I recently purchased this telescope, and it has completely exceeded my expectations! The clarity of the lenses and the magnification capabilities are truly impressive. The setup was straightforward, even for a beginner like me, and within minutes, I was able to explore the moon’s craters and even spot Saturn’s rings!The build quality is excellent, making it sturdy and durable for both indoor and outdoor use. The included accessories, such as different eyepieces, enhance the viewing experience significantly.Whether you're a beginner or an experienced astronomer, this telescope is a fantastic investment. Highly recommended for anyone passionate about space exploration! 🚀🔭✨

Product is excellent but shippingdelays were a problem.

This telescope is my Childhood Dream Scope! I am almost 70. Back in the 1960s the most common way to get into astronomy was to aim for a 6" F8 mirror, starting with grinding your own. Edmunds Scientifiic sold mirror kits and you supplied the elbow grease. Anything smaller than that was considered "meh" unless it was a 7X50 binoculars and a sky free of city lights. That form ended up being the kind I pursued as it was the most portable and required some persistence at collecting what was owed from my paper route clients who always stiffed me (along with the paper boss). I still have my mirror blank which I think I ground to about an f30 curve. I did not have a good setup for grinding and polishing.We paid less than $300 for a prime Day purchase of this thing, as an early birthday present. The scope itself is a fast F5. With the large FL eyepieces the field of view is large and with an older 34mm Plossl the field of view was 5-6 degrees. The moon itself was low in the sky and a little bit attenuated by some high altitude smoke. This actually contributed to a high degree of color contrast. This was without the moon filter. Actually it was without anything else other than the core telescope. One can probably hold this in one's arms using a guitar strap and an lower power eye piece and see some amazing star fields if the sky is dark enough, such as is found in the SE part of Oregon, or the northern California Coast where I am heading later this summer. One could easily adapt the tube as well as the tube holder to a simplified Dobsonian mounting. Basically the core telescope seems about perfect at that price. Throw in the filters, the selections of eyepieces, and then the lens cap with the smaller cap for a solar filter (I am eager to try this!) and its like WOW!The tripod seems roust enough. At full extension it ended up being too high for me and was a little less stable but for this size of scope its massively overbuilt (this is a good thing). The various plastic handled axle locks etc. are a little flimsy feeling but easily upgraded by replacement with a more serious design. I will get around to this later on. Setting the primary axis to the exact truse north at tis latitude will be an easy task with the T-handled screw. However, once set it could be locked. I haven't fojnd a way to do this yet. Its not a big deal. The fine control worm gear drives are great and the flex shafts are another good start and something someone clever could improve upon. Again this is the overkill exception in the 1960s amateur telescope context. The thing is that one is already starting with an amazing piece of equipment.Here's the thing. The base and mount could hold something larger even. They might consider adding an aftermarket 8" or even 10" RFT with a similar quick mounting. I have an 8" mirror and diagonal and will build that out. 12" would even work if the mirror was F4 which is really steep. The main point of going larger would be to see fainter objects.This is a fools errand near Seattle where I live. There are filters that remove street light frequencies and other strategies. The main thing is to be able to see something like the nebula in Orion glow like a neon light. Its amazing with a 10" scope and a 34mm Plossl eyepiece. Magnify light - not resolution - to see these things.The mount would adapt well to a clock drive. However, the iPhone mount makes it possible to collect and stack digital imagery, filter out the street lights and produce some amazing results that could be useful in the scientific community, such as the shearing off of comet tails, and other faintly presented but dynamic processes. One can also figure out exactly when and where the ISS will be passing in front of the sun and moon and capture that on video. The telescope could also be slewed in a sling and your eyes can see this object's shape as it rapidly passes overhead. I actually did this with a 10" RFT that I recently decommissioned. Its so amazing that one can see this.As a starting point at the regular sale price this scope is a great point of origin. I suspect the company making these cannot make them fast enough. Except for the modular larger scope possibility, there is no need for them to accessorize as one can find eyepieces, view finders, etc. elsewhere easily. Until it is tested and vetted I would exercise some caution before using the solar filter. Replacing that with something robust would perhaps be a safe route. One can also get a sharper view of planets at higher resolutions by leaving the dust cover on exceptr for where the solar filter would go. This is an old trick. I have no problem with this being made out of plastic. Testing will determine if the iPhone holder works and perhapssome accessorizing in that department to fit it to a better camera such as my Canons and Nikon point and shoots would be great. The iPhone actually has 4-5 different lenses and I am not sure which one is the one to use!Bottom line - this is a wonderful choice and made well enough. Its also way better than what the average kid into astronomy could muster way back when we were all inspired by the Mercury to Apollo Program. These days we are equally inspired by the JWST and everything else. The TikTok STEM scientists help make it that much more exciting. The price point - especially on the dreaded Prime Day - is simply shocking!What may be needed if it doesn't exist would be an ebook or website community showing how many start with this scope and the ways they personally chosse to improve it, using cleverness, 3D printed parts, off the shelf components etc. I might have to pursue such a thing eventually though I should let someone with many more years to live and a better social media sense else pursue this, while I finally get to do some reasonable astronomy myself. If I write anythingon a blog on Substack, I will post the link in a future review.Thank you to Amazon for your part. The scope arrived very well packed and protected in similar fashion to how Elegoo or Snapmaker ships off their 3D printers ortable top CNC machines.

This telescope is nothing short of stunning! it is an absolute work of engineering genius in and of itself. You can tell whoever designed this put so much thought into everything that would make using this telescope not only an enjoyable experience, but user friendly, so that no matter what your skill level is in using a device like this, you can operate this telescope with general ease.Putting it together if you follow the instructions, you will have no problems. We went from start to finish with putting this together. Me and my son, not one hiccup at all. And let me just say, one of my favorite parts of this. is the. counterbalance weight. It is spot on and the little tray on the legs to hold the accessories.If you live in a place that has a lot of light pollution, you're not going to have any problems with this (no worries at all). If you have some vision problems yourself, you can adjust this to the point where you can see what you need to see with no problems at all. I know when people think of a telescope, they usually are thinking about having it outside at night, but we have also seen some pretty amazing things in the day using this. All I can say is, if you have anyone in your family or you yourself are a fan of looking at Celestial Bodies, you are going to love owning this telescope.

About what I expected. Very pleased it does not have .0965" eyepieces which are low quality and cant easily be added to with more eyepieces in the aftermarket. The K eyepieces are okay and have less lens elements to penetrate which can be a good thing. The only drawback to the eyepieces are a narrow field of view. (about 40 degrees) Two things I did not like are that the tube has a length wise seam and the focuser has what appears to be a lot of plastic. What I did like is that the tripod legs are very sturdy with a little weight. Slo motion controls work smoothly and it comes with setting circles and anodized red metal on many surfaces like focuser knobs etc. (night vision) The counter weight is heavier than I imagined but I may use another scope on this mount so that is a good thing. Optically, this is an almost exact size that a Boeing engineer gave me as my very first telescope so Iam happy with the size and ability. It has some type of solar filter that I will never use. (solar viewing should be done by projection only) I would like to add that a friend of mine at work set up a Newtonian facing the sun in his A Frame and forgot to cap the mirror which resulted in him "smoking" a wood beam on his ceiling. A mirror this size will effortlessly light a cigarette so you can imagine what it would do to an eyeball with direct viewing of the sun. So far overall the quality is much better than expected. The directions are easy step by step but I did not need them. Took me longer to unpack than it did to put together.