Celestron AstroMaster 114 EQ Telescope
- Optical Diameter: 114 mm
- Max Useful Magnification: x 100
- Finderscope: Optical
- Mount Type: Equatorial
- Motorized: No
- Focal Length: 1000 mm
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A better start than most, probably will spur more purchases
Pros
Inexpensive, reasonably compact/lightweight, good backyard viewing
Cons
Cheap eyepieces, nearly useless finder, slightly sloppy and difficult GEM mount
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
A good, inexpensive choice for beginning amateur astronomers
I had been thinking for quite some time that I would like to have a telescope. I did considerable research, and I know a bit about the designs and possibilities of many different ones. The result of this, of course, is that I'd like to have an 8" Cassegrain with a GOTO equatorial mount and a small case of various Nagler eyepieces. Lacking the money for one of those, I have to do something else. I hadn't necessarily decided to settle for a 4.5" Newtonian, but I found this telescope for sale on a local sale ad for about 1/3 of its normal retail and I thought I'd give it a shot. Other than computer software, I received all accessories included in the normal package in good to excellent condition.
I'll start at the bottom. The foundation, as it were, of a telescope is its tripod. Without sufficient mount and tripod, even the best telescope would be worthless. This telescope includes a metal tripod and "German Equatorial Mount" (GEM). The included tripod 2-segment legs that are adjustable for height and to help leveling. It seems sufficiently sturdy for this use and isn't terribly heavy (the entire scope-mount-tripod assembly is less than 20 lbs/9 kg). None of the tripod parts are difficult to use. There is a plastic spider that goes between the legs to keep them centered and which holds an included tray to hold small accessories during observations. This would also be a good place to hang a weight. Many amateur astronomers suspend weights to help steady everything at high-magnifications, but I have not found that necessary yet.
Secondly, I'll talk about the included mount. This GEM type (it is a type and is not made in Germany) mount is designed to make manual tracking of objects easy. Given a level spot and knowing your latitude, it's possible to track objects using only one axis of movement. It's hard to imagine when looking at them, but the earth turns pretty fast under the stars and it takes a bit of work to keep them visible through a telescope. A properly-aligned GEM can track objects using only the Right Ascension (RA) axis of the mount. When it comes to inexperienced people, though, a GEM isn't easy or intuitive to set up. When I bought this telescope, the GEM wasn't properly set up and had some loose parts. Being loose had caused the aluminum gear of the RA axis to have been visibly stripped a few times. The orange colored anodization had ground off it in several places. After tightening a couple of things and moving the weights for balance, it does still work. The included weights are sufficient to balance the scope, which is necessary to minimise both wear and tension on the mounts tracking adjustments. The slow adjustments are done by turning knobs that are attached to a worm gear with a flexible cable. This is typical, works well, and minimizes vibration from touching the scope. While I've found the GEM to work properly once a combination of improper setup and factory defects were corrected, it's not what I would recommend in this class. A novice would probably find an alt-azimuth mount less tedious. While an alt-azimuth would require two axes of movement to track, it's enough simpler to set up that I think it's less intimidating. Dobsonian alt-azimuth mounts are probably the easiest of all. I don't feel that a GEM is likely to be used properly by a beginner. Obviously, a GOTO mount would be nice but unlikely at this price point.
Finally, the scope itself (and attached accessories). This is a Newtonian reflector with a 114mm (about 4.5") aperture, a focal length of 1000mm, and a ratio of f8. This is a short-tube design with a lens built into the focus tube to increase magnification. It actually has an f4 mirror and 500mm focal length. This same telescope (manufactured by Synta in China) is sold under many different names and is often cited online as one to avoid. I feel that assessment is a bit unfair. Everything always involves compromise, and this compromise allows a shorter, lighter scope with a cheaper (easier to grind) spherical mirror instead of a parabolic one. For many people, the cost savings and portability do make up for the tradeoff of sharpness. I believe a lot of this tradeoff is exaggerated as to the quality difference. I've not so far felt that the sharpness was less than I expected. This scope is equipped with a standard 1.25" rack-and-pinion focus tube, which I consider a big plus. Being the size used by most amateur telescopes allows you to select from a huge selection of other eyepieces and Barlow magnifiers as needed to get the size you want (more later) . The scope attaches to the mount with a standard dovetail mount that attaches to the tube with bands that wrap around it. This is excellent because it is adjustable for balance and to help put the eyepieces where you can look through them better. should you later buy a different mount, this should mount to most any of them. The tube itself is metal painted dark metallic blue with black plastic trim.
The biggest letdown to me is the quality of the included accessories. There is a red dot finder mounted to the tube (in a non-standard mount) that I don't like. I don't feel like it's large enough to be very helpful pointing the scope, and the red dot is much too bright. The light setup doesn't make only a dot in the middle, and the foggy bleed of light through the entire circle obscures seeing through it at night. I prefer to use it turned off. It also includes two eyepiece: a 20mm eyepiece that gives an erect image (50x), and a 10mm that gives an inverted image (100x). Though they do work, each is a bit of a letdown for different reasons. The 20mm eyepiece requires that you be perfectly aligned with it to see the image. Any unsteadiness results in image cutoff known as "kidney-beaning." That said, this eyepiece puts the entire moon in the field of view and did give excellent and pleasing views of the partial-phase surface. It is bright and sharp for this use. It doesn't make much sense to include an erecting eyepiece with a 1000mm GEM mounted reflector, though. I may buy a different 20mm to look at the moon. The magnification is correct, but the kidney-beaning problem makes it a little fatiguing to stare for a while. For planetary and star observations, the 20mm is best used to help aim for using the also-included 10mm. It doesn't suffer from the kidney-beaning of the 20mm, but it does require you to get very close to see the focused view. More eye-relief would be nice. A 100x view of Jupiter is sufficient to see moons and a couple of bands of the planet's atmosphere. Cool. It's also enough to see the rings of Saturn. Very, very cool. The problem is, these planets are low to the horizon here right now, can't be seen just anywhere and are more prone to atmospheric interference. I'm looking forward to seeing them more when they're higher in the sky. I've not seen them yet, but this combination should allow you to see that Venus has phases like the moon and see that the ice caps of Mars' poles. I'm looking forward to that. Planetary observation is most of why I wanted a telescope, but it can be used for stars, too. When centered in the view, stars do look nice, but getting off-center hurts sharpness. This can be blamed on a combination of mirror design and cheap eyepieces. With a couple of carefully-chosen quality eyepieces, this scope's purchase price could easily be doubled, but enjoyment would be drastically improved and the 1.25" standard pieces could later follow you to a better scope.
When it comes to amateur astronomy or family viewing, this is a good start. It's probably not a good choice for a child to use alone, but costs little more than the basically toy scopes at big box stores. It is of sufficient size to do interesting viewing, cheap enough to be an easy purchase, and standard enough to be compatible with better accessories. If you buy better eyepieces, they will still work with a better scope you might buy later. If you have a better scope and want a lighter scope for portability, it is good for that, too. Ditto for GOTO mounts. Like I said in the title, it's a good scope to start with that is likely to spur additional purchases later. Most purchases made to better enjoy the 114 can be strong investments and used later with other scopes.
I'll start at the bottom. The foundation, as it were, of a telescope is its tripod. Without sufficient mount and tripod, even the best telescope would be worthless. This telescope includes a metal tripod and "German Equatorial Mount" (GEM). The included tripod 2-segment legs that are adjustable for height and to help leveling. It seems sufficiently sturdy for this use and isn't terribly heavy (the entire scope-mount-tripod assembly is less than 20 lbs/9 kg). None of the tripod parts are difficult to use. There is a plastic spider that goes between the legs to keep them centered and which holds an included tray to hold small accessories during observations. This would also be a good place to hang a weight. Many amateur astronomers suspend weights to help steady everything at high-magnifications, but I have not found that necessary yet.
Secondly, I'll talk about the included mount. This GEM type (it is a type and is not made in Germany) mount is designed to make manual tracking of objects easy. Given a level spot and knowing your latitude, it's possible to track objects using only one axis of movement. It's hard to imagine when looking at them, but the earth turns pretty fast under the stars and it takes a bit of work to keep them visible through a telescope. A properly-aligned GEM can track objects using only the Right Ascension (RA) axis of the mount. When it comes to inexperienced people, though, a GEM isn't easy or intuitive to set up. When I bought this telescope, the GEM wasn't properly set up and had some loose parts. Being loose had caused the aluminum gear of the RA axis to have been visibly stripped a few times. The orange colored anodization had ground off it in several places. After tightening a couple of things and moving the weights for balance, it does still work. The included weights are sufficient to balance the scope, which is necessary to minimise both wear and tension on the mounts tracking adjustments. The slow adjustments are done by turning knobs that are attached to a worm gear with a flexible cable. This is typical, works well, and minimizes vibration from touching the scope. While I've found the GEM to work properly once a combination of improper setup and factory defects were corrected, it's not what I would recommend in this class. A novice would probably find an alt-azimuth mount less tedious. While an alt-azimuth would require two axes of movement to track, it's enough simpler to set up that I think it's less intimidating. Dobsonian alt-azimuth mounts are probably the easiest of all. I don't feel that a GEM is likely to be used properly by a beginner. Obviously, a GOTO mount would be nice but unlikely at this price point.
Finally, the scope itself (and attached accessories). This is a Newtonian reflector with a 114mm (about 4.5") aperture, a focal length of 1000mm, and a ratio of f8. This is a short-tube design with a lens built into the focus tube to increase magnification. It actually has an f4 mirror and 500mm focal length. This same telescope (manufactured by Synta in China) is sold under many different names and is often cited online as one to avoid. I feel that assessment is a bit unfair. Everything always involves compromise, and this compromise allows a shorter, lighter scope with a cheaper (easier to grind) spherical mirror instead of a parabolic one. For many people, the cost savings and portability do make up for the tradeoff of sharpness. I believe a lot of this tradeoff is exaggerated as to the quality difference. I've not so far felt that the sharpness was less than I expected. This scope is equipped with a standard 1.25" rack-and-pinion focus tube, which I consider a big plus. Being the size used by most amateur telescopes allows you to select from a huge selection of other eyepieces and Barlow magnifiers as needed to get the size you want (more later) . The scope attaches to the mount with a standard dovetail mount that attaches to the tube with bands that wrap around it. This is excellent because it is adjustable for balance and to help put the eyepieces where you can look through them better. should you later buy a different mount, this should mount to most any of them. The tube itself is metal painted dark metallic blue with black plastic trim.
The biggest letdown to me is the quality of the included accessories. There is a red dot finder mounted to the tube (in a non-standard mount) that I don't like. I don't feel like it's large enough to be very helpful pointing the scope, and the red dot is much too bright. The light setup doesn't make only a dot in the middle, and the foggy bleed of light through the entire circle obscures seeing through it at night. I prefer to use it turned off. It also includes two eyepiece: a 20mm eyepiece that gives an erect image (50x), and a 10mm that gives an inverted image (100x). Though they do work, each is a bit of a letdown for different reasons. The 20mm eyepiece requires that you be perfectly aligned with it to see the image. Any unsteadiness results in image cutoff known as "kidney-beaning." That said, this eyepiece puts the entire moon in the field of view and did give excellent and pleasing views of the partial-phase surface. It is bright and sharp for this use. It doesn't make much sense to include an erecting eyepiece with a 1000mm GEM mounted reflector, though. I may buy a different 20mm to look at the moon. The magnification is correct, but the kidney-beaning problem makes it a little fatiguing to stare for a while. For planetary and star observations, the 20mm is best used to help aim for using the also-included 10mm. It doesn't suffer from the kidney-beaning of the 20mm, but it does require you to get very close to see the focused view. More eye-relief would be nice. A 100x view of Jupiter is sufficient to see moons and a couple of bands of the planet's atmosphere. Cool. It's also enough to see the rings of Saturn. Very, very cool. The problem is, these planets are low to the horizon here right now, can't be seen just anywhere and are more prone to atmospheric interference. I'm looking forward to seeing them more when they're higher in the sky. I've not seen them yet, but this combination should allow you to see that Venus has phases like the moon and see that the ice caps of Mars' poles. I'm looking forward to that. Planetary observation is most of why I wanted a telescope, but it can be used for stars, too. When centered in the view, stars do look nice, but getting off-center hurts sharpness. This can be blamed on a combination of mirror design and cheap eyepieces. With a couple of carefully-chosen quality eyepieces, this scope's purchase price could easily be doubled, but enjoyment would be drastically improved and the 1.25" standard pieces could later follow you to a better scope.
When it comes to amateur astronomy or family viewing, this is a good start. It's probably not a good choice for a child to use alone, but costs little more than the basically toy scopes at big box stores. It is of sufficient size to do interesting viewing, cheap enough to be an easy purchase, and standard enough to be compatible with better accessories. If you buy better eyepieces, they will still work with a better scope you might buy later. If you have a better scope and want a lighter scope for portability, it is good for that, too. Ditto for GOTO mounts. Like I said in the title, it's a good scope to start with that is likely to spur additional purchases later. Most purchases made to better enjoy the 114 can be strong investments and used later with other scopes.
