Celestron FirstScope Table Top Telescope Review and Unboxing

In this article we will be reviewing the Celestron and FirstScope, this telescope is a compact telescope with a simple Dobsonian design.

Unlike large Dobsonian telescopes the Celestron Firstscope requires a flat surface to use it preferably something like a table top. However, as this is a Dobsonian telescope it is quite simple to use just point at the target you wanted to record and then look through the eyepiece, this telescope has a seventy-six millimetre aperture which is about three inches and it has a three hundred millimetre focal length.

This means it is quite fast if you're doing any astrophotography, it'll give you a wide field of view unless you had a intervening eyepiece. This telescope does not come with a finderscope which I found quite a bit more difficult to use at first, when I when I tried it in the field. But it does come with the finderscope attachments so one can attached and aligned if necessary.

So, when using the Celetstron FinderScope, the recommended way to find a target would be to use the twenty-millimetre eyepiece to find the target and then zoom in with the four-millimetre eyepiece.

This telescope comes with two Kellner eyepieces, the twenty-millimetre eyepiece gives you fifteen times magnification and the four-millimetre eyepiece will give you seventy-five times magnification. Now these are Kellner eye pieces so they only have a forty-to-fifty-degree apparent field of view when you look through them which is not great. So, a good upgrade if you are thinking about upgrading would be a Plossl eyepiece not very expensive but it will give you fifty two degrees apparent field of view which will widen what you see when you look out into the night sky.

A great thing about as well also if you do upgrade to the Plossl eyepieces you will be able to take them to any other telescope you have got so you upgrade to a new telescope in the future and you can just use it in that telescope as well.

Now the maximum magnification you can usually use for a telescope is fifty times magnification per inch of aperture as this telescope has a three-inch aperture, you should be able to go up to one hundred and fifty times magnification.

You would need to use a two times Barlow lens and the four-millimetre eyepiece to get this magnification. But again, I would recommend getting a Plossl eyepieces if possible.

I found that these eyepieces supplied with the telescope did perform adequately in this scope giving quite sharp images.

So who's the Celetstron FirstScope good for?

Well, due to its small size, you can pack it down to pretty much nothing so it is a great travel telescope. It is also quite a good telescope for someone who only uses a telescope now and again is not a particularly serious observer so you can take it out occasionally.

Another great use case for this telescope is for small children its small size making it easy for a child to use.

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