Astromaster 130EQ

After much searching and investigating I picked this telescope as it had the largest aperture for my price range. It is very well built and was easy to setup and build. The guide is useful, but ended up searching YouTube for a video guide - this also included how to balance the telescope [...]). The telescope itself was supplied with 2 lenses, a 20mm and a 10mm. The 20mm is plastic and I only use it as a starting lens to position the telescope first to what I want to see. The 10mm is a good little lens and give nice view of the stars and moon. I also purchased the 'Celestron AstroMaster Accessory Kit' at the same time - this included lens filters and additional 5mm, 15mm and 2x lenses. This gives more range of magnifications to use with the telescope. Viewing with the telescope is very good. The moon is amazing, but you will NEED a moon filter - it is very bright. You can clearly see the moons of Jupiter and with my additional 5mm lens I can just about make out the markings of Jupiter. As for the other planets they have not been visible in the evenings yet - but can't wait until Saturn appears! The only fault is the StarPointer. It's not that good, but you can work around/with it. I have even had my 4 year old daughter looking at the moon - which she found fascinating as she could see the craters very clearly. Since buying this, I have also contacted Celestron support (issue with the additional lens). They were quick and put me in touch with their local distributor (Hama) in the UK. Hama were also very helpful. All-in-all this is very good for the price it costs. I wanted a good telescope that would allow me to get started in Astronomy, without using it for a short while and having to replace it when I want more. This is a good start and with the right lenses will do for what I want it for. Good quality lenses are not cheap (it's the price of the telescope itself for a set), but I can now slowly upgrade this over time now that I have a decent telescope.

I was amazed at the size of this telescope when it arrived, very impressive. One thing to remember, and I have to keep reminding myself is, the price of this telescope. When I grumble at the flimsiness of a couple of the things on it I remind myself how much it cost. As one reviewer has quite rightly pointed out, it can cost this much to buy a tripod. So the five stars is for the value for money. If you want a professional telescope start looking at a couple of thousand plus, not hundred and fifty or so. The quality of the visuals (for the price) are excellent. You get two lenses, a 20mm and a 10mm. Perfectly adequate for starters. I then acquired Orbinar Plossl 30mm eyepiece 31.7mm (1.25") which gives a larger field of view. Great for finding the planet then use one of the others to zoom in on it. The main downside of this level of scope is the ease of use. It is not brilliant for following the orbits, the two cables you use to make the minor adjustments are to be honest, rubbish! They are really flimsy and soon come off (but remember what it cost!). Probably not a good idea to go below 8mm lense on this telescope due to the limitations of this scope. I did buy Celestron AstroMaster Accessory Kit which does seem to fluctuate in price. At the moment it is fifteen pounds more than I paid a couple of weeks ago. In this box you have the filters, a 15mm and 6mm lense plus a 2x power lens. The 6mm lens probably won't get used much but the collection is worth it because to buy the items individually would cost a lot more. I now feel after an outlay of just over two hundred notes that I have all I need to be a novice astronomer!

I think it's always good to give some background info on myself first so if you're in a similar position you know what to think. I'm 18, finishing my A-Levels, about to start an Astrophysics course at Uni and i've not personally used a telescope before. I'd been toying with the idea of buying a telescope for a while, and after Christmas had some spare cash so set out to find one for >£250. I spent weeks researching and contacted friends, teachers and professors about what would be best for my situation. the feedback i essentially got was to buy a Newtonian reflector of minimum this diameter aperture. Being 18 and not wanting to overspend i bought this one. And after a combined usage of about 6 hours i think i can come up with a good review. On the upside: It's easy to assemble regardless of the instructions. I didn't look once and had it together in 20 minutes; it produces a VERY clear image and have seen brilliant detail of objects like the moon, the bands of jupiter and it's moons and more recently the Milky Way; it comes with some good extras such as the two eyepieces. On the downside; it's hard to use at first, the dot finder for example was useless (infact i took it off completely and instead screwed on my point and shoot camera and used the zoom on that to locate what i wanted to see, reduced the time to find, for example, jupiter from 30 minutes to 30 seconds) making it hard to use for beginners although with a few hours practice you'll be fine; it's not particularly transportable, to move all the bits and pieces single handed (i.e. the telescope, the counterweights and the tripod) it takes 3 trips and you need those three trips unless you want to mark every wall in your house and develop a back injury as the combined thing weighs a lot; it's also quite hard to control, the "precision" controls are pretty flimsy and i feel like i'm going to break them, not to mention the fact that you get roughly 4 seconds of visual time on any object before you have to re-align it as the object's drifted away. On the whole i gave it 4 *'s because for it's price it does the job nicely. It's not super expensive (especially here on amazon) which means you get a lot for your money, the concepts are easy to pick up and it gives you the single greatest feeling ever. The first time i saw jupiter for example it made it worth every single penny. So, if you're in the same boat as me. You want something to mess around with a couple of hours a week. And to see something really cool. Look no further, or rather not too much further (see below). For the price this was brilliant and arrived quickly all in one piece (figure of speech). HOWEVER!!!!! There are two MASSIVE things to keep in mind. Firstly, if you are like me, a beginner. You MUST!!!!!!!: 1) Buy a light filter too, otherwise you'll see for example the moon for 3 seconds and you'll come away nearly blind. I wouldn't opt for the celstron one amazon recommends, it's ok, but not great. Instead spend the extra pound and get this "Light Blue 1.25" Telescope Filter - (73% transmission)" type it into amazon and you can't miss it 2) Don't get this one. The is the 130 EQ, get the 130 EQ-MD, the MD stands for motor drive. Which means that it'll track whatever you're looking at. This means you'll be able to actually look at stuff rather than glimpse it then re-align. This also comes in EXTREMELY handy with astrophotography (see below) as it means you can have longer exposure times. It's worth paying the extra £20 for a better quality stand 3) If you're interested in taking pictures using this scope you need to buy a 1" / 1/4" adapter and a T-Ring of your particular brand DSLR camera. This is the easiest way for doing it, as in my experience afocal imaging is hard to do. Although if ALL you want to do is take pictures of stuff, don't bother with a telescope, buy a DSLR camera, a telescopic lense, a stand and an automatic shutter release. It's so much easier to do, and produces just as good pictures as the telescope a lot more easily. And secondly If you're not a beginner. Don't buy this telescope at all. This is a good scope, but having seen the quality of a picture taken on a £7000 telescope the price really does matter even at a smaller scale. pay as much as you can afford and i promise you'll be happier with it. Although i can't really advise you much on what to get.

Before I bought my scope I read all the reviews here and to be honest some of them worried me, but I couldn't find better for the price so I bought it. Having now used the scope for six months I feel qualified to comment, and rather than write a straight review I thought I'd answer some of the negative points made previously. Firstly there are those who have questioned the build quality of this scope. Well six months of use have found no problems with the build quality of my scope. If I am being charitable I would say that those who have had problems such as parts shearing must have had poor examples of the product and that maybe QC is not up to much at Celestron. However from my experiences with this and other Celestron products I would say that those users who managed to break their scope are extraordinarily ham fisted. Build quality is fine and indeed better than you would expect for a scope of this spec at this price. Then there are those who have whinged about the quality of the eye pieces. Sure they are not top quality, but the whole scope, mount, tripod and eyepieces cost around £150. You're not going to get a pair of eyepieces which would normally retail at £100 each in a kit for £150 are you. They get the job done and get you started. The only thing I would say about the eyepieces is that if I were speccing this scope I would not include the erecting eyepiece, but would include something else instead. Perhaps a Barlow lens or another atronomical eyepiece, or maybe a good quality moon filter. If you want a scope for terrestrial use you're not going to buy one on an equatorial mount, so why would you want an erecting eyepiece? The most puzzling review is perhaps the chap who was surprised by the size. The dimensions are readily available on the web, and anyway how small did he expect a 130mm reflector to be? Likewise his inability to follow the assembly instructions is not a reason to return the scope. The person who wanted QR clamps on the tripod legs also puzzled me. An equatorial mount will always take a little time to set up and once setup it is presumably going to sit where it is for some time, an hour at least. So what advantage would QR clamps be? You're not going to be picking up the scope and moving it every five minutes as you would with, say, a wildlife scope. So why would you need QR clamps. In short you will not get a better scope of similar specifications and capabilities for the price. This is a classic example of the adage "you get what you pay for". Yes you can get a better 130mm reflector, but for more money. You can even get a worse one for (not much) less. You are not, however, going to get better for the same price. If you want better, pay more. You can't say fairer than that.

This is a great beginner telescope. I only used the kit included (except for a 3x Barlow lens which I bought separately for about £20), nothing else, and got views of Saturn similar to the image attached (which I pulled from the internet to give readers an idea of what you’ll see through the scope). You can faintly make out the cloud stripes of Jupiter (couldn’t see big red spot unfortunately) and the Galilean moons were also visible. On my first try, having never used a telescope before, it took me about 30-40 minutes to find Saturn through the scope. The second night, I found Saturn and Jupiter in 5 minutes. Set up was pretty simple for an adult and took about 20 minutes. If there was anything I could fault at all (and this is small) is that it doesn’t have easily collapsible legs, there is a static plastic tray that must be twisted off before the legs will collapse and putting the tray back on in darkness would be a bit of a pain. It’s not really a problem, but I just wish it was a quick lever to collapse the legs for quick moving, so I can get it through my door or into my car without having to fiddle with a tray. A flexible nylon tray would have done the same job and made transport easier. Other than that, the telescope is perfect for beginners, you won’t be disappointed. EDIT: I bought the Celesteon 2.3mm lens and, without using a Barlow lens, I was able to snap my own picture (the one of Saturn horizontal, not slanted). It still looks better in person as there’s no shakiness blurring the image (the picture was taken on an iPhone 12 by hand, no mount to keep it still)

Firstly, it is very rare I leave a review for anything. However, I just felt I had to give a shout out to Celestron for their outstanding customer service. I have used my Astromaster 130EQ for 9 months or so now and have always been extremely pleased with it. Yes, the provided lenses aren't the best but the telescope is excellent for a beginner. It may be a little too complex for a child but I managed to set it up and use it without any trouble! The barrel is well made and easy to attach to the mount. The tripod is OK but can be a bit shaky if there is some wind. On the whole though. I am more than happy with the tripod for now. I recently had a major problem with the mount however. I went out to use the telescope and the mount completely broke with the telescope on it! Fortunately, I managed to catch the scope before it hit the ground. Obviously, I was a little upset about this as there was no way to fix it. So, I emailed Celestron in the USA and they responded in seconds (and I do mean seconds); unfortunately, they were unable to help due to shear geography. They provided me with the email for the UK branch of the company and I emailed them first thing. Within minutes they had replied, arranged a replacement and shipped it. This was yesterday morning (28/03/22). The new mount was in my hands at lunchtime today! Celestron have been outstanding. They have definitely made a loyal customer out of me and I can't thank them enough for the speed of their response and delivery of the replacement part. A lot of companies could learn a thing or two from them. Awesome company and a decent product for a beginner.

OK, after much research I bought this scope, a copy of 'Turn Left at Orion' and a Moon Filter. Upon unpacking the telescope I found that the tripod was broken (one of the leg supports was cracked (no signs of damage to the packaging). I was so disappointed (it was a nice clear night). I'm afraid the tripod does look quite weak but costs have to be saved somewhere; the equatorial mount and scope look good and I guess this is where you are better off spending the money if the tripod is secure enough. I guess I will just need to handle it with care... Excellent service from Amazon, filled out the returns form on line and a new telescope was delivered 2 days later (before I had returned the faulty one). UPDATE Having used my 130EQ for a few weeks now I can say that it really is an excellent piece of kit with a few reservations: The 'star pointer' (used to aim the scope) is really bad. I could not get this to work and even struggled to find the moon using it! I have now removed it (quite easy by removing two Philips screws) and I bought a Telrad finder which is so easy to use. The Telrad took me 5 minutes to mount and set up (the hardest bit was finding an object to aim at with the scope in the first place). I can now point the Telrad at an object and it is immediately centred in the eyepiece. The Telrad is a bit expensive at around £50 for what it is but but for the difference it makes it is well worth it. It transforms this scope - don't hesitate to upgrade to a Telrad if you struggle with the built in finder. The tripod is not very steady so astro photography is not easy but it does the job and the equatorial mount is a substantial quality mount. At the price - this is fine. The scope itself pulls in a huge amount of light and the best views are with lower magnifications. I can highly recommend the Revelation Eyepiece set which I bought from Telescope House. This set is worth the money for the Barlow Lens, T-adaptor and especially for the 32mm eyepiece which is fantastic. Overall this scope is an excellent introduction to astronomy but budget for an update to the pointer - I can find an object in less than a minute with the Telrad when without it I could spend all night trying and still fail! I now intend to join a local astronomy club and continue my journey in this new hobby. Hope this review is helpful for any newbies like me.

I got this as my first telescope, before I had been using 10x50 binocular which gives a good wide field of view, so you don't really have problems aiming. Now with this telescope on the first time out I was lucky enough to get it aimed at Jupiter and could see a clear crisp view of the planet as a white globe and then the four moons as small pin pricks of light. This was with the lowest mag eyepiece, I tried the other but couldn't get as good an image. Later I found out that this is not the telescopes fault as such: the scope is still gathering the same amount of light, but now your trying to magnify this (make it bigger in the eyepiece) which is spreading the light over a bigger area and so reducing the brightness. It also reduces the field of view so the moons were not visible. All this is expected if you read the literature. I also tried, in that first night, to aim at the Orion nebula, which was could be seen with the naked eye. Not so lucky this time! As I'm very inexperienced it seemed very hard to aim at a particular star and know that you have the star you want in the eyepiece. There is just so much light, you can see stars everywhere that you can't see with the naked eye, and it seemed impossible to identify anything. According to the forums, and countless books on the subject, these are beginners mistakes. The scope has a star pointer finder scope, and setting circles. Every bit of advice tell to get these aligned and set-up properly to get full use out of a telescope. Overall I think this is a great telescope for the money. Now all that is needed is more skill!

Çok iyi bir teleskop. Başlangıç için 50AZ modelini almıştım ama arasında çok fark var. Andromeda, jüpiter, saturn ve niceleri telefonumda var ama "AMAZON TÜRKİYEDE RESİMLERİ AÇSA GÖSTERECEM!" Eğer çok üst segment alıp para basmayacam diyorsanız ideal. Çok ekmeğini de yedim ürünün ;) 2 eksisi var el ile taşınmaz çok ağır. Ekstra lens alıp geliştirmek lazım. Jüpiterin 2 büyük çizgisi ve büyük kırmızı gözü lens yardımı ile gözüküyor. Ayrıca fotozeynep ile 1 günde kapınızda.

Amazing is just not enough to describe what you see and feel looking through the eyepiece. Venus was my first stop, "wow" was the word that came out when the image got focussed for the first time. I could see the phases of venus with just the 20mm eyepiece. 10mm made the image a bigger one and astonishing. Moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds but when it was well above the horizon and shining brightly, I was spell bound with its beauty. Honestly you could spend hours just looking at the moon. 10mm eyepiece gave an even closer look at the Carter's, the shadows casted by the craters and the mountain ranges on the moon. Jupiter looks like a 2mm ball with very faint bands of methane distinguishable if observed for longer durations. The four moons of Jupiter are just a very minute dots if observed very minutely. But I felty it requires more magnification power to observe Jupiter with it's methane bands and the giant red spot. (May be collimation issue is there) Couldnot see the most beautiful planet Saturn as clouds came in hope to see it when conditions are perfect. These were my first experience of amature astronomy with my first telescope. I don't write reviews at all but this Celestron Astromaster 130eq is such amazing piece that it made me to write such a review. Though there are some points which I would like to list to get the most out of the telescope. 1. Lots of patience is required to be able to see what you actually want to see, trust me patience will give you all that you want from this telescope. 2. Try to see the videos and go through the instructions manual before beginning assembly of the telescope as it's quite critical for one who has no idea of any such kind before. 3. Lot of things has to go right to get the perfect views, if not getting the perfect view wait for the perfect condition to occur. 4. The equatorial mount is very heavy and of solid built quality but the pointers are just not right and you can't be sure which degree u are setting on it. 5. The tripod is also of heavy construction but if expanded fully it feels more shakey so I don't expand it. 6. The secondary mirror was dangling loose when I first unpacked the telescope which totally dishearted me but I did manual collimation as per the instructions manual provided and it was fairly accurate but will eventually require a lazer collimation which again costs around Rs 6000/- to get more sharper images. 7. The telescope is very heavy (around 16kgs) and very difficult to move it around in assembled condition. It gave me body pains the next morning after my first setup and observations. 8. There are no cromatic abbrations as it is relfector telescope and the optics are of very good quality Those who are still reading this review and disheartened because I didn't post any pictures of moon or Jupiter for them I just want to tell that pictures just don't do justice to what you can actually see with your naked eye because human eye has 1000 times better dynamic range than any camera. Even I have gone through all the pictures posted in the other reviews. Trust me you are going to see 1000 times better with your naked eye that any of those pictures. If you want to go for this telescope go for it without any hesitation as it will finally give you and out of the world experience.

É bem preciso na busca de planetas quando se regula bem a buscadora. As lentes que vem nele é de altíssima qualidade e só fica "devendo" uma barlow para aumentar o zoom. - Antes de comprar, é importante saber a latitude e longitude da sua localidade. - Se vai comprar, compre uma barlow também. Respeitando a capacidade do telescópio - Zoom real máximo é de 260x (sem aberrações nas imagens) - Para ver a lua, fica muito bom com o filtro lunar e as lentes de 10mm e 20mm dão e sobram - A regulagem precisa é muito boa - Se for fazer imagens/vídeos, recomendo um suporte para celular ou câmera DSL

Arrivé très vite, très bien fait, très content.

not usable