very difficult to tighten down far enough to keep your scope from moving, and often, simply switching eyepieces causes the whole thing to slew. 9. The mount bounces up and down or bends at the slightest touch, because it isn't engineered to be sturdy enough, which makes wrestling with the grinding gears on the mount extra fun. 10. The mount is designed such, that, trying to point the scope anywhere within 20 degrees or so from straight overhead is impossible, because it bumps against itself, or the tripod. 11. Even when not pointing the telescope up, one of the locking knobs bumps and scrapes against the right ascension dial, because it wasn't engineered with enough clearance. As the elevation dial is essentially useless, my recommendation is probably to completely remove the RA dial, as well, to provide proper clearance.

Pros: This scope is a good choice if you want to do planetary or moon imaging. The 20mm eyepiece has enough field of view to see the whole moon in the frame and I've been able to get decent basic pictures of Jupiter and Saturn using my phone without much hassle (note that views may be better or worse depending on atmospheric turbulence that night. I recommend the Astrospherics app to check conditions). The larger diameter means that with a smaller eyepiece or a Barlow lens you can reach a pretty high magnification, more than you would be able to do with most refractors, especially cheap ones; or if you attach your phone camera you could zoom in digitally instead. I've seen some people complain about the quality of the eyepieces but they aren't really that bad; although for the planets a 5mm eyepiece would be nice to have since they're still quite small with the 10mm. Having the motor drive is also a really useful tool for entry-level astrophotography without spending big bucks, allowing for one to take longer exposures for brighter nebulae and galaxies, although it is difficult to go longer than 5-10 seconds. The red dot finder can also be pretty useful for finding things, just remember to turn it off when you're done. Also unlike a basic refractor, there is no fringing on the stars or planets, which is another plus. Although some people say equatorial mounts aren't good for beginners it's really not hard to use and I think it's worth it for the tracking ability. Cons: Unfortunately, many components were made very cheaply and quite heavily downgraded the quality of the scope from what it could be capable of. One of which being the most important component: the primary mirror. As a Newtonian reflector, you would want to have a mirror with a parabolic shape, especially for a telescope with a low focal ratio like this one, but this telescope uses a spherical mirror instead. The result is significant spherical aberration, reduced sharpness, and bloated stars, especially in images. This fact is not stated anywhere in the description and is a sneaky way Celestron cut the performance of the optics to save money. I also really hate the mount, it's clearly very cheaply made: it has tight and loose spots, the fine adjustment knobs stop moving the telescope after a few turns and have fallen off a few times, one of the adjustment knobs can't be used simultaneously with the motor drive, and it's difficult to adjust by moving the scope because it often recoils and/or drifts back. All this makes for a pretty frustrating experience where a lot of time is spent just trying to get a good central alignment. The motor drive does help with this since it does work at tracking objects, but as I said, it's not perfect and it will eventually drift away. Sometimes the MD will also block the full range of motion of the scope, which can impact if you're looking straight up. Still, I would absolutely recommend getting the MD if you want to buy this scope, even if you're not doing photography. Final thoughts: There are honestly probably better options out there. It's certainly not terrible and it gets better as you use it and practice more, and I and other people have made good images using this scope. But with the bad optics and frustrating mount, it's hard to recommend this even for beginners. Look for a scope that has a parabolic mirror, and check reviews to see what people say about the mount and other components. Celestron also sells motor drives separately, so you can buy any scope with an equatorial mount and still get the ability to track if you want that. If you don't care for an equatorial mount or photography, maybe look for a dobsonian.

This was my sons purchase, but he let me test it out a little. I am 53 years old, and have always wanted a telescope. I have dreamed of looking out into the night sky and choosing a spot and looking to see what I might see. I got my wish, and my imagination is on fire. The first thing I wanted to look at was the moon. I can look up with the naked eye and see it sure, but the detail that is lost makes all the difference. When I looked through they eye piece and saw the ridges on the craters, I almost cried. I got to see in detail what God created long ago, and my heart was overjoyed. Sadly it has been cold and cloudy most of the nights since then, and we have not gotten to set things up again, but when we do, I hope to get to see some of the planets as well. It is one thing to see pictures someone else took, but it is another to look at it yourself. Wow. I feel blessed.

Everything about this was great. Instructions were easy, aligning was simple and was able to start using quickly. Celestron is always a good buy!! There is one design change suggestion that I don’t have an answer for, but wish I did. With the RA motor attached, you CANNOT manually turn the RA knob. The motor being attached blocks the RA knob from moving at all. It’s probably cause there’s some worm drive on the RA motor. The motor needs some sort of clutch or something so that if something needs manual adjustment, you can flick a lever, disengage the clutch, manually make the change, then flick the lever back and engage the clutch

I am returning this telescope and have not decided what to buy next. The problems I had: When I unboxed the Equatorial mount a screw and nut fell out of the packaging. As I unwrapped the bubble wrap, another screw and nut fell out. The screws and nut were intended to secure the motor to the mount and I had to install them. If this was the intent, I would expect them to be in a plastic bag with instructions. The rack on the Focus Assembly rack and pinion is missing a tooth. It works, but, still, this is not right. The locking knobs to not provide a secure locking function. RA and DEC clutch locking knobs do not lock and prevent movement no matter how much I tried to hand tighten them. The EQ knob does not prevent the equatorial mount from rotating off Polar Alignment. The theoretical maximum magnification for the 130EQ is 306X. With the optics provided, the highest magnification attainable is 32.5X with the 20mm eyepiece and 65X with the 10mm. These magnifications were adequate, and if no greater magnification is desired, they are fine. However, I have a 2X Barlow lens and several eyepieces available. The highest magnification I can get is 216.6X using a 2X Barlow lens with a 6mm eyepiece. At this magnification, in daylight, the image was totally unacceptable, with spots and distortion. I was focusing on tree branches about 200 yards away. At night, I could perform a rough manually alignment of declination and right ascension easily, then use the DEC knob and RA motor to fine tune the alignment. One feature I liked for the RA alignment is the motor has a N-S switch that reverses the motor. I used that switch and motor to change the direction of RA alignment. All worked well until I tried to move the scope off Polaris to another star in the sky opposite Polaris. Then the mount rotated off N-S position and the alignment was off. Similarly, when the target was aligned and I went to change eyepieces for greater magnification, the scope would move in either in DEC or RA or both. I repeatedly tried tightening the knobs by hand, but the tube kept moving. The Starfinder Finderscope is adequate. I could align the Finderscope with the telescope easy enough, but the Finderscope is easily knocked out of alignment because the controls have too much play in them. As long as it is not touched, no problem. But it has to be touched to turn the laser on or off. It was constantly moved out of alignment and had to be realigned. With this telescope, there is too much fussing and realigning required to enjoy the observation experience. More time is spent adjusting than can justify the low cost of the equipment. I spent about 90% of my time readjusting and only 10% observing. And not even observing at highest power available. The tube kept moving when I switched to 6mm lens at night. I could have tried the other eyepieces I have to see which one is the best magnification, but got frustrated and disappointed with the problems of alignment, so gave up and took the whole thing inside.

Suuuuuper

Fungerade precis som jag hade förväntat mig, bra produkt

ay, mars, jüpiter ve satürn üzerindeki detaylar, bazı kuyruklu yıldızlar ve bazı meteorlar, yakın çift yıldızlar, sönük yıldızlar, bazı yıldız kümeleri, bazı nebulalar, bazı galaksilerin spiral kolları, bazı yeni genel katalog (ngc) ve indeks kataloğu (ic) nesnelerini gözlemlemek için mükemmel bir başlangıç teleskobu. Kargo çok hızlı geldi.

جميل جدا ياخذك الى عالم موازي بحيث تهرب من واقعك القاسي

I recently purchased this scope through TigeRetaiL_SLP and the product was amazon fulfilled. The astromaster 130EQ is a standard entry level telescope and is widely known across the globe. This scope along with it's close rival Celestron powerseeker 127(which is also available on amazon for almost the same price) are usually the scope of choice for people beginning their journey in stargazing. I received a sort of faulty piece with the declination cable slightly jammed but I'd still give it a 5 stars because I got it at an amazing price of 15999. You should go for this model if you want to do some serious stargazing in a low budget. Anything less than this is not recommended if you actually want to enjoy stargazing for a long time to come instead of just looking at the moon and packing your scope away for it to collect dust in your store room. You should not go for this scope if you plan to use your scope for astrophotography at a later point in time since the mount is not stable enough for a good astrophotography experience with a dslr. It comes with 2 eyepieces, a 20mm one which produces erect images and is suitable for terrestrial viewing and a 10mm one which produces invert images and is for space observations. Also note that the finderscope provided with this scope is different from the one shown in the product images. What to expect: 1, This scope is decent for planetary observation. 2. With the eyepieces provided, you will be able to see the moons of jupiter with ease. To bring about the planetary details you will need to buy additional accessories since the provided eyepieces only use a fraction of the maximum possible zoom capabilities of the scope. 3. You will be able to observe a fair amount of deep sky objects including most of the objects from the messier catalog. Another thing worth noting is that it uses equatorial mount instead of alt-az mount which can be a bit troublesome if your primary focus is terrestrial viewing. The only difference between the astromaster 130eq and astromaster 130eq md is the additional motor drive which you receive with the 130eq md model. Note that you can choose not to connect the motor to the scope if you don't like it. Doing that will make it identical to the astromaster 130eq. I wonder why the version with the motor drive is sometimes sold at a lesser price. If that seems to be the case while you're making a purchase, go for the model with the motor drive without a second thought. They are completely identical. Also make sure you're aware that telescopes in this price range do not produce NASA like vivid images. Overall, this is a very good scope to start your stargazing journey if you have a limited budget. The only close competitor for this scope at this price range on amazon.in right now is the powerseeker 127 but if you'll look on the international sites, you will realize that the powerseeker is usually a lot cheaper than the astromaster. This is however not the case for Indian e-commerce sites as of now since their prices are comparable, atleast at the time of writing the review. This makes astromaster 130 the scope of choice, atleast for Indian buyers for now.