I bought the powerskeer 127eq for my first telescope. It took me a year to master it with everything about it, I was able to capture 15 Messier objects and mastered collimation with no problem. I upgraded to Orion 8inch Newtonian sky view pro. If I had this telescope again. Definitely would still have fun. Or either it drove me insane a bit lol
I frequently buy up older serviceable scopes and clean them up, make them more user friendly.. better eyepieces, build dob mounts for them etc. I've given two away to people I know who bought this scope, just to save them or their child from giving up the hobby out of frustration... Gave a Edmund 6" newt with superb optics I "dobified" and modded the focuser to the first, and one of my 2 Celestron/vixen c80s on an original Polaris mount to the other. Both are wayyyy happier and are very involved in the hobby now. There are some older, used gems out there that are cheap, with excellent build and optics. newbies just don't know what to look for..
very generous and future thinking of you. Many people love astronomy, yet the proper gears doesn't seems to be sufficently affordable. Out there chinese cheap toys are sold like a pro telescopes and the reasons for frustations..
@@aswingsharif6729 I know they always sell these telescopes like it’s the Hubble used to have a junk one now I have an xt6 but the send 4mm or 5mm that don’t work and 3x Barlow lens These have wasted so much of mine and others time
I got this inexpensive model to learn about equatorial mounts. I'm just a casual beginner. Upgraded the eyepiece and finder. Really works just fine for me, not that hard to learn... Slow motion knobs work fine on mine. I'm sure of course there are better telescopes with less shake and edge distortion, but its really not as bad of a deal as the internet apparently seems to think
I just bought my first telescope a few months ago and initially I ordered one of these because it was right at the upper end of my budget and gave me the maximum size possible. Then I read a bunch of negative reviews about it and canceled the order. Went with the Orion SpaceProbe instead and after watching this video I'm so glad I did.
@@ericaroundtheworld it's a great scope. Perfect for someone getting into the hobby. The mount can take some getting used to but it's great for viewing the planets and moon. I'm ready for a big boy though lol. If you have the money just got for an 8+ in Dob
These are the most common too in physical stores. I was at Ross in 2012 and saw these on the shelves. Thought it was a hell of a deal for an EQ mount and wide Newtonian.
If they would discontinue this garbage and sell a 4-5” tabletop Dob and pack in a 20mm eyepiece, basically clone a Starblast, they’d really gain my respect.
I bought one of these and haven’t had problems, I read a lot beforehand and had no problems using the mount and I’ve never used either of the stronger lenses. I’ve been able to see every planet and some deep sky objects. It was all I could afford at the time and I’m content with the quality, I was actually expecting worse and was surprised my admittedly low bar was exceeded. My biggest issue is the field of view which was more an annoyance than anything else. I think that buying an armatures guide beforehand set expectations well and made me aware of how to use the kit and let me know going in the limits which avoided the much reported situations. This video however leaves me very excited because if I’m happy with this thing I can only guess how brilliant the views from my second telescope will be! Thank you for the videos, it’s terrifically evident the amount of passion you have and your ability to inform.
I’m having the exact same experience as you are. I was gifted one of these and at first I was worried after seeing all these reviews but for my first telescope I’m loving it so far. I’m sure it’s not the best telescope ever but as a beginner, it’s amazing to look through and the mount is not as difficult to use as everyone says. I think this is similar to a professional photographer saying that a cheap beginner DSLR is terrible but to someone who is just starting out, they are great fun and a great way to get into the hobby.
Thanks for your comment. I am curious, when you say you saw "every planet and some deep sky objects" can you explain and elaborate for us here exactly what you saw?
@@edting I’ve seen all the planets including the ice giants, though they are very faint and took a long time to find in remote areas. I’ve been able to distinguish the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter as well as both of their major sets of moons. I’ve also seen the phases of Venus and the red of Mars reasonably well. For me the Orion Nebula is very noticeable in terms of shape but only has color with a 2 second exposure from my phone which I was very chuffed with. Other smaller deep sky objects are visible though nothing like what’s to be seen on the internet. I’m at 32 south and the m clouds are far too big to look at with the very small field of view and likewise with the pleadies though I can get most of them in at once. I also was able to follow the ISS one night, it was hard to track and I just loosened RA and declination so that I could move them with my hands and I could make out the solar panels. Ive had a really good time with the 127 and didn’t have any troubles operating the eq mount. Just read the instructions. It also came with the Celestron stellarium app and I used that to find the ice giants. The finder circles or set circles whatever they’re called are too small to be accurate but are good enough to be in the general area and I can find most things from them in a couple minutes as a complete novice. Lastly I will say that as a beginner star hopping with the fov is tricky but manageable with patience.
I bought the Power Seeker 80mm f/11 refractor years ago. After changing the included diagonal and using better eyepieces it’s fantastic for viewing the planets, moon and brighter deep sky objects like Andromeda and Orion.
@@Astro_Ape in my opinion it's not bad, the optical tube is good, the long focal legth eliminates the coma, but the poor quality mount and finderscope and eyepieces is the problem.
This was my 1st scope. I agree with your assessment. It takes a lot of homework, adjustments and practice to get it to work. However, once I did all of that, and put in my share of struggling, I was able to get great views of Jupiter and Saturn. On top of that, I was forced to learn basic astronomy and the night sky, to become an expert collimator, and the pros and cons of Equatorial mounts, because this thing, and the instructions given, sure aren’t going to help. I believe it made me a better amateur astronomer. Each viewing session was a challenge. I obtained my best views of Jupiter and Saturn with (gasp!) a 9mm eyepiece and the Barlow lens , once the mount and the tube stopped shaking after 5 seconds after each adjustment. I now have a Celestron Nexstar 8SE (nice scope, easier, nice mount) and Celestron 15x70 binoculars. The binoculars are amazing , fun and easy-wish I had started with them.
Yup I bought this POS too. Not a good scope to learn how to collimate. On the plus side, it was such a challenge to get working right that I learned a lot (school of hard knocks style). On the negative: everything else. Good news for me, I stayed in the hobby but now am a ton more cautious with my purchases
I had a similar experience, and I agree that it made me a better stargazer from having to do everything the hard way. Mine is a cheap trash 60mm refractor from olden days, salvaged from a dumpster, & it's still all I have for observing. It's still teaching me what things to watch out for when the time comes to get a quality instrument. It's a real pain in the asterism to set up, but the optics are okay & I get some nice views. I found a plastic 1.25" focuser & Kellner eyepieces & Barlow from Surplus Shed, all of good value for very little money. That was way before I had a computer. I've entertained a few ideas about doing what can be done to improve the mount & tripod, too, but haven't yet tried any of them.
@@brianpriest2930 School of Hard Knocks is an excellent way to put it.. Learning how to collimate this gave me a good understanding of the whole process.
Ed, thank you for the review, to the point with a dash of humor thrown in, and its needed. I don't understand some companies, you can put great ideas, new products, or ways to make their products better etc, and they ignore you. I asked a local health food store a simple question "You are trying to sell health products right" I had gone in to the store numerous times and never once had someone asked "may I help you" while the staff sat at the register and laughed and talked, I just finally got tired and went to their competition. Some companies just don't care.
I have this Telescope, with the supplied eyepieces. It is my first telescope and I did not know what I was doing when I purchased it. That said, I really didn't know any better and nothing to compare it to and over the last two years had gotten used to its idiosyncrasies. I also use it within its limitations and I don't try for Deep space objects; however I have gotten some great views of Jupiter and its moons, Saturn, Neptune and of course the Moon. I guess all in all it may not be "user friendly" but if you are patient it can be an ok entry level telescope.
Yes, it isn't perfect but it's not that bad as people says. I even think that if this telescope is the pure reason that could make you stay away from the hobby, then astronomy isn't for you. Astronomy requires patience, figure things out, and certain determination, all of those things and some others are required for use this telescope
Thanks Ed. But now I feel bad for having this gear and wouldn’t join any astronomy club unless I want to get ridiculed for having this piece of scope until I get a better gear as you recommend.
This model was my first telescope. Everything he said is true. the mount is so unstable that merely adjusting the focus sent tremors through the mount and tripod that you would have to wait 10 to fifteen seconds before everything settled down. Only then could you see if your focus adjustment was good.
I was “that guy” and bought the smaller cousin of this scope. Eventually I put it on a simple Alt/Az mount, added aTelrad and better viewfinder and a 32mm eyepiece; and I practice star hopping. Great review, hopefully folks entering the hobby will see it before they waste their money.
So, i already ordered it and i'm wating for it to be delivered, does it worth that i add a wider 32mm eyepiece or even a variable 8to24mm eyepiece? Or shall i cancel the order?
@@mohammadmoustafa9471both eyepieces are much better than what comes with the scope, and would be all you need for a long time. Then only caveat is that the 24mm end of the zoom us quite narrow, but the 8mm has a pleasing 60deg apparent field, which is closer to 40deg at the 24mm end. Narrower than a 25mm plossl. I would suggest a 20-24mm wide angle as well to give a more pleasing view in that range of power. Plus you can use them when you actually get a good scope later
Hello Ed, I just wanted to say "thank you" for this video and many of the others of yours that I have recently viewed and "Liked". I am a recent retiree who dusted off an ancient 60mm objective lens refractor telescope that I have owned for almost 30 years - which I today understand to be a "hobby killer" . Thru your videos I now understand just how much I didn't know about these devices and how to use them - I can't thank you enough! Your videos are incredibly educational, but your demeanor also makes them very enjoyable to watch. I am now finally using my "hobby killer" as effectively as that technology allows - while I wait for my AWB 130P reflector to arrive :-)
I am a total beginner, I purchased the same scope, didn’t take me long to upgrade my finder scope and my lens. After that I was able to use it but I got bored quickly because everything shakes so bad! I’m glad you made this video to help the next poor sucker! Keep up the great work love your videos.
A little over a year ago I purchased an 8” dob. But I was tempted by this Powerseeker scope because of its small size and large focal length. So thankful to the online community for keeping from making the mistake of buying one of these. This proves the old adage “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Great Review! That was my first telescope I bought for a birthday gift for myself in 2018 to view Mars after many years like 30 of wanting to own a telescope. And fought with it for month's.Center marked the primary mirror bought the finder you used changed the collimation screws to Bob's knobs. purchased the power seeker eyepiece set. And still wasn't happy the optics were still just barely ok. Almost gave up on the hobby all together but I'm Bullheaded so I purchased a 10inch Skyline Dob from Orion and wow what a difference then I bought a Orion Bx90mm refractor compared that to 127mm one evening then gave away the 127eq. I do see there are other Bird Jones offered by Celestron and other Brands. I enjoy the hobby greatly now and even gave Celestron another chance with the Nexstar scopes. But still feel bad for people that get their hopes up when buying the 127eq weather for themselves or a gift.
I picked up one of these, complete, at a thrift shop for $50. I mounted it on a better tripod and added a 0.5x focal reducer, which provides some very sharp, bright images.
Great video Ed. One thing that is worth mentioning about the Bird Jones design is the relay lens isn't there to merely extend the focal length and act like a built-in barlow, it's also a spherical aberration corrector. That telescope's primary mirror is not only a very short native focal ratio, it's a short focal ratio spherical mirror! No doubt that corrector lens does a poor job of fully correcting the spherical aberration, let alone handle the steep light cone from that short native focal ratio, but it also impedes your ability to even collimate the scope properly (which has to be exact given the short native focal ratio) It truly is a dastardly design.
Any reflector that needs a field flattener has too short of focal length/f-stop under 5. That is not a flaw with the 127EQ but as I see it, any of them.
@Jon L - But to me, the relay lens isn't actually correcting for the spherical aberration. Looking through it gives me the impression of a snapshot of a Star Trek viewscreen at warp. Streaks of stars radiating out from the center.
@@stevenemert837 What you're seeing is astigmatism, which is equally annoying, but different from spherical aberration. Spherical aberration is a defect in an objective that prevents the system from having a single point of focus anywhere in the field, even in the center. Astigmatism is a distortion that becomes increasingly worse the farther off-axis you get. The relay lens in the focuser is too simplistic of a design to handle the steep native focal ratio of the PowerSeeker (which is probably somewhere around F/4 or so). Feeding an F/4 light cone into a lens that isn't designed to handle it will result in the astigmatism you see even in well corrected eyepieces. Now, it's entirely possible that the relay lens also isn't correcting spherical aberration either. My understanding of things like spherical aberration correctors and coma correctors is that they must be placed at a specific position with respect to the focal plane, and that cannot happen if the relay lens in the focuser has variable position due to the focuser being moved in and out to accommodate different eyepieces. Combine that with the cheap manufacturing, likely tilt of the relay lens due to manufacturing and also focuser slop, and there's a good chance that relay lens is doing a very poor job of correcting spherical aberration. But that would be in addition to the astigmatism it is adding.
Yup i have one upgraded the eye pieces and and yes even did a collimation! works just fine.. i have had zero issues with the dreaded "frustration" ,, mentioned..but i have learned, being a ham radio operator, that there are those that always say mine is better.. all from so called experts when in all reality it is just their opinion.
I bought this annoying thing for my young daughter. Got so frustrated trying to get it to work that she finally just said, “ daddy I’m sorry I asked. “ Going to try to save face by getting the xt8. Good channel Ed. We live in NH as well.
This was my first telescope. I bought it last year during prime day for $150. Excelent performance for the price. I now have 10" orion dob and I still jump back to it every once in a while.
Me too, I loved the powerseeker 127EQ. No doubt it is not the best there is, but I had none of the troubles showed up in the video. Maybe I was lucky, but I still enjoy this telescope. And have seen a lot of beautiful things in the sky.
Hey, Ed! I have to mention that trying to colimate this thing is also a big issue. Yes, I still own one of these. It’s in the closet, of course, and really I can’t get rid of it. I can’t give it away, I might kill someone’s passion for astronomy. And of course I can’t sell it, that would be so much worse! So… I don’t know. I believe I will keep it ‘till I die. Great video and great recommendations!
I fixed the collimation problem with this telescope with 'Bob knoth'...easy to adjust. I have several telescopes and it is absolutely necessary to invest so that this telescope works properly... the best quality optics (most of the optics that come with new telescopes leave something to be desired) so in my case I already had what I needed and just bought 'Bob knoth' collimation screws. Now I must say that it is a telescope that I appreciate (for me) and that I use regularly. If I recommend it as the first telescope to a new...no.Ps. for guiding scope i have many brands so it fix for me.
I bought a cheap used one to see what all the fuss was about. I had to put longer bolts, used wing nuts and springs on mine as the factory rubber washers didn't have enough range. I got it collimation well but , as he said, only the central part of the field of view is sharp.
So I got this as a gift, immediately saw the reviews and thought oh no! Well the good news is whether through sheer persistence or dumb luck I got an amazing view of Jupiter a few days later. now I have no idea if it has an impact but I’m sitting on pretty much the equator, which means that I could pretty much track Jupiter with almost no lateral movement and it was basically an easy up down motion on one of the knobs. In any case good to hear that if this wasn’t super difficult there are better options.
My current scope is a Meade 114mm EQ-AR reflector. It's been good to me. It was a big improvement over my first scope (a little Orion 50mm refractor). With a 1000mm focal length and an f8 focal ratio. I've never had to re-align the mirrors. But when I was looking at affordable scopes, I did hear quite a few bad reviews about Celestron. Now I'm saving up for an Orion 8-inch reflecting scope.
I have played around with plastic bodied SR4 eyepieces, and while they have no eye relief and super narrow field of view that is only sharp in the center, man, when you get a planet in the center in a good scope with a fast enough focal ratio, f8 or faster, it was some of the best surface detail I have seen. Being only 2 elements helps in some cases. But it is not easy to look through and I wouldn't rush out to buy one, even though it shouldnt cost more than $5 used. But it was extremely sharp and high contrast on axis
Glad your fellow club member wasn't turned off by the negative experience with the 127. It's great hearing that he stuck with our hobby. We're in need of more visual observers like ourselves, not less. I'm also happy that he went with the strategy you advocate of starting with an 8" Dobsonian. Plus I'll give two great big thumbs up for going with the Apertura. I have an AD8 as well (assuming AD8 > DT8), they're fantastic scopes. I know you're more of the 'ol school observer who prefers his Dob's to have springs & Teflon pads. I use to agree with you, but lately I've come around to preferring GSO's design. The azimuth roller bearings seem to work very well on the smaller 8" dobs, and I much prefer their altitude break design over others such as SkyWatchers. Synta's design works well but isn't as aesthetically pleasing. Regardless of the name brand, he's got a quality scope with enough aperture to get serious with. It'll be able serve him well for years to come (possible "lifetime scope" {if there's such a thing}) and isn't something he'll outgrow.... until the inevitable Ap' Fever sets in. But that's a more advanced stage of the Amateur Astronomy Bug, and by the time those symptoms start to show his conversion to the Dark Side as one of us will be complete...
I laughed my way through this video just now because I bought one a year ago and the thing entirely fell apart last week, before coming across your wonderful channel. The diplomatic way you say how awful this scope is hilarious and so true. I was less diplomatic on starry nights. I ended up ordering an Apertura AD8 dob just a couple hours ago after watching you rave about the Orion XT6. I would have gotten an Orion, but they're all backordered.
Thanks Ted, even though it brings bad memories. It was my first telescope. Threw it in the garbage a month later, then bought the Orion 8" Dob. "A beauty"
Dude I've been using one of these for a year, I have been ready for an upgrade and now I know why. Thank you for sharing this video and giving me the courage to get a new telescope
Many years ago I got my first telescope as a gift. It was a 114mm F8 newton on a EQ1. It still is my main telescope but I mounted it on a EQ3 that I won together with a 3 inch F10 achromat. The EQ1 is horrible, shaky and the declination axis doesnt even use a worm drive, its just a bolt pushing against a surface. This restricts movement in DEC to a few degrees. Also the OTA was secured to the mount head by two wing nuts wich were too wide and scratched against the mount head during tightening. My EQ3 is a lot less shaky but still somewhat unstable for such long OTA. And as all know Newtons dont mix well with EQ mounts. And these are just a selection of all the issues with the EQ1! Im glad that I will soon be upgrading to a AZ-EQ6, a bit overkill for my current telescopes but better ones will follow and it will get a good use.
Thank you for your review here, Ed. You are really doing the community a great service with these reviews. As someone who's had to help people with this abomination, I wholeheartedly agree with you.
One popped up on marketplace for a very "attractive" price, but I had heard stories. Your video was at the top of the list to confirm or deny the value of this scope. Thank you for performing this difficult and unpleasant chore, but getting the word out there.
Great video, as always! I was wondering if you could make a video about big binoculars (starting with the "cheap" 25x100, and up to the more fancy ones, sometimes labeled as "binocular telescopes"). I'm not asking for a specific product review, just your general thoughts/experience in this category. Thanks!
The 25X100's color-fringing was so bad I sent it back to have them check it. They couldn't find anything wrong with it. It was my LAST Celestron purchase. I don't know about the Zhumell, but they are now controlled by Celestron, so...
@@ronmcmartin4513 Yeah, I've read similar issues from some amazon reviews. Apparently collimation is also a problem in the cheap 25x100 binoculars category. I would be interested in Ed's take on big binoculars in general though, I guess its a different experience all together being able to observe with both eyes. There are some more expensive models that even allow interchangeable eyepieces.
@@ronmcmartin4513even higher quality 25x100 binoculars will have false color. It is inherent to the design, not a quality control issue. Stick to 20x80 or 15x70 which don't have as much false color. Or spend thousands on ED giant binoculars
@@k.h.1587--Or $1000s on big telescopes(Free Hubble, shipping not included), instead of an 8" Dob with good eyepieces. I had no idea the quality of the images were that good for so cheap, until I watched Ed Ting's videos. The 25x100 was a disappointment.
I got one from Christmas a year ago when I was 11, and I love space so I saw this thing and was like "Wow this looks amazing!" and granted I liked it because It was kinda simple and not too hard to understand. But about 6 months later I lost a piece and I couldn't see planets and could only see the moon really. I still have it but i don't use it that much, I hope I can get one that's at least a little better and is able to see some planets.
Which piece did you lose? You probably did yourself a favor. The eyepieces and barlow it came with are even worse than the telescope itself. You can improve the views greatly even with $20 plossls and a $20 shorty 2x barlow, which can also be used as a 1.5x as well. I would suggest a 32mm plossl, and a 12mm plossl, therfore giving you 16mm and 6mm options, as well as 21.3mm and 8mm options when used as a 1.5x, which is done by unthreading the bottom part of the barlow that has the lenses in it, and threading it to the bottom of the eyepiece. It may be a $60-75 investment, but you can use them with any telescope you buy in the future
I have one of these put a 25mm eye p in looks ok my first scope was a 50mm refracter in the early seventies just was Abel to see the moon in the late seventies I had a 60mm refactor bought it with my first wage so I was used too crappy scopes now I’m amazed by my 90mm refracter easy pleased never put me off stargazing
Sir, I owe you one! You just saved me a world of trouble... I was wondering if I should buy one that I found one a website, second hand. You can't imagine my relief at watching this video! Thank you so much!
Unfortunately I bought this exact telescope on a recommendation as an upgrade from my smaller refractor and I was and have always been super disappointed as I gave away my refractor which even though it was a lot smaller it worked better than the power seeker I still have the power seeker but I'm looking to upgrade to a 10" or 12" dobsonion. Always regretted my decision to buy the 127 power seeker however my love of the night sky remains as my eyes work perfectly. I only wish I had found your channel 5 years ago.
For correcting the spherical aberration of the primary spherical mirror, this corrector lens they put it opposite oriented in the focuser than regular barlow lens, so the more curved side of that corrector faces inside towards the secondary in order to correct spherical aberration of the primary mirror. This causes that only the center portion of the image appears relatively sharp and the edges are horrible with coma, astigmatism and field curvature, because of that poor optical design which makes collimation of this Bird-Jones thing nearly impossible! They tried to cancel one aberration and induced three other aberrations. Only because of the spherical mirror and its upside down installed achromatic doublet barlow in the focuser. These are in versions 114/1000, 127/1000 and 150/1400. These scopes are the worst thing especially for beginners who have no experience, especially in collimating a Bird-Jones thing. Much better are of course the parabolic newtonians like Orion Starblast 4.5 and 6" newtonians. I am asking myself all the time how much is really more expensive to make a DAMN PARABOLIC MIRROR?? They take no effort to get even at least close to it, to at least half parabolizing the mirror to meet at least 1/4 lambda undercorrected mirrors, it would be far far more better that this crap! I have 20+ years experience in mirror making and did parabolize a few of these mirrors from Bird-Jones newtonians, but have nowhere to coat them again, since we here in Croatia do not have any coating service avaolable...
Thanks for that. I'll go even further. Why bother putting the silly lens in there at all? Even if the mirror is spherical? So what? There will be distortion at the edges, so what? It's a beginner's scope.
I bought this when it was on sale at Amazon for $150. Like everyone else I read all the horrendous reviews on the web and TH-cam and just decided to never take it out of the box. I just returned it to Amazon and bought an Orion Starblast 4.5. Loving the Starblast and found a new hobby to kill time instead of reading and watching the dreaded news all the time.
This was my first ever telescope purchase I was probably 19,20 years old..It's awesome for looking at the moon anything else requires the patience of a Saint which I do not possess I had my hopes up and I never purchased another telescope kinda gave up on it being a hobby now I'm 31 I still have the power seeker was looking at the moon through it the other day kinda fired back up my passion. I appreciate the suggestions and will be looking into them as my next purchase.
Ed, the negative review was actually very instructive, lending insight into how to look at other products being offered. I already went back as I was shoppping for a beginner telescope and took a new look at things I was suspicious about, and NOW it makes more sense. This review likely saved me from making a mistake with completely different telescopes. And by the way, I was suspicious about those other things to begin with largely because of your videos. For all the clear information provided, and time you have saved me, while searching for a first telescope for me and my young children, several times I have thought to myself, "This guy's a dang hero..."
As with most industries you get what you pay for. This is certainly true for optics be they for telescopes, binoculars and microscopes. For a long time $200 has been the starting point for beginning optics. This was true when I was in the industry back in the late-1980s and with Ed's recommendations today. Anything below $200 and you get into the power racket. A racket where totally unrealistic performance specifications are thrown in front people who are new to astronomy who are on a budget. They will buy a plastic 60mm scope with plastic optics, .96" oculars and 900x power claims, then become frustrated because they can't see M31 the way M31 is shown on the telescopes box (in full color) and are turned off astronomy for the rest of their life. It's all very sad and has been happening for a very long time. It is unfortunate that the same manufacturers who make the high-end gear also pray upon beginners in this way.
I had a Celestron astromaster 114eq which is similar to the powerseeker 127eq. It was horrible, the poor stability of the mount, eyepieces of plastic, the bird jones design, etc. I recomend instead the Astromaster 130eq, a aceptable begginer telescope. Excellent review.
@@mad_clown475what do you think is better about the meade and worse in the astromaster? With the exception of the powerseeker line, meade is an even bigger offender in the dept store scope area
When I was first getting into astronomy and thinking about buying a telescope my partner surprised me with this scope as a gift. It was painful to have to explain that I wanted a different type of scope and that it was nothing personal. We returned it and I got an Orion XT8 Plus which I still use to this day. Seeing this scope still makes me cringe! Nice to see you rip on it a bit. I didn't know enough about scopes at the time to know exactly why it was bad aside from the mount seeming to be terrible.
Thanks to your channel, i quickly moved from a 5" Celestron Skytracker 130DX to a Zhumell Z8. Couldn't be happier. You mentioned the telescope to have is a 8" dob, so here I am :)
Hi Ed, You're reviews are 'Stellar' very honest, fun and interesting to watch. I love the back drop white vintage reflector's always fun to look at. I think it would be great for those out there to 'focus' on vintage scopes big bang for the buck and usually by far a better experience for the price and the re-sale is there, probably more if taken care of.
I got the Celestron StarSense Explorer 114LT reflector scope. I'm thinking I'm glad that i only paid $100 US Dollars for it. I will say though, I've got a 25mm plossl eyepiece. I've actually had some descent views. Yeah, the tripod isn't great but still better than some I've seen and used lol. I bought the scope used without looking at any reviews. So, I'm kinda stuck with it now. I'm gonna make the best of it till i can afford something a little better. I've learned a lot about reflectors and how to collimate if nothing else. The views of the moon, planets, and brighter dso's are enough for me for now. Besides, i enjoy a good challenge, and I just enjoy getting outside and looking up. Great review. 😁
I am one of the people unfortunate enough to get one of these as my first telescope and because of your videos I'm looking into dobsonians, which are in very low stock right now. I did find a 5.3in brand new model dobsonian from Orion that I'm considering (mainly because It's in stock) and I thought you might be interested because I can't find anything like it and It's so new that there aren't any reviews anywhere on it.
The Orion catalog seems to be going through a shift right now, with old models getting deleted and new ones coming in. I'm trying to get my hands on one of the new models.
This was my first real telescope also. At the time, I thought it worked ok. I wasn't real sure what I was supposed to be able to see though lol. It will get the job done if you don't know any better though. Now it's in my attic I think, or maybe storage. It ended up getting a scratched primary in a move about 11 years ago which was for the best. Now I've got a 76mm Zhumell reflector, 114mm Celestron Starsense reflector(pretty much just got this on sale so I could get the starsense mount and app), and my Apertura AD8 8" Dobsonian. My 76mm Zhumell did more for my love of astronomy than the 127 ever did.
Slam dunk review sir! I was literally about to buy this exact telescope as a beginner…until I watched your review…gonna stick with a dobsonian…thanks for the expert critique!
If you bought it, package it back up carefully and send it back. Even if you have to pay return shipping and/or a restock fee, it's worth it. Chalk it up to experience.
My first telescope (Meade Polaris 130 mm refractor on a very similar looking mount to the Power Seeker) had all the same (nonfunctioning) bells and whistles. Hard to use at medium power, much less high power. The 25 mm EP was serviceable at least. But I should have started with an 8 inch Dob!
I got one of these for $40 and at that price it was a great starter telescope. It needed collimated and cleaned. The mount is super flimsy but it’s a functional EQ mount. The spotting scope is less convenient than sighting down the side of the telescope. I’ll use it until I find a great deal on something better.
2:10 ..."I Will try to be civilized about all of this..." 🤣..... 5:45 "They give you a 4mm eyes piece"...🤣🤣🤣🤣 This one literally made me fall from my chair !
Ed, In the Bird-Jones design, the in-focuser lens is not simply a "relay lens", but is (nominally) a crucial corrector. It's required for the spherical primary mirror. Merely removing that lens would result in horrible spherical aberration. Another point against the Bird-Jones is the added difficulty in achieving collimation. The close mounting ring separation is not an issue if they are clamping the tube sufficiently snugly. That mount looks like an EQ-1. That's awful. An EQ-2, which a not expensive upgrade, would be sufficient for that scope. The finder's aperture reducing stop is just that; an aperture stop. A field stop is, by definition, located at the focus, where it would set the field of view. The aperture stop is necessary here to reduce the pronounced chromatic aberration produced by the singlet (non achromatic) objective lens. Re-assembling that rattling 20mm eyepiece, with its erecting prism assembly, is no challenge as long as no bits are missing. The prism is in a self contained housing, and it only requires to drop the few elements into place and thread in the retaining ring holding it all together. Of course, that eyepiece is horrible enough due to the rather restricted field of view for the focal length resulting from the prism's small aperture. Is there some TH-cam class for presenters which commands that empty hands must not remain immobile for longer than a single sentence? Or is this simply osmotically absorbed from other TH-camrs? I see this same kind of thing from a fair number of them. Chopping hands repetitively for emphasis at every sentence, or twice per sentence, detracts from the purpose through overuse. The almost metronomic, rhythmic sameness quickly becomes distracting and tiresome. Less is more. 😊
I know of a certain overly tall oompah loompah who rose to very high office via the chopping and waving hands technique while lying his ass off. At least Ed is telling the truth
Those scopes aren't true bird Jones types, they are bird Jones LIKE. I doubt there is any more complexity to the lens assembly than that of a barlow. Which is why they are so bad and even a panoptic had bad edge performance. Celestron used to make proper bird Jones reflectors, that had a much larger internal lens group that was part of the secondary assembly rather than in the focuser iirc. They weren't as sharp as SCTs or normal newts but they were nowhere near as bad as all the 114 to 150 range scopes of the last 20 years. The G8N celestron was rather stubby, halfway between a c8 and an f5 c8n, a little shorter than an f4 newtonian, and hence easier to transport, and lighter and shorter for better performance on a smaller mount like a cg5
Ed, just so you know, the Starblast now sells for $245 due to recent...market fun. (I know because that is what I paid for it when I got it for my son for Christmas.) Great scope, but the price has gone up, and as you often recommend it, I wanted to give you a heads up.
This comment didn't age well. They are probably pushing about $300 or more now. And give it another 3 years and it will be $500 and an 8" dob will be $1200
I kinda restarted with this....ugh......thing, when I got back into astronomy in 2017. I had to spend about two months just to get it ready for the 2017 total solar eclipse. It was....well....workable. I guess. But I had quite a time doing so, bumped the tube somehow with less than ten seconds to totality, and spent the next two minutes finding the eclipsed sun...and actually managed to film about, oh....ten seconds of totality. Ouch. Man, I tell ya, I had to laugh at most of the issues you raised with it - I remember having to go through all of that garbage myself, in those two months, and even more later on. When it came time to collimate the scope, dear gawd did I have to come up with some tricks. I made a center dot paper mask thing, so I could correctly position one of those paper ring things for binder paper in the center, and then came the oh-so-joyous discovery that it was a Bird-Jones. I kept wondering just why the blazes I could never properly collimate the thing, until I found this one guy on TH-cam, who explained a surefire way to collimate Bird-Jones scopes, and that actually worked. I also used colored paper to help me line up the secondary mirror properly, so it was a crapload of work. Oh well, at least my 20mm eyepiece was intact... Hah. Donated the scope to Value Village when I moved. At least I can say that I never truly gave up on that scope, and I did spend a great deal of time outside with it, but I was always dropping parts through the deck, and then having to crawl underneath it just to find them again. Man, I'm so happy to have my Dob now.
This was my 2nd scope and the first one that i really used as intended (first was a Orange Tube C5 but broke it after a month by accident) I bought it for 100$ at Walmart and never had any issues with it until 5 or 6 years after but it was because that i changed the finderscope to the one in the C5 and also the Ortho eyepiece of that one as well. Didnt even have to collimated that often and it gave good enough view of a lot of DSO and the Planets. I think the problems really were the stock eyepieces and barlow, get rid of them and you have a decent scope , the mount was not perfect but it does the Job if you give it 5sec to the woobling to stop
@12:00--"No such luck; you're getting this back!" ... What a cruel guy. How Dare You! The Donor could have solved his problem with the always-legal, "And no Tap-backs" Rule( ;>D)
I had already decided against this Celestron telescope after some research and this video only reinforces my decision. Thinking of getting the Orion Observer 134mm on an EQ mount instead - unless someone has news that might steer me away from the Orion Observer as well. I would LOVE to get an XT6 or XT8 but they are not in my budget right now. I may bite the bullet, summon some patience and save for a Dob anyway - at least my money would be well spent.
I too am one of these people that bought this as my first scope. It served me well enough on my budget at the time, but I grew to hate it and sold it as soon as I could. The mount was shaky and cheap, the relay lens made collimating a nightmare. I had no idea it was there and I thought my laser collimator was broken. The finder scope is useless and the barlow lens, with the 4mm eyepiece ended up in the trash. Overall, it was great for the moon, but horrible for everything else. It soured my taste for amateur astronomy and I really wish I started with something else.
Nice review! I started with a Starblast a few years ago and have had lots of fun with it. Before Christmas upgraded to a 6" Orion Dobsonian and am having fun slowly getting to know it and master it. Even planning a camping trip to a Class 1 dark sky area this spring. :)
Ha, this was my first telescope, and up until today my only one. It really does suck. The worst part about it is the mount. It's so hard to find anything. It's a huge chore to use but it does work once you find something. I've seen Jupitor's moons with it, and that was awesome. I just got my Starsense DX 100AZ for a small portable scope, and plan to buy a larger Dobsonian soon.
If you happen to have this scope, buy a 10mm eyepiece, a red dot finder, and a Bahtinov mask of the right size, and never use included barlow lens. Always start with low magnification eyepiece (20mm), than switch to 10mm. This scope can reach focus with all 1.25" eyepieces, but you need to turn focusing knobs really slow - Bahtinov mask is a great help to find focus, Also if you're capable of a little DIY, search for Tasco 1603EF motor - it's a focuser motor with wired remote - helps a lot to tune focus without shaking your scope with hands.
Do not throw any money at this heaping pile of rubbish. A bahtinov mask (a device of questionable merit under the best of circumstances) is useless to you here, a 10mm eyepiece is way too strong for the crappy Bird-Jones optics, and Tasco ("TrashCo") is the poster child for everything that is wrong in our hobby. Junk the "telescope" and chalk it up to experience.
i got one of these on a charity auction site recently was missing the eye pieces and the tripod legs. since i have 3 other scopes it was mostly for the eq mount i'm gunna modify to a pier for my dslr. it will still be capable of mounting the scope. taking it apart to clean the rubber o-rings on the mirror cell was a definite give away this was a cheapie. i'll still play with it see what i can do.
I know, I bought one. Thankfully, I realised my mistake before my return window expired, and got me an OMNI XLT 150 Newtonian… that was my "real" first scope and I still use it with satisfaction today!
I disagree , it's worth your time and effort to call out these really poor telescopes and shame the maker , in fact you should make a feature of it once or twice a year , if these companies only interest is to make money then surely they should be held accountable for poor products and be embarrassed enough to change their ways
I purchased the Power Seeker 80EQ back in 2013. It has served me well and luckily mine has good optics. I will say the included accesories are useless. My focuser started giving me issues after about 3 months of use. I was observing about 4 nights a week so I did use it quite a bit in that time however the focuser was crap. I replaced alot of stuff on the OTA. I installed a GSO Crayford focuser, I replaced the finder with an Orion 8x40, and also replaced the diagonal with an Orion dielectric coated mirror one. I think I have about $300 in the rear of the OTA now. As for the mount well it was certainly a headache. I did make use of it by doing so modifications with the help of material from Home Depot. I replaced the slow motion controls with knobs from a 10 meter radio amplifier. That made a world of difference as they didnt fall off every few minutes. I greased the worm gear with automtive bearing grease and adjusted the gear. This made a slight difference. Once a friend gifted me with her used DSLR a few months ago I tried doing astrophotgraphy with it. Before I had used a modified webcam with good results. Once I went down the path of astrophotography is when the mount became a real nightmare. I purchased a motordrive for it and was able to get decent but not great photos of deep sky targets. Exposures over 10 seconds were not possible. I now have the scope on a CG-4 mount and it has now become an excellent little refractor to use. I think the only thing I kept that originaly came with the scope was the 20mm kellner eyepiece which was ok. I dont use it as I bought some mid range plossls. I guess I got lucky as the motor drive I had purchased works with the CG4 you just have to switch it to Southern Hemisphere. Since putting it on the CG4 I have gotten some exceptional photos and exposures up to 30 seconds. I need to get a polar finder and then I will be set to push the scope to its limit. Speaking of limits the scope I have is capable of imaging stars that are 13th magnitude. I dont know how considering the scopes size but they certainly show up in my images. Last time I star tested the scope it did well but does show some slight spherical abberation and under correction. For what I originaly payed ($120) I would say I got a decent one out of the batch. I dont know how the optics are in the newer versions but the older one I own is pretty good. It has produced some stunning planetary images for the size. I know people that have far more expensive and larger scopes that do not match the quality of images I have. So if you're thinking of buying a Power Seeker I would say go with the 80mm refractor model. I know a local person trying to sell a 127 Power Seeker. Sadly I had to tell them I doubt it will ever sell and let them know they made a mistake of purchasing one of the most awful telescopes that Celestron sticks their name on. I do believe if and when I upgrade to a better scope its going to be a 5" refractor. I wished I could find a C102 for a resonable price. In 10 years of Astronomy I have avoided apeture fever. I would be pleased for another decade with a 4 or 5 inch refractor im sure. Good thing about the focuser thats on my scope is with an adaptor it would fit a larger refractor. So I didnt really waste money on that purchase. Looking back im pleased with what I bought but do wished I would have waited till I had the money to buy a Omni 102. Now that its all said and done I have invested about $1000 in my equipment. I don't know if I came out even by buying a budget scope and upgrading it but atleast im happy with what I have.
I found the largest long f ratio refractor that can easily be transported completely assembled is a 102mm one. I have a 90mm, 102mm, 120mm and 150mm The 120mm is heavy and difficult and the 150mm has to be carried in pieces. The 102mm is not too much of a burden to carry from inside to outside of the house.
The bigger refractor you go, the worse the false color gets, until you enter the world of apo refractors. Consider a 6" newtonian or SCT, which work fine on a cg4 provided it has the bigger steel legs like the omni cg4 version, and not the square aluminum legs like the orion astroview and most other eq4 mounts. In fact, at least for me using it on the 2" steel cg5 legs, I have even had decent visual performance with 8" scts. The main scope I use on that mount is a 4" celestron f10, which is about the biggest I would accept as a general use telescope, having tolerable amounts of false color on jupiter and almost none on saturn. Anything larger and they are really only good wor wide field low power deep space views where they excel, but have much more false color on the planets, and require larger mounts, with the exception of the really short versions, which have even more color on bright objects, but excel at the lower powers that are less susceptible to mount vibration. I wouldn't go bigger than the 120mm short tube. For a longer 120 or a 150, you will need at least a cg5 with full 2" steel tripod
By popular demand, thank you for this one! It's still important to help beginners avoid the bad ones, and remind some of us why to avoid them. Yes, Celestron should know better.
I was able to get great views of the moon with the Barlow lens, but it does take alot of focusing, found the view finder is off, unable to get it in sinc with telescope
I think that, for a lot of people, the finder is really the thing that is going to be the potential hobby killer. I got a cheap red dot finder as an alternative and the difference is night and day.
Hi Ed ! Great video and explanation. Would you consider making a video about how to make this telescope better ? Unfortunately, for people outside of the US, sometimes it's really difficult to find a good option to buy, and we have to choose based on availability (importing is too expensive) ...
I bought the powerskeer 127eq for my first telescope. It took me a year to master it with everything about it, I was able to capture 15 Messier objects and mastered collimation with no problem. I upgraded to Orion 8inch Newtonian sky view pro. If I had this telescope again. Definitely would still have fun. Or either it drove me insane a bit lol
I frequently buy up older serviceable scopes and clean them up, make them more user friendly.. better eyepieces, build dob mounts for them etc. I've given two away to people I know who bought this scope, just to save them or their child from giving up the hobby out of frustration... Gave a Edmund 6" newt with superb optics I "dobified" and modded the focuser to the first, and one of my 2 Celestron/vixen c80s on an original Polaris mount to the other. Both are wayyyy happier and are very involved in the hobby now. There are some older, used gems out there that are cheap, with excellent build and optics. newbies just don't know what to look for..
very generous and future thinking of you. Many people love astronomy, yet the proper gears doesn't seems to be sufficently affordable. Out there chinese cheap toys are sold like a pro telescopes and the reasons for frustations..
That is seriously generous from you man! we need more people like you in this hobby
@@aswingsharif6729 I know they always sell these telescopes like it’s the Hubble used to have a junk one now I have an xt6 but the send 4mm or 5mm that don’t work and 3x Barlow lens These have wasted so much of mine and others time
Thank you for your benevolence. This kindness will come back to you as the universal law of karma is very much at play.
The 127mm is not one you can fix completely. It will always have the small area of the field that is in focus and the rest blurred.
I got this inexpensive model to learn about equatorial mounts. I'm just a casual beginner. Upgraded the eyepiece and finder. Really works just fine for me, not that hard to learn... Slow motion knobs work fine on mine. I'm sure of course there are better telescopes with less shake and edge distortion, but its really not as bad of a deal as the internet apparently seems to think
Just got this for Christmas. I don't want to give up on it. Any tips to optimize it?
Learn tips and do not listen this elitist ed who do not want people to learn and enjoy astronomy. Lol😅
I LOLed (literally, not figuratively!) at the "you're getting this thing back!" line. Thank you for that!
I just bought my first telescope a few months ago and initially I ordered one of these because it was right at the upper end of my budget and gave me the maximum size possible. Then I read a bunch of negative reviews about it and canceled the order. Went with the Orion SpaceProbe instead and after watching this video I'm so glad I did.
How is it ...????
Same. I almost got this too and listened to Ed and got an xt8. It is so good!
Orion is one of my favorite companies for making good scopes.
@@ericaroundtheworld it's a great scope. Perfect for someone getting into the hobby. The mount can take some getting used to but it's great for viewing the planets and moon. I'm ready for a big boy though lol. If you have the money just got for an 8+ in Dob
Man, I soooo almost bought one, but decided I didn't really need a new scope.
Way to go Celestron. Nothing like turning young people off of Astronomy and telescopes!
These are the most common too in physical stores. I was at Ross in 2012 and saw these on the shelves. Thought it was a hell of a deal for an EQ mount and wide Newtonian.
theres always gysker lol
Good thing Ed Ting is guiding us towards good and great ones
If they would discontinue this garbage and sell a 4-5” tabletop Dob and pack in a 20mm eyepiece, basically clone a Starblast, they’d really gain my respect.
@@MikeLikesChannel they do make the AWB onesky, that or the Orion star last are great for beginners
I bought one of these and haven’t had problems, I read a lot beforehand and had no problems using the mount and I’ve never used either of the stronger lenses.
I’ve been able to see every planet and some
deep sky objects. It was all I could afford at the time and I’m content with the quality, I was actually expecting worse and was surprised my admittedly low bar was exceeded.
My biggest issue is the field of view which was more an annoyance than anything else. I think that buying an armatures guide beforehand set expectations well and made me aware of how to use the kit and let me know going in the limits which avoided the much reported situations.
This video however leaves me very excited because if I’m happy with this thing I can only guess how brilliant the views from my second telescope will be!
Thank you for the videos, it’s terrifically evident the amount of passion you have and your ability to inform.
I’m having the exact same experience as you are. I was gifted one of these and at first I was worried after seeing all these reviews but for my first telescope I’m loving it so far. I’m sure it’s not the best telescope ever but as a beginner, it’s amazing to look through and the mount is not as difficult to use as everyone says. I think this is similar to a professional photographer saying that a cheap beginner DSLR is terrible but to someone who is just starting out, they are great fun and a great way to get into the hobby.
Thanks for your comment. I am curious, when you say you saw "every planet and some deep sky objects" can you explain and elaborate for us here exactly what you saw?
@@edting I’ve seen all the planets including the ice giants, though they are very faint and took a long time to find in remote areas. I’ve been able to distinguish the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter as well as both of their major sets of moons. I’ve also seen the phases of Venus and the red of Mars reasonably well.
For me the Orion Nebula is very noticeable in terms of shape but only has color with a 2 second exposure from my phone which I was very chuffed with. Other smaller deep sky objects are visible though nothing like what’s to be seen on the internet.
I’m at 32 south and the m clouds are far too big to look at with the very small field of view and likewise with the pleadies though I can get most of them in at once.
I also was able to follow the ISS one night, it was hard to track and I just loosened RA and declination so that I could move them with my hands and I could make out the solar panels.
Ive had a really good time with the 127 and didn’t have any troubles operating the eq mount. Just read the instructions.
It also came with the Celestron stellarium app and I used that to find the ice giants.
The finder circles or set circles whatever they’re called are too small to be accurate but are good enough to be in the general area and I can find most things from them in a couple minutes as a complete novice.
Lastly I will say that as a beginner star hopping with the fov is tricky but manageable with patience.
Also forgot to say that the moon is clear and I can see the light on the rims of crators and shadows in the bottoms of them.
@jahmes_404 FOV is determined by the eyepiece, so just get wider field ones.
I bought the Power Seeker 80mm f/11 refractor years ago. After changing the included diagonal and using better eyepieces it’s fantastic for viewing the planets, moon and brighter deep sky objects like Andromeda and Orion.
Yes, the refractors of powerseeker series are good, the problem is in this reflector 127mm
And the 114EQ PowerSeeker as well, they're both junk scopes.
I have the older Celestron Firstscope 80mm F11 refractor that predates the Powerseeker 80mm. I love it.
@@robertsonsid IDK about the refractors, but I've heard some positive reviews of the FirstScope reflectors.
@@Astro_Ape in my opinion it's not bad, the optical tube is good, the long focal legth eliminates the coma, but the poor quality mount and finderscope and eyepieces is the problem.
This was my 1st scope. I agree with your assessment. It takes a lot of homework, adjustments and practice to get it to work. However, once I did all of that, and put in my share of struggling, I was able to get great views of Jupiter and Saturn. On top of that, I was forced to learn basic astronomy and the night sky, to become an expert collimator, and the pros and cons of Equatorial mounts, because this thing, and the instructions given, sure aren’t going to help. I believe it made me a better amateur astronomer. Each viewing session was a challenge. I obtained my best views of Jupiter and Saturn with (gasp!) a 9mm eyepiece and the Barlow lens , once the mount and the tube stopped shaking after 5 seconds after each adjustment.
I now have a Celestron Nexstar 8SE (nice scope, easier, nice mount) and Celestron 15x70 binoculars. The binoculars are amazing , fun and easy-wish I had started with them.
I also started with one of these. I wouldn’t recommend one, but I enjoyed it at the time.
I love my 15x70 binoculars, I don’t even bother with 10x50’s
Yup I bought this POS too. Not a good scope to learn how to collimate. On the plus side, it was such a challenge to get working right that I learned a lot (school of hard knocks style). On the negative: everything else. Good news for me, I stayed in the hobby but now am a ton more cautious with my purchases
I had a similar experience, and I agree that it made me a better stargazer from having to do everything the hard way. Mine is a cheap trash 60mm refractor from olden days, salvaged from a dumpster, & it's still all I have for observing. It's still teaching me what things to watch out for when the time comes to get a quality instrument. It's a real pain in the asterism to set up, but the optics are okay & I get some nice views. I found a plastic 1.25" focuser & Kellner eyepieces & Barlow from Surplus Shed, all of good value for very little money. That was way before I had a computer. I've entertained a few ideas about doing what can be done to improve the mount & tripod, too, but haven't yet tried any of them.
@@brianpriest2930 School of Hard Knocks is an excellent way to put it.. Learning how to collimate this gave me a good understanding of the whole process.
Ed, thank you for the review, to the point with a dash of humor thrown in, and its needed. I don't understand some companies, you can put great ideas, new products, or ways to make their products better etc, and they ignore you. I asked a local health food store a simple question "You are trying to sell health products right" I had gone in to the store numerous times and never once had someone asked "may I help you" while the staff sat at the register and laughed and talked, I just finally got tired and went to their competition. Some companies just don't care.
I have this Telescope, with the supplied eyepieces. It is my first telescope and I did not know what I was doing when I purchased it. That said, I really didn't know any better and nothing to compare it to and over the last two years had gotten used to its idiosyncrasies. I also use it within its limitations and I don't try for Deep space objects; however I have gotten some great views of Jupiter and its moons, Saturn, Neptune and of course the Moon. I guess all in all it may not be "user friendly" but if you are patient it can be an ok entry level telescope.
Yes, it isn't perfect but it's not that bad as people says. I even think that if this telescope is the pure reason that could make you stay away from the hobby, then astronomy isn't for you. Astronomy requires patience, figure things out, and certain determination, all of those things and some others are required for use this telescope
If you have a large OPEN backyard, an 8in. Dob would be much better!
@@ulisessolis3182It's still bad
Thanks Ed. But now I feel bad for having this gear and wouldn’t join any astronomy club unless I want to get ridiculed for having this piece of scope until I get a better gear as you recommend.
@@photographyforbeginnersnobody will do that, if they do you dont want to be in that club do you
This model was my first telescope. Everything he said is true. the mount is so unstable that merely adjusting the focus sent tremors through the mount and tripod that you would have to wait 10 to fifteen seconds before everything settled down. Only then could you see if your focus adjustment was good.
I was “that guy” and bought the smaller cousin of this scope. Eventually I put it on a simple Alt/Az mount, added aTelrad and better viewfinder and a 32mm eyepiece; and I practice star hopping. Great review, hopefully folks entering the hobby will see it before they waste their money.
So, i already ordered it and i'm wating for it to be delivered, does it worth that i add a wider 32mm eyepiece or even a variable 8to24mm eyepiece? Or shall i cancel the order?
@@mohammadmoustafa9471both eyepieces are much better than what comes with the scope, and would be all you need for a long time. Then only caveat is that the 24mm end of the zoom us quite narrow, but the 8mm has a pleasing 60deg apparent field, which is closer to 40deg at the 24mm end. Narrower than a 25mm plossl. I would suggest a 20-24mm wide angle as well to give a more pleasing view in that range of power.
Plus you can use them when you actually get a good scope later
Hello Ed,
I just wanted to say "thank you" for this video and many of the others of yours that I have recently viewed and "Liked".
I am a recent retiree who dusted off an ancient 60mm objective lens refractor telescope that I have owned for almost 30 years - which I today understand to be a "hobby killer" .
Thru your videos I now understand just how much I didn't know about these devices and how to use them - I can't thank you enough! Your videos are incredibly educational, but your demeanor also makes them very enjoyable to watch.
I am now finally using my "hobby killer" as effectively as that technology allows - while I wait for my AWB 130P reflector to arrive :-)
I was just about to buy this one, good thing the seller wasn't fast enough to reply. Thank you!
I am a total beginner, I purchased the same scope, didn’t take me long to upgrade my finder scope and my lens. After that I was able to use it but I got bored quickly because everything shakes so bad! I’m glad you made this video to help the next poor sucker! Keep up the great work love your videos.
A little over a year ago I purchased an 8” dob. But I was tempted by this Powerseeker scope because of its small size and large focal length. So thankful to the online community for keeping from making the mistake of buying one of these. This proves the old adage “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Thanks for the review I was looking at one of these used very cheap, now I know why.
Great Review! That was my first telescope I bought for a birthday gift for myself in 2018 to view Mars after many years like 30 of wanting to own a telescope. And fought with it for month's.Center marked the primary mirror bought the finder you used changed the collimation screws to Bob's knobs. purchased the power seeker eyepiece set. And still wasn't happy the optics were still just barely ok. Almost gave up on the hobby all together but I'm Bullheaded so I purchased a 10inch Skyline Dob from Orion and wow what a difference then I bought a Orion Bx90mm refractor compared that to 127mm one evening then gave away the 127eq. I do see there are other Bird Jones offered by Celestron and other Brands. I enjoy the hobby greatly now and even gave Celestron another chance with the Nexstar scopes. But still feel bad for people that get their hopes up when buying the 127eq weather for themselves or a gift.
I picked up one of these, complete, at a thrift shop for $50. I mounted it on a better tripod and added a 0.5x focal reducer, which provides some very sharp, bright images.
Great video Ed. One thing that is worth mentioning about the Bird Jones design is the relay lens isn't there to merely extend the focal length and act like a built-in barlow, it's also a spherical aberration corrector. That telescope's primary mirror is not only a very short native focal ratio, it's a short focal ratio spherical mirror! No doubt that corrector lens does a poor job of fully correcting the spherical aberration, let alone handle the steep light cone from that short native focal ratio, but it also impedes your ability to even collimate the scope properly (which has to be exact given the short native focal ratio)
It truly is a dastardly design.
Any reflector that needs a field flattener has too short of focal length/f-stop under 5. That is not a flaw with the 127EQ but as I see it, any of them.
@Jon L - But to me, the relay lens isn't actually correcting for the spherical aberration. Looking through it gives me the impression of a snapshot of a Star Trek viewscreen at warp. Streaks of stars radiating out from the center.
@@stevenemert837 What you're seeing is astigmatism, which is equally annoying, but different from spherical aberration. Spherical aberration is a defect in an objective that prevents the system from having a single point of focus anywhere in the field, even in the center. Astigmatism is a distortion that becomes increasingly worse the farther off-axis you get. The relay lens in the focuser is too simplistic of a design to handle the steep native focal ratio of the PowerSeeker (which is probably somewhere around F/4 or so). Feeding an F/4 light cone into a lens that isn't designed to handle it will result in the astigmatism you see even in well corrected eyepieces.
Now, it's entirely possible that the relay lens also isn't correcting spherical aberration either. My understanding of things like spherical aberration correctors and coma correctors is that they must be placed at a specific position with respect to the focal plane, and that cannot happen if the relay lens in the focuser has variable position due to the focuser being moved in and out to accommodate different eyepieces. Combine that with the cheap manufacturing, likely tilt of the relay lens due to manufacturing and also focuser slop, and there's a good chance that relay lens is doing a very poor job of correcting spherical aberration. But that would be in addition to the astigmatism it is adding.
what on earth are you on about? you lost me in the first sentence!
So glad you did a video on it. Now I can link it whenever someone is thinking about grabbing one!
Yup i have one upgraded the eye pieces and and yes even did a collimation! works just fine.. i have had zero issues with the dreaded "frustration" ,, mentioned..but i have learned, being a ham radio operator, that there are those that always say mine is better.. all from so called experts when in all reality it is just their opinion.
I bought this annoying thing for my young daughter. Got so frustrated trying to get it to work that she finally just said, “ daddy I’m sorry I asked. “ Going to try to save face by getting the xt8. Good channel Ed. We live in NH as well.
This was my first telescope. I bought it last year during prime day for $150. Excelent performance for the price. I now have 10" orion dob and I still jump back to it every once in a while.
I did the same thing but got a 10” skywatcher but I don’t use the powerseeker at all anymore
Me too, I loved the powerseeker 127EQ. No doubt it is not the best there is, but I had none of the troubles showed up in the video. Maybe I was lucky, but I still enjoy this telescope.
And have seen a lot of beautiful things in the sky.
You demonstrating the issues with this one certainly helped me understand the stay away comments I've read.
Hey, Ed! I have to mention that trying to colimate this thing is also a big issue. Yes, I still own one of these. It’s in the closet, of course, and really I can’t get rid of it. I can’t give it away, I might kill someone’s passion for astronomy. And of course I can’t sell it, that would be so much worse! So… I don’t know. I believe I will keep it ‘till I die. Great video and great recommendations!
I fixed the collimation problem with this telescope with 'Bob knoth'...easy to adjust. I have several telescopes and it is absolutely necessary to invest so that this telescope works properly... the best quality optics (most of the optics that come with new telescopes leave something to be desired) so in my case I already had what I needed and just bought 'Bob knoth' collimation screws. Now I must say that it is a telescope that I appreciate (for me) and that I use regularly. If I recommend it as the first telescope to a new...no.Ps. for guiding scope i have many brands so it fix for me.
I bought a cheap used one to see what all the fuss was about. I had to put longer bolts, used wing nuts and springs on mine as the factory rubber washers didn't have enough range. I got it collimation well but , as he said, only the central part of the field of view is sharp.
So I got this as a gift, immediately saw the reviews and thought oh no! Well the good news is whether through sheer persistence or dumb luck I got an amazing view of Jupiter a few days later. now I have no idea if it has an impact but I’m sitting on pretty much the equator, which means that I could pretty much track Jupiter with almost no lateral movement and it was basically an easy up down motion on one of the knobs. In any case good to hear that if this wasn’t super difficult there are better options.
If you collimate it well, you will get a sharp focus in the center of the field as Ed says, but only the center, which is good enough for planets.
My current scope is a Meade 114mm EQ-AR reflector. It's been good to me. It was a big improvement over my first scope (a little Orion 50mm refractor). With a 1000mm focal length and an f8 focal ratio. I've never had to re-align the mirrors. But when I was looking at affordable scopes, I did hear quite a few bad reviews about Celestron. Now I'm saving up for an Orion 8-inch reflecting scope.
I have played around with plastic bodied SR4 eyepieces, and while they have no eye relief and super narrow field of view that is only sharp in the center, man, when you get a planet in the center in a good scope with a fast enough focal ratio, f8 or faster, it was some of the best surface detail I have seen. Being only 2 elements helps in some cases. But it is not easy to look through and I wouldn't rush out to buy one, even though it shouldnt cost more than $5 used.
But it was extremely sharp and high contrast on axis
Glad your fellow club member wasn't turned off by the negative experience with the 127. It's great hearing that he stuck with our hobby. We're in need of more visual observers like ourselves, not less.
I'm also happy that he went with the strategy you advocate of starting with an 8" Dobsonian. Plus I'll give two great big thumbs up for going with the Apertura. I have an AD8 as well (assuming AD8 > DT8), they're fantastic scopes. I know you're more of the 'ol school observer who prefers his Dob's to have springs & Teflon pads. I use to agree with you, but lately I've come around to preferring GSO's design. The azimuth roller bearings seem to work very well on the smaller 8" dobs, and I much prefer their altitude break design over others such as SkyWatchers. Synta's design works well but isn't as aesthetically pleasing.
Regardless of the name brand, he's got a quality scope with enough aperture to get serious with. It'll be able serve him well for years to come (possible "lifetime scope" {if there's such a thing}) and isn't something he'll outgrow.... until the inevitable Ap' Fever sets in. But that's a more advanced stage of the Amateur Astronomy Bug, and by the time those symptoms start to show his conversion to the Dark Side as one of us will be complete...
I laughed my way through this video just now because I bought one a year ago and the thing entirely fell apart last week, before coming across your wonderful channel. The diplomatic way you say how awful this scope is hilarious and so true. I was less diplomatic on starry nights. I ended up ordering an Apertura AD8 dob just a couple hours ago after watching you rave about the Orion XT6. I would have gotten an Orion, but they're all backordered.
The apertura is usually a better deal then the orion, and made by GSO in Taiwan rather than synta in chjna
Thanks Ted, even though it brings bad memories. It was my first telescope. Threw it in the garbage a month later, then bought the Orion 8" Dob. "A beauty"
Dude I've been using one of these for a year, I have been ready for an upgrade and now I know why.
Thank you for sharing this video and giving me the courage to get a new telescope
Many years ago I got my first telescope as a gift. It was a 114mm F8 newton on a EQ1. It still is my main telescope but I mounted it on a EQ3 that I won together with a 3 inch F10 achromat.
The EQ1 is horrible, shaky and the declination axis doesnt even use a worm drive, its just a bolt pushing against a surface. This restricts movement in DEC to a few degrees.
Also the OTA was secured to the mount head by two wing nuts wich were too wide and scratched against the mount head during tightening.
My EQ3 is a lot less shaky but still somewhat unstable for such long OTA. And as all know Newtons dont mix well with EQ mounts.
And these are just a selection of all the issues with the EQ1!
Im glad that I will soon be upgrading to a AZ-EQ6, a bit overkill for my current telescopes but better ones will follow and it will get a good use.
Thank you for your review here, Ed. You are really doing the community a great service with these reviews. As someone who's had to help people with this abomination, I wholeheartedly agree with you.
One popped up on marketplace for a very "attractive" price, but I had heard stories. Your video was at the top of the list to confirm or deny the value of this scope. Thank you for performing this difficult and unpleasant chore, but getting the word out there.
Man, I wish I would have seen this a few days ago. I'm hurt and I feel like this video should be at the top.
I have the PowerSeeker 114eq. The scope isn't bad. I use it to practice collimination. I upgraded to a 6 inch dob and a orion 102mm mak cass.
Great video, as always! I was wondering if you could make a video about big binoculars (starting with the "cheap" 25x100, and up to the more fancy ones, sometimes labeled as "binocular telescopes"). I'm not asking for a specific product review, just your general thoughts/experience in this category. Thanks!
The 25X100's color-fringing was so bad I sent it back to have them check it. They couldn't find anything wrong with it. It was my LAST Celestron purchase.
I don't know about the Zhumell, but they are now controlled by Celestron, so...
@@ronmcmartin4513 Yeah, I've read similar issues from some amazon reviews. Apparently collimation is also a problem in the cheap 25x100 binoculars category. I would be interested in Ed's take on big binoculars in general though, I guess its a different experience all together being able to observe with both eyes. There are some more expensive models that even allow interchangeable eyepieces.
@@ronmcmartin4513even higher quality 25x100 binoculars will have false color. It is inherent to the design, not a quality control issue.
Stick to 20x80 or 15x70 which don't have as much false color.
Or spend thousands on ED giant binoculars
@@k.h.1587--Or $1000s on big telescopes(Free Hubble, shipping not included), instead of an 8" Dob with good eyepieces. I had no idea the quality of the images were that good for so cheap, until I watched Ed Ting's videos.
The 25x100 was a disappointment.
I got one from Christmas a year ago when I was 11, and I love space so I saw this thing and was like "Wow this looks amazing!" and granted I liked it because It was kinda simple and not too hard to understand. But about 6 months later I lost a piece and I couldn't see planets and could only see the moon really. I still have it but i don't use it that much, I hope I can get one that's at least a little better and is able to see some planets.
Which piece did you lose? You probably did yourself a favor.
The eyepieces and barlow it came with are even worse than the telescope itself. You can improve the views greatly even with $20 plossls and a $20 shorty 2x barlow, which can also be used as a 1.5x as well.
I would suggest a 32mm plossl, and a 12mm plossl, therfore giving you 16mm and 6mm options, as well as 21.3mm and 8mm options when used as a 1.5x, which is done by unthreading the bottom part of the barlow that has the lenses in it, and threading it to the bottom of the eyepiece.
It may be a $60-75 investment, but you can use them with any telescope you buy in the future
I have one of these put a 25mm eye p in looks ok my first scope was a 50mm refracter in the early seventies just was Abel to see the moon in the late seventies I had a 60mm refactor bought it with my first wage so I was used too crappy scopes now I’m amazed by my 90mm refracter easy pleased never put me off stargazing
Sir, I owe you one! You just saved me a world of trouble... I was wondering if I should buy one that I found one a website, second hand. You can't imagine my relief at watching this video! Thank you so much!
Unfortunately I bought this exact telescope on a recommendation as an upgrade from my smaller refractor and I was and have always been super disappointed as I gave away my refractor which even though it was a lot smaller it worked better than the power seeker I still have the power seeker but I'm looking to upgrade to a 10" or 12" dobsonion. Always regretted my decision to buy the 127 power seeker however my love of the night sky remains as my eyes work perfectly. I only wish I had found your channel 5 years ago.
How did you punish the recommender?
For correcting the spherical aberration of the primary spherical mirror, this corrector lens they put it opposite oriented in the focuser than regular barlow lens, so the more curved side of that corrector faces inside towards the secondary in order to correct spherical aberration of the primary mirror. This causes that only the center portion of the image appears relatively sharp and the edges are horrible with coma, astigmatism and field curvature, because of that poor optical design which makes collimation of this Bird-Jones thing nearly impossible! They tried to cancel one aberration and induced three other aberrations. Only because of the spherical mirror and its upside down installed achromatic doublet barlow in the focuser. These are in versions 114/1000, 127/1000 and 150/1400. These scopes are the worst thing especially for beginners who have no experience, especially in collimating a Bird-Jones thing. Much better are of course the parabolic newtonians like Orion Starblast 4.5 and 6" newtonians.
I am asking myself all the time how much is really more expensive to make a DAMN PARABOLIC MIRROR?? They take no effort to get even at least close to it, to at least half parabolizing the mirror to meet at least 1/4 lambda undercorrected mirrors, it would be far far more better that this crap!
I have 20+ years experience in mirror making and did parabolize a few of these mirrors from Bird-Jones newtonians, but have nowhere to coat them again, since we here in Croatia do not have any coating service avaolable...
Thanks for that. I'll go even further. Why bother putting the silly lens in there at all? Even if the mirror is spherical? So what? There will be distortion at the edges, so what? It's a beginner's scope.
I bought this when it was on sale at Amazon for $150. Like everyone else I read all the horrendous reviews on the web and TH-cam and just decided to never take it out of the box. I just returned it to Amazon and bought an Orion Starblast 4.5. Loving the Starblast and found a new hobby to kill time instead of reading and watching the dreaded news all the time.
Ah, excellent move! Good for you.
I’m so glad I found this. I’m a newbie and got this one and for months I thought I was just doing wrong. Thank you.
This was my first ever telescope purchase I was probably 19,20 years old..It's awesome for looking at the moon anything else requires the patience of a Saint which I do not possess I had my hopes up and I never purchased another telescope kinda gave up on it being a hobby now I'm 31 I still have the power seeker was looking at the moon through it the other day kinda fired back up my passion. I appreciate the suggestions and will be looking into them as my next purchase.
Wow this was actually my first telescope. I needed more and eventually moved up to a C9.25. I'll have to do a review myself on my channel
Good work BTW!
Ed, the negative review was actually very instructive, lending insight into how to look at other products being offered. I already went back as I was shoppping for a beginner telescope and took a new look at things I was suspicious about, and NOW it makes more sense. This review likely saved me from making a mistake with completely different telescopes. And by the way, I was suspicious about those other things to begin with largely because of your videos. For all the clear information provided, and time you have saved me, while searching for a first telescope for me and my young children, several times I have thought to myself, "This guy's a dang hero..."
As with most industries you get what you pay for. This is certainly true for optics be they for telescopes, binoculars and microscopes. For a long time $200 has been the starting point for beginning optics. This was true when I was in the industry back in the late-1980s and with Ed's recommendations today. Anything below $200 and you get into the power racket. A racket where totally unrealistic performance specifications are thrown in front people who are new to astronomy who are on a budget. They will buy a plastic 60mm scope with plastic optics, .96" oculars and 900x power claims, then become frustrated because they can't see M31 the way M31 is shown on the telescopes box (in full color) and are turned off astronomy for the rest of their life. It's all very sad and has been happening for a very long time. It is unfortunate that the same manufacturers who make the high-end gear also pray upon beginners in this way.
I had a Celestron astromaster 114eq which is similar to the powerseeker 127eq. It was horrible, the poor stability of the mount, eyepieces of plastic, the bird jones design, etc. I recomend instead the Astromaster 130eq, a aceptable begginer telescope. Excellent review.
astromaster 130eq is also bad telescope, i recommend you to buy meade polaris 130eq.
@@mad_clown475what do you think is better about the meade and worse in the astromaster? With the exception of the powerseeker line, meade is an even bigger offender in the dept store scope area
Thanks for the review, going to skip this one for my first scope!
When I was first getting into astronomy and thinking about buying a telescope my partner surprised me with this scope as a gift. It was painful to have to explain that I wanted a different type of scope and that it was nothing personal. We returned it and I got an Orion XT8 Plus which I still use to this day. Seeing this scope still makes me cringe! Nice to see you rip on it a bit. I didn't know enough about scopes at the time to know exactly why it was bad aside from the mount seeming to be terrible.
Blunt honesty. That's what we need. Thanks again Ed.
Thanks to your channel, i quickly moved from a 5" Celestron Skytracker 130DX to a Zhumell Z8. Couldn't be happier. You mentioned the telescope to have is a 8" dob, so here I am :)
@0:02 Two seconds in and I've already made my judgement on the scope based on the supplied finderscope!
Hi Ed,
You're reviews are 'Stellar' very honest, fun and interesting to watch. I love the back drop white vintage reflector's always fun to look at. I think it would be great for those out there to 'focus' on vintage scopes big bang for the buck and usually by far a better experience for the price and the re-sale is there, probably more if taken care of.
Thank yoinso much for this record review, you. Saved men heartache and $$. You've more than earned a subscriber!👊🏿
I had no trouble getting it to work, finderscope was terrible, But I'm sending it back
I got the Celestron StarSense Explorer 114LT reflector scope. I'm thinking I'm glad that i only paid $100 US Dollars for it. I will say though, I've got a 25mm plossl eyepiece. I've actually had some descent views. Yeah, the tripod isn't great but still better than some I've seen and used lol. I bought the scope used without looking at any reviews. So, I'm kinda stuck with it now. I'm gonna make the best of it till i can afford something a little better. I've learned a lot about reflectors and how to collimate if nothing else. The views of the moon, planets, and brighter dso's are enough for me for now. Besides, i enjoy a good challenge, and I just enjoy getting outside and looking up. Great review. 😁
Bird-Jones and a shaky mount. What could possibly go wrong?
I am one of the people unfortunate enough to get one of these as my first telescope and because of your videos I'm looking into dobsonians, which are in very low stock right now. I did find a 5.3in brand new model dobsonian from Orion that I'm considering (mainly because It's in stock) and I thought you might be interested because I can't find anything like it and It's so new that there aren't any reviews anywhere on it.
The Orion catalog seems to be going through a shift right now, with old models getting deleted and new ones coming in. I'm trying to get my hands on one of the new models.
I wonder if that was the observer 134 that happened to be very good for the money
This was my first real telescope also. At the time, I thought it worked ok. I wasn't real sure what I was supposed to be able to see though lol. It will get the job done if you don't know any better though. Now it's in my attic I think, or maybe storage. It ended up getting a scratched primary in a move about 11 years ago which was for the best. Now I've got a 76mm Zhumell reflector, 114mm Celestron Starsense reflector(pretty much just got this on sale so I could get the starsense mount and app), and my Apertura AD8 8" Dobsonian. My 76mm Zhumell did more for my love of astronomy than the 127 ever did.
Slam dunk review sir! I was literally about to buy this exact telescope as a beginner…until I watched your review…gonna stick with a dobsonian…thanks for the expert critique!
Darn it … I just received this in the mail and started setting it up. THEN, I watch this review. That’s just wonderful…
If you bought it, package it back up carefully and send it back. Even if you have to pay return shipping and/or a restock fee, it's worth it. Chalk it up to experience.
My first telescope (Meade Polaris 130 mm refractor on a very similar looking mount to the Power Seeker) had all the same (nonfunctioning) bells and whistles. Hard to use at medium power, much less high power. The 25 mm EP was serviceable at least. But I should have started with an 8 inch Dob!
I got one of these for $40 and at that price it was a great starter telescope. It needed collimated and cleaned. The mount is super flimsy but it’s a functional EQ mount. The spotting scope is less convenient than sighting down the side of the telescope. I’ll use it until I find a great deal on something better.
I replaced the finder with a cheap red dot finder and it's an absolute revelation!
2:10 ..."I Will try to be civilized about all of this..." 🤣..... 5:45 "They give you a 4mm eyes piece"...🤣🤣🤣🤣 This one literally made me fall from my chair !
yeah ,, excellent review, if I'm getting a starter telescope I will be looking at your recommendations my friend 👍👍👌👌
Ed,
In the Bird-Jones design, the in-focuser lens is not simply a "relay lens", but is (nominally) a crucial corrector. It's required for the spherical primary mirror. Merely removing that lens would result in horrible spherical aberration.
Another point against the Bird-Jones is the added difficulty in achieving collimation.
The close mounting ring separation is not an issue if they are clamping the tube sufficiently snugly.
That mount looks like an EQ-1. That's awful. An EQ-2, which a not expensive upgrade, would be sufficient for that scope.
The finder's aperture reducing stop is just that; an aperture stop. A field stop is, by definition, located at the focus, where it would set the field of view. The aperture stop is necessary here to reduce the pronounced chromatic aberration produced by the singlet (non achromatic) objective lens.
Re-assembling that rattling 20mm eyepiece, with its erecting prism assembly, is no challenge as long as no bits are missing. The prism is in a self contained housing, and it only requires to drop the few elements into place and thread in the retaining ring holding it all together.
Of course, that eyepiece is horrible enough due to the rather restricted field of view for the focal length resulting from the prism's small aperture.
Is there some TH-cam class for presenters which commands that empty hands must not remain immobile for longer than a single sentence? Or is this simply osmotically absorbed from other TH-camrs? I see this same kind of thing from a fair number of them. Chopping hands repetitively for emphasis at every sentence, or twice per sentence, detracts from the purpose through overuse. The almost metronomic, rhythmic sameness quickly becomes distracting and tiresome. Less is more. 😊
I know of a certain overly tall oompah loompah who rose to very high office via the chopping and waving hands technique while lying his ass off.
At least Ed is telling the truth
Those scopes aren't true bird Jones types, they are bird Jones LIKE. I doubt there is any more complexity to the lens assembly than that of a barlow. Which is why they are so bad and even a panoptic had bad edge performance.
Celestron used to make proper bird Jones reflectors, that had a much larger internal lens group that was part of the secondary assembly rather than in the focuser iirc.
They weren't as sharp as SCTs or normal newts but they were nowhere near as bad as all the 114 to 150 range scopes of the last 20 years.
The G8N celestron was rather stubby, halfway between a c8 and an f5 c8n, a little shorter than an f4 newtonian, and hence easier to transport, and lighter and shorter for better performance on a smaller mount like a cg5
Ed, just so you know, the Starblast now sells for $245 due to recent...market fun.
(I know because that is what I paid for it when I got it for my son for Christmas.)
Great scope, but the price has gone up, and as you often recommend it, I wanted to give you a heads up.
This comment didn't age well. They are probably pushing about $300 or more now. And give it another 3 years and it will be $500 and an 8" dob will be $1200
I kinda restarted with this....ugh......thing, when I got back into astronomy in 2017. I had to spend about two months just to get it ready for the 2017 total solar eclipse. It was....well....workable. I guess. But I had quite a time doing so, bumped the tube somehow with less than ten seconds to totality, and spent the next two minutes finding the eclipsed sun...and actually managed to film about, oh....ten seconds of totality. Ouch. Man, I tell ya, I had to laugh at most of the issues you raised with it - I remember having to go through all of that garbage myself, in those two months, and even more later on. When it came time to collimate the scope, dear gawd did I have to come up with some tricks. I made a center dot paper mask thing, so I could correctly position one of those paper ring things for binder paper in the center, and then came the oh-so-joyous discovery that it was a Bird-Jones. I kept wondering just why the blazes I could never properly collimate the thing, until I found this one guy on TH-cam, who explained a surefire way to collimate Bird-Jones scopes, and that actually worked. I also used colored paper to help me line up the secondary mirror properly, so it was a crapload of work. Oh well, at least my 20mm eyepiece was intact... Hah. Donated the scope to Value Village when I moved. At least I can say that I never truly gave up on that scope, and I did spend a great deal of time outside with it, but I was always dropping parts through the deck, and then having to crawl underneath it just to find them again. Man, I'm so happy to have my Dob now.
This was my 2nd scope and the first one that i really used as intended (first was a Orange Tube C5 but broke it after a month by accident) I bought it for 100$ at Walmart and never had any issues with it until 5 or 6 years after but it was because that i changed the finderscope to the one in the C5 and also the Ortho eyepiece of that one as well. Didnt even have to collimated that often and it gave good enough view of a lot of DSO and the Planets. I think the problems really were the stock eyepieces and barlow, get rid of them and you have a decent scope , the mount was not perfect but it does the Job if you give it 5sec to the woobling to stop
@12:00--"No such luck; you're getting this back!" ...
What a cruel guy. How Dare You! The Donor could have solved his problem with the always-legal, "And no Tap-backs" Rule( ;>D)
Maybe they can take it out to a field and destroy it like the printer in "Office Space"
@@Pyrolonn--Or the Tesla Model S that the guy blew up with dynamite in Finland.
I love how you included what to do instead
I had already decided against this Celestron telescope after some research and this video only reinforces my decision. Thinking of getting the Orion Observer 134mm on an EQ mount instead - unless someone has news that might steer me away from the Orion Observer as well. I would LOVE to get an XT6 or XT8 but they are not in my budget right now. I may bite the bullet, summon some patience and save for a Dob anyway - at least my money would be well spent.
Turned out to actually be a good scope, Ed reviewed it later on
Thank You Sir Straight up Respect to Host and Channel ✌️
I too am one of these people that bought this as my first scope. It served me well enough on my budget at the time, but I grew to hate it and sold it as soon as I could. The mount was shaky and cheap, the relay lens made collimating a nightmare. I had no idea it was there and I thought my laser collimator was broken. The finder scope is useless and the barlow lens, with the 4mm eyepiece ended up in the trash. Overall, it was great for the moon, but horrible for everything else. It soured my taste for amateur astronomy and I really wish I started with something else.
Yes it is a lot of work. Much appreciated Ed.
Nice review! I started with a Starblast a few years ago and have had lots of fun with it. Before Christmas upgraded to a 6" Orion Dobsonian and am having fun slowly getting to know it and master it. Even planning a camping trip to a Class 1 dark sky area this spring. :)
Ha, this was my first telescope, and up until today my only one. It really does suck. The worst part about it is the mount. It's so hard to find anything. It's a huge chore to use but it does work once you find something. I've seen Jupitor's moons with it, and that was awesome. I just got my Starsense DX 100AZ for a small portable scope, and plan to buy a larger Dobsonian soon.
If you happen to have this scope, buy a 10mm eyepiece, a red dot finder, and a Bahtinov mask of the right size, and never use included barlow lens. Always start with low magnification eyepiece (20mm), than switch to 10mm. This scope can reach focus with all 1.25" eyepieces, but you need to turn focusing knobs really slow - Bahtinov mask is a great help to find focus, Also if you're capable of a little DIY, search for Tasco 1603EF motor - it's a focuser motor with wired remote - helps a lot to tune focus without shaking your scope with hands.
Do not throw any money at this heaping pile of rubbish. A bahtinov mask (a device of questionable merit under the best of circumstances) is useless to you here, a 10mm eyepiece is way too strong for the crappy Bird-Jones optics, and Tasco ("TrashCo") is the poster child for everything that is wrong in our hobby. Junk the "telescope" and chalk it up to experience.
i got one of these on a charity auction site recently was missing the eye pieces and the tripod legs. since i have 3 other scopes it was mostly for the eq mount i'm gunna modify to a pier for my dslr. it will still be capable of mounting the scope. taking it apart to clean the rubber o-rings on the mirror cell was a definite give away this was a cheapie. i'll still play with it see what i can do.
This scope is okay with few changes I use a plossl eyepiece and a new Barlow lens
Hey, The flame nebulae is not in the right place in his picture back there, it is rotated
I know, I bought one. Thankfully, I realised my mistake before my return window expired, and got me an OMNI XLT 150 Newtonian… that was my "real" first scope and I still use it with satisfaction today!
Ahh yes, get rid of that crappy $200 scope and buy a $700 one, all problems solved!
@@mercster Or hang on to your 200$ scope and quit the hobby in a rush? But even for that price, you can do a lot better than the Powerseeker
@@mercster Haha. Or compromise and buy a 90mm astromaster for 278$
I am glad I found this video. I was just about ready to buy one.
"I did my duty"...."You're getting it back". Yes, perfectly sums up this telescope.
I bought this same one. Works fine & I can see plenty. Not everyone can afford to get top of the line.
Please keep watching my videos.
I disagree , it's worth your time and effort to call out these really poor telescopes and shame the maker , in fact you should make a feature of it once or twice a year , if these companies only interest is to make money then surely they should be held accountable for poor products and be embarrassed enough to change their ways
Whew! I almost bought this as my first telescope
I purchased the Power Seeker 80EQ back in 2013. It has served me well and luckily mine has good optics. I will say the included accesories are useless. My focuser started giving me issues after about 3 months of use. I was observing about 4 nights a week so I did use it quite a bit in that time however the focuser was crap. I replaced alot of stuff on the OTA. I installed a GSO Crayford focuser, I replaced the finder with an Orion 8x40, and also replaced the diagonal with an Orion dielectric coated mirror one. I think I have about $300 in the rear of the OTA now. As for the mount well it was certainly a headache. I did make use of it by doing so modifications with the help of material from Home Depot. I replaced the slow motion controls with knobs from a 10 meter radio amplifier. That made a world of difference as they didnt fall off every few minutes. I greased the worm gear with automtive bearing grease and adjusted the gear. This made a slight difference. Once a friend gifted me with her used DSLR a few months ago I tried doing astrophotgraphy with it. Before I had used a modified webcam with good results. Once I went down the path of astrophotography is when the mount became a real nightmare. I purchased a motordrive for it and was able to get decent but not great photos of deep sky targets. Exposures over 10 seconds were not possible. I now have the scope on a CG-4 mount and it has now become an excellent little refractor to use. I think the only thing I kept that originaly came with the scope was the 20mm kellner eyepiece which was ok. I dont use it as I bought some mid range plossls. I guess I got lucky as the motor drive I had purchased works with the CG4 you just have to switch it to Southern Hemisphere. Since putting it on the CG4 I have gotten some exceptional photos and exposures up to 30 seconds. I need to get a polar finder and then I will be set to push the scope to its limit. Speaking of limits the scope I have is capable of imaging stars that are 13th magnitude. I dont know how considering the scopes size but they certainly show up in my images. Last time I star tested the scope it did well but does show some slight spherical abberation and under correction. For what I originaly payed ($120) I would say I got a decent one out of the batch. I dont know how the optics are in the newer versions but the older one I own is pretty good. It has produced some stunning planetary images for the size. I know people that have far more expensive and larger scopes that do not match the quality of images I have. So if you're thinking of buying a Power Seeker I would say go with the 80mm refractor model. I know a local person trying to sell a 127 Power Seeker. Sadly I had to tell them I doubt it will ever sell and let them know they made a mistake of purchasing one of the most awful telescopes that Celestron sticks their name on. I do believe if and when I upgrade to a better scope its going to be a 5" refractor. I wished I could find a C102 for a resonable price. In 10 years of Astronomy I have avoided apeture fever. I would be pleased for another decade with a 4 or 5 inch refractor im sure. Good thing about the focuser thats on my scope is with an adaptor it would fit a larger refractor. So I didnt really waste money on that purchase. Looking back im pleased with what I bought but do wished I would have waited till I had the money to buy a Omni 102. Now that its all said and done I have invested about $1000 in my equipment. I don't know if I came out even by buying a budget scope and upgrading it but atleast im happy with what I have.
I found the largest long f ratio refractor that can easily be transported completely assembled is a 102mm one. I have a 90mm, 102mm, 120mm and 150mm The 120mm is heavy and difficult and the 150mm has to be carried in pieces. The 102mm is not too much of a burden to carry from inside to outside of the house.
The bigger refractor you go, the worse the false color gets, until you enter the world of apo refractors.
Consider a 6" newtonian or SCT, which work fine on a cg4 provided it has the bigger steel legs like the omni cg4 version, and not the square aluminum legs like the orion astroview and most other eq4 mounts.
In fact, at least for me using it on the 2" steel cg5 legs, I have even had decent visual performance with 8" scts.
The main scope I use on that mount is a 4" celestron f10, which is about the biggest I would accept as a general use telescope, having tolerable amounts of false color on jupiter and almost none on saturn.
Anything larger and they are really only good wor wide field low power deep space views where they excel, but have much more false color on the planets, and require larger mounts, with the exception of the really short versions, which have even more color on bright objects, but excel at the lower powers that are less susceptible to mount vibration. I wouldn't go bigger than the 120mm short tube.
For a longer 120 or a 150, you will need at least a cg5 with full 2" steel tripod
By popular demand, thank you for this one! It's still important to help beginners avoid the bad ones, and remind some of us why to avoid them. Yes, Celestron should know better.
This is EXACTLY why it is critical to do proper research FIRST .. thank you for an honest and transparent review ✅✅
I was able to get great views of the moon with the Barlow lens, but it does take alot of focusing, found the view finder is off, unable to get it in sinc with telescope
I think that, for a lot of people, the finder is really the thing that is going to be the potential hobby killer. I got a cheap red dot finder as an alternative and the difference is night and day.
Hi Ed ! Great video and explanation. Would you consider making a video about how to make this telescope better ? Unfortunately, for people outside of the US, sometimes it's really difficult to find a good option to buy, and we have to choose based on availability (importing is too expensive) ...
BTW, I saw that you made a few comments about it in the last 4 minutes, but would be great to have more details on it..
I removed the eyepiece magnification. See if its better. was really easy to take out. I mean I am a beginner and did it in 2 minutes
Dude, you certainly talked me out of the Craigslist free score I thought I had. Thank you.
Friends don’t let friends buy a PowerSeeker. They tell them to buy a lightly used 6” Dob.