Celestron FirstScope 114 Telescope
Out of stock |
Similar in Telescopes
- Optical Diameter: 114 mm
- Max Useful Magnification: x 269
- Finderscope: Red-Dot
- Mount Type: Equatorial
- Focal Length: 1000 mm
- Optical Design: Refractor
- Overview
-
Reviews
-
Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
a dependable scope for the beginner
Pros
image quality
Cons
nothing serious
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Recommendable. There's simply nothing wrong with it!
My husband and I purchased this as our very first telescope, so the opinions here are not based on comparison to something else, but merely as first impressions of this one.
The telescope came with aluminium tripod which provided a sturdy support for the scope. The equatorial mount is of type EQ-2 and is pretty good, allowing only a couple of seconds of wobbling when gently pushed. Not long enough to make you frustrated. Though with the higher power eyepiece eye-relief is a bit poor and if your eye touches the piece, the image goes haywired for a while; also, focusing with it can be a bit of a drag sometime. The slow-motion control knobs provided smooth and accurate control.
The optics are wonderful. The scope keeps its optical elements aligned well, having required collimation only once (though we do a check-up almost every time we got out) since purchase, even if our handling could often times be gentler. Also it was easy to do, despite of how afraid of it we were prior, after reading about it.
Now for the images. High-powered images of planets give good detail, sharpness and contrast. They are truly crisp and clear. Jupiter shows bright, distinctly showing two of its wide cloud bands. Its moons appeared as bright tiny points. Saturn was a breathtaking sight with its "ears."
Even a double as close as 4" (Sigma 422 in Taurus) could easily be resolved with the higher power eyepiece.
Two eyepieces are supplied: a 20mm Plossl and a 10mm SMA. The 20mm is of exceptional quality. It has good eye-relief, making it highly compatible with the rubber eyeguard that we use with it. The 10mm has very poor eye-relief. With the same kind of eyeguard, one has to move his eye around in order to see the entire view. Also it is a bit annoying that you have to re-focus when you change from one to the other. It would have been nice to have a pair of par-focal eyepieces with the telescope.
The focuser functions smoothly and accurately. It allows you to rack it back and forth (for best focus), with relative ease. The knobs, though, could use a little size increase so that it's easy to grab them with your gloves on, without worrying about shaking the telescope too much.
The manual was pretty bad. Starting from the layout, some words were cut-off at the edge of the page. The content...well. On the other hand, we hardly needed the manual at all.
Despite a couple of complaints, Celestron 114 Premium is truly a joy to use and has encouraged us enough to pursue astronomy much much further...and later upgrade to a bigger scope.
The telescope came with aluminium tripod which provided a sturdy support for the scope. The equatorial mount is of type EQ-2 and is pretty good, allowing only a couple of seconds of wobbling when gently pushed. Not long enough to make you frustrated. Though with the higher power eyepiece eye-relief is a bit poor and if your eye touches the piece, the image goes haywired for a while; also, focusing with it can be a bit of a drag sometime. The slow-motion control knobs provided smooth and accurate control.
The optics are wonderful. The scope keeps its optical elements aligned well, having required collimation only once (though we do a check-up almost every time we got out) since purchase, even if our handling could often times be gentler. Also it was easy to do, despite of how afraid of it we were prior, after reading about it.
Now for the images. High-powered images of planets give good detail, sharpness and contrast. They are truly crisp and clear. Jupiter shows bright, distinctly showing two of its wide cloud bands. Its moons appeared as bright tiny points. Saturn was a breathtaking sight with its "ears."
Even a double as close as 4" (Sigma 422 in Taurus) could easily be resolved with the higher power eyepiece.
Two eyepieces are supplied: a 20mm Plossl and a 10mm SMA. The 20mm is of exceptional quality. It has good eye-relief, making it highly compatible with the rubber eyeguard that we use with it. The 10mm has very poor eye-relief. With the same kind of eyeguard, one has to move his eye around in order to see the entire view. Also it is a bit annoying that you have to re-focus when you change from one to the other. It would have been nice to have a pair of par-focal eyepieces with the telescope.
The focuser functions smoothly and accurately. It allows you to rack it back and forth (for best focus), with relative ease. The knobs, though, could use a little size increase so that it's easy to grab them with your gloves on, without worrying about shaking the telescope too much.
The manual was pretty bad. Starting from the layout, some words were cut-off at the edge of the page. The content...well. On the other hand, we hardly needed the manual at all.
Despite a couple of complaints, Celestron 114 Premium is truly a joy to use and has encouraged us enough to pursue astronomy much much further...and later upgrade to a bigger scope.
