Celestron 76 mm Firstscope

This is not a powerful telescope, nor does it have particularly good optics. If you want a scope like that, expect to pay hundreds of pounds.However, if you're just looking for a cheap entry-level scope, this one is damn near perfect.It's a great introduction to telescopes, because despite its diminutive size it's a fully-functioning reflector. It comes with two eyepieces which provide 15x and 75x magnification respectively. These fit into a focus mount which can take other, higher quality lenses, should you want to invest later on. It attaches to a stirdy Dobsonion mount, and you can attach a finderscope to the side, should you choose to buy one separately.At 75x magnification, Jupiter appears as a tiny milky-coloured disc accompanied by four pinprick-sized moons. Even in heavily light-polluted skies, I can see two dark bands on the planet's surface.The scope is particularly good for looking at the moon.Considering what you get for the price (£34.00 when I bought it), this scope deserves five stars.

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!

We bought this for our 7 year old daughter. I was initially put off by some of the bad reviews on here, but I really am rather confused by those now we've got it.We've had this since daughter's birthday in April so it's only now with the onset of winter that we've been able to get much use out of it before her bedtime. As other reviewers have said, it is pretty easy to set up ; we have a little stool for daughter and use a taller one for me. Now that clear, cold winter skies are here with their complement of interesting constellations, we're getting quite a lot of use out of it. It's been used tonight to see the Orion Nebula and 3 of Jupiter's four Galilean moons and we've previously used it to look at Mars and the galaxy in Andromeda.To find objects in the sky, I always start with the supplied 20mm eye piece, which has a fairly wide field of view. Even then, it does take a little bit of practice to find things smaller than the moon. Like most telescopes, tilting the scope towards the ground does make whatever you're looking at go up. That also takes a bit of getting used to.Star-finding is a bit of an art - we're so used to the lovely wide field of view which two eyes give us that a first look through a telescope feels a bit like trying to see the entire inside of a house through a letterbox. If you're after suggestions of things to see and how to navigate to interesting things in the sky, one bright star at a time, I'd recommend this simple book 'Signpost to the Stars' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Signpost-The-Stars-George-Philip/dp/0540002143. I have had it since I was little myself and it's served me well.But back to the telescope. Once you've got a star or planet, you can lock the vertical tilt, though there isn't a way to lock the base to stop it going from side to side. At that point, you can swap in the 4mm eyepiece for a close up view, though be careful not to move it all while you do that or jerk it once you look through it.The main shortcoming of this scope is the supplied eyepieces. We've already invested in a Barlow lens which improves the magnification of the 20mm lens quite a lot and leads to a better quality view - we don't really use the 4mm at all. I have seen what other reviewers said about investing in better quality eyepieces and I think we will probably do that soon too. The eyepieces themselves are not awful but they do have a fair amount of chromatic abberation. It would also be nice if there was finer control on the focusing, but those are the only things which have caused me to give four stars instead of five.The pictures on the box could cause misleading expectations - Jupiter is definitely not going to look as good as that - in fact, I think that picture is a famous NASA shot from the Voyager space probe. On the other hand, the Moon looks much better in the scope than the picture on the box and using it at half moon when shadows are best picks out some amazing details. At full moon it is almost too bright and a moon filter might help.Finally, I'd say that if you've bought this for a child and they're below age 9 or 10, you will need to help them locate objects in the night sky or even do it for them. I recommend finding stuff first, lining the scope up, swapping eyepieces if needed and focusing before getting younger children outside. They will get bored (and cold) if they wait outside while you do all the above, especially at first while you're still getting used to finding things too. Even an exciting view in the scope will not be enthused about if your dearest is frozen.I would recommend this scope - as with all telescopes, it will take a bit of investment in time to get the best out of it.

Bought as a starter telescope for my son. He is 5, and with some help can look through and see things I have focused on.Very quick and easy to set up outside. Perfect for younger people who don't have the longest attention spans. As set up is so short it doesn't matter if they get cold and lose interest after 15 minutes.I am a total novice and found this easy to use and focus.

Bought this for my Son for Christmas, along with the book and the Accessory kit. The book was fine. The Accessory kit was ok, apart from it was missing the Sky X CD it said it was supposed to come with...And when we took the telescope out to assemble it, we noticed that two of the feet were snapped off! :0 No idea how that happened as the box was all intact. So we had a sad little boy Christmas morning for a while until we'd manage to convince him that Mummy and Daddy would "sort it" for him.So now we have the problem / hassle of either sending it all back, or doing without the CD and trying to fix new holes in the bottom of the telescope. I have managed to hold it up to look at the moon already and i have to say the quality is really good, and my boy was pretty impressed as well. Hopefully you will have a better experience/purchase than what we had.

Great scope. Images thru it are very clear, it's also really easy to use and is extremely portable. I'd advise anyone to also buy the accessories kit with it.

Whilst this isn't the most powerful scope out there, the quality of the optics is great for the price. It's perfect for looking at the moon and very easy to use once you get familiar with lining it up. It also looks pretty smart when you are not using it. Well worth the money.