Tasco Astronomical 600X60mm Telescope
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- Mount Type: Altazimuth
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A poor quality telescope
Pros
The optics are not too bad
Cons
Too many low quality plastic parts, low quality wooden tripod.
Recommended it?
No
Ok, this isn't a big and expensive telescope, so when I bought it I wasn't expecting to get the best instrument of the world. I was fully aware of it's limitations. Even so, the bad quality of the telescope surpassed all my expectations.
At first lets describe the telescope: it is a 60 mm refractor, with an alt-azimut wooden mount. It came with a pair of eyepieces (12.5mm and 4mm) a diagonal mirror, a low power finderscope, an erecting eyepiece and a 3X barlow lens (which i have to confess, that I never used).
The telescope seems very nice when looking at the pictures, but as soon as you put it on your backyard and starts watching the sky with it, you'll notice these little imperfections, that eventually will make your night journey a really frustrating experience.
As an example, I can mention the screw that keeps the eyepiece on it place, or that was supposed to do that. The screwhole is made of plastic, and the screw itself is made of metal. What happened was that the metal screw wore all the threads from the low-quality-plastic hole and now I have to keep my eyepieces with a piece of adhesive tape.
The eyepieces have other problems. The 4mm eyepiece provides much more amplification power than the optics are capable to afford, so I think I would not be telling a lie if I say that I used this eyepiece a just couple of times. With the 12.5mm eyepiece I had other problems. Once, when observing the sun searching for sunspots, the eyepiece got too hot that the internal plastic cover just melted away! Since then, every time I use this eyepiece (yes, it still can be used) I have an oval shaped field of view.
Conclusion
The telescope quality is extremely low, even for its low price. If you are a serious amateur that want to buy a telescope, but don't have enough money to afford an expensive one, I would recommend you to wait a few months. If you want to buy it as a toy for your kids, well maybe it would fit for that use, but in my opinion it is too expensive to be used as a toy. The best use that I can imagine for this telescope is as a decorative piece of a science TV show or something like that...;)
At first lets describe the telescope: it is a 60 mm refractor, with an alt-azimut wooden mount. It came with a pair of eyepieces (12.5mm and 4mm) a diagonal mirror, a low power finderscope, an erecting eyepiece and a 3X barlow lens (which i have to confess, that I never used).
The telescope seems very nice when looking at the pictures, but as soon as you put it on your backyard and starts watching the sky with it, you'll notice these little imperfections, that eventually will make your night journey a really frustrating experience.
As an example, I can mention the screw that keeps the eyepiece on it place, or that was supposed to do that. The screwhole is made of plastic, and the screw itself is made of metal. What happened was that the metal screw wore all the threads from the low-quality-plastic hole and now I have to keep my eyepieces with a piece of adhesive tape.
The eyepieces have other problems. The 4mm eyepiece provides much more amplification power than the optics are capable to afford, so I think I would not be telling a lie if I say that I used this eyepiece a just couple of times. With the 12.5mm eyepiece I had other problems. Once, when observing the sun searching for sunspots, the eyepiece got too hot that the internal plastic cover just melted away! Since then, every time I use this eyepiece (yes, it still can be used) I have an oval shaped field of view.
Conclusion
The telescope quality is extremely low, even for its low price. If you are a serious amateur that want to buy a telescope, but don't have enough money to afford an expensive one, I would recommend you to wait a few months. If you want to buy it as a toy for your kids, well maybe it would fit for that use, but in my opinion it is too expensive to be used as a toy. The best use that I can imagine for this telescope is as a decorative piece of a science TV show or something like that...;)
