Celestron Speciality Series FirstScope Telescope

This is one awesome telescope! I bought it for 4.5k inr, and I've had great fun! It's really difficult to get photos from it, but it provides amazing clarity when seen with eye. Craters on the moon are very nicely visible. I can see some sort of colour on Jupiter, but you shouldn't expect to see the banding. 4 Galiean moons are visible as well. Saturn and it's rings are visible as well. While you can see planets through it, you should keep your expectations low. Planets are really far after all. Jun-Aug are the best if you want to see Jupiter and Saturn. Moon is best seen 2-3 days after no moon day. The "Hassle free packaging" is not needed. It costs around 1.5k extra, and my telescope arrived just fine with the normal packaging.

Had bought it as gift for my dad. His interest in astronomy seems to have gone up and seemed quite happy with the scope. However I believe the lenses arent that great and one might have to go in for better ones in order to move fw.

Not so much good Best for beginners Power 15x to 75x I Cannot see jupiter's moons Jupiter at size 0 only

This cannot be termed as a telescope as you barely get to see any good images. Bright stars just look like shniny dots and planets look like a little bigger dots ( you can see that it is a tiny sphere and that's it) You cannot see the bands of Jupiter, the phase of Venus or the rings of Saturn. Now any telescope which is incapable of doing that cannot be termed as a telescope. I've attached a photo of Venus which is processd digitally (zoomed and enhanced a bit). View of moon is no extraordinary. Binoculars offer a better view. Since the price is around ₹6000, it is not worth buying at all. Terrestrial viewing is upside down so it's of no use there as well. A good option would be buy a good pair of binoculars in the same price range which will give you a better viewing experience. Binoculars tend to get a bit shaky but you can use a tripod to stabilize them.

Edit: Opinion as of now (Aug, 2018) Current price just doesn't cut it. In US the price has always been 40-50$ or even less. Buy it if you get this for <4000 or don't. Reduced 2 stars now coz of price. I bought it for 3400 (>3 Yrs Back) I still use this occasionally. Will post some pics for you in following days Original Review [cut short & some edits] (Strictly for product alone) What do I get? Just as shown in the image. Small, compact and light. Hardly measures 2 feet in any orientation. No assembly required. Take it out of the box, insert eyepiece in the focuser and you are good to go. Focuser is fine and comes with a dust cap. Remove the dust cap of the tube and you can see secondary mirror mount and the primary at the end of the tube. Look through the focuser and you can see the secondary. It is a dobsonian mount, so motion control is easy. There is lock knob on the stand to lock its vertical motion. But while locking, the tube tilts a bit in horizontal direction. Nothing to worry about, you can counter it by rotating the stand in opposite direction. Comes with Huygens 20 mm and Ramsden 4 mm eyepieces. That's all! Everything in the box covered! (Except warranty tag, manual and bubble wraps -_-) What can I see? It all depends on the seeing conditions and time of the year. Moon, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Star clusters and hopefully a few others. When I say Jupiter don't assume that it'll be as big as a football. It is of the size of this letter --> o <-- Looks like a bright spot. You can see moons of jupiter too. They are this big --> . <-- Jupiter and moons look like this --> . o . . . <--;... Saturn's rings (You can definitely make out that there is a ring) and its moon titan (again a --> . <--) can be seen. Venus is too bright. You need filters for good views. But view of moon is revealing. All of the above will be revealing as well, if this is your first time. Attached a pic of moon taken on mobile just by placing the camera above the eyepiece. Note: Actual view of moon will be much brighter than in the pic. It may be too bright for the eye. Instead of buying a moon filter you can actually take a pic in your phone and stare at it. But taking pics like this can be irritating. It is hard to locate and click pics this way. Moon is okay but other stuff is really hard or not possible.

Good for planetary views. Some star clusters and nebula can be seen with average quality view. Galaxies views are not so great because of optics limitations of this scope. Great buy if you are just starting to explore.

for first timer it is very good, it took time for me to find moon from it, but ones it is set it is very good, and it is so good that you can carry the same with you on vacation also. highly recommended for beginner, and yea it give you two lens only and no moon filter or CD

Absolutely it's for the beginners. The best in beginner's telescope. But don't expect much from it. Only moon is visible clearly and the rest of the celestial objects are visible as dots. But the other telescopes at this price even can't do that. If you wish spend a little bit more on telescopes then you can get a professional telescope.

I see right now that it's listed at $25.00. That's a steal. This product is great for people just starting out. Easy to use. Very sturdy base. Just look down the barrel toward your target just a little below it. Then, swivel back and forth, raise a little, swivel again, etc, and you will find it pretty quickly. The lenses that come with it are adequate to see detailed looks at the moon, Jupiter's moons (won't see Jupiter's bands)and can see the easy nebulae and double stars. I haven't tried it yet on Saturn's rings, although I suspect the rings would be difficult to see if you weren't in pristine conditions. You could order this for $25.00 and stop. If you wanted to upgrade to Plossl lenses, (I did), I would recomend a 20-25 mm which makes finding objects a total snap. I would also recommend a 12.5 mm and maybe a 6 mm. I tried a 4 mm plossl to try and see Jupiter's bands and the telescope simply could not focus enough to use it. I had the same experience trying Barlow lenses. Simply couldn't focus except with the 20 mm. I read somewhere that Celestron had a certain Barlow of their own that would work on this telescope, but don't order any other ones just for this telescope, because it probably won't work. A neighbor who was moving gave me his deceased father in law's Celestron 60 EQ Refractor. I tried the 12.5 Plossl and could see Saturn's rings clearly with it. I doubt you could see that with the FirstScope, although, like I said, I haven't tried it on Saturn yet. The plossls sure came in handy on that free scope. Not sure it's worth the money or not to get plossls just for the firstscope, although they do make the viewing experience significantly better with clearer views and much bigger lense holes to look through. The ones that come with it aren't bad, though. They are adequate. For the price, you can't beat this scope. It's very portable and lightweight also. Great for taking on trips to places with no light pollution. Would easily fit in a carry on bag for an airline. I highly recommend it. Update: I determined that the secondary mirror collimation was a little off. The directions online show you to align it with your eyeball (looking through eyepiece holder with no eyepiece. However, that doesn't get it perfect, and if you want to see Saturn's rings or the bands of Jupiter, it needs to be perfect. I used a collimation cap that came with another telescope and I got it aligned perfectly. A huge improvement. It's really hard to find a collimation cap to buy though. I only see laser collimaters for sale, and they are much too expensive if this is the only Reflector Scope you own.

Good value as an intro to astronomy for young children. Well packed and not too big for storage.

If you're not too ambitious, its a wonderful little gadget. Its small, its neat, its simple, and it looks good, just the sort of thing you would actually use, unless you want to turn your house into an observatory. Its portable, so you can easily take it out into the garden and stick it on a table. Try carrying a normal telescope with a tripod about. You just wouldn't. It'll finish up in the garage collecting dust. The Dobsonian movement is surprisingly simple, but effective. The telescope has an f4 aperture, so it produces bright images. Thats important. But most of all, the engine room as it were is the eyepiece. I immediately bought a Celestron barlow lens - very nice lens - which means I can get much better magnification from the longer focus eyepiece, and any lens down to about 10mm. The 4mm lens is a very small lens to look through especially if you're wearing glasses. Longer focus lenses have wider apertures, and therefore are more comfortable to use. All in all a very worthwhile telescope system. All thats missing, is a clear night sky!

So, I'm an adult and I bought this for myself. I just can't afford to buy a "regular" telescope but I wanted one so badly that after a long agonizing comparison of the "cheap" telescopes, I decided on this one. It took me a moment to figure out how to see anything but that's because I was testing indoors and I finally realized I was too close to what I was looking at to actually make anything else (or quite possibly I was focusing on the white ceiling)! No matter, straight out of the box this was easy to figure out even without instructions. There is 1 sheet of minimal instructions included however you can download the manual from the Celestron website (and to save you some aggravation, I'm including the link in this review): [...] I haven't tested it outdoors yet and I will likely update this review after I have done so however, this is a great price for a starter telescope, especially if it is intended for a younger person (child) or a complete novice (like me). It comes with 2 lenses for magnification however there is a very affordable add-on pack that can also be purchased. This thing is lightweight and sturdy and made for a table top. I don't have a table to use outside so I'll be improvising but a patio table would work perfectly. From what I can see this is a great choice for a first telescope. This telescope can be used to look at terrestrial (land) objects or wildlife, like birds. If you look into the scope from behind it, the image will appear upside down (this is unimportant when looking at extra-terrestrial objects, ie. stars, moon, planets) however if you stand to the side but in front of the telescope and look into it, you will be able to see things "right side up". Indoor storage: If you have a shelf space, that's great. Since this is a table top model rather than a floor model, you'll need somewhere to store it. The scope can be flipped up to minimize the space it will take up, it's about 7.5"x7.5" in terms of width and depth and I have yet to figure out where to store mine but if you have room on a bookshelf, that would be the perfect space.

For the price, it is a very good first telescope. The optical clarity is fairly iffy compared to Celestron's Skymaster binoculars that can be had for $10-15 more at Amazon. Even so, you can clearly see the craters and maria on the Moon. Last night, in a hugely light polluted locale, we were able to see all four Galilean Moons of Jupiter. We saw the Orion Nebula, albeit faint without appreciable color. You can also look at the Seven Sisters, and get overwhelmed by how many more stars actually make up the Pleiades. It makes many more stars visible where you could only see a few with the un-aided eye. For teaching and learning beginning astronomy especially basic telescope usage, it can't be beat. The simple Dobsonian mount reflector telescope is perfect for throwing on the hood of a car and having folks take turns viewing. It is much more steady than the twitchy, lightweight bipod mounted refractors most kids get for a first scope. Also, for the binoculars, I have yet to come up with a satisfactory mounting/viewing system worthy of the optics. Very glad I bought the FirstScope, but I wouldn't buy a second one. Get your youngin' a FirstScope, and if they are still interested, get them something more expensive later. Don't spend $500+ right out of the chute, only to have your child get bored or frustrated.