The Search For The Perfect Starter Telescope

December 2, 2008 on 10:06 pm | In general | No Comments

Finding the perfect starter telescope involves many things, foremost of which for most of us is price. This telescope goes for a bit less than $100 and represents what I consider the best buy in the “starter” telescope range. It has a few plastic parts, notably the dials, but all-in-all, it offers some fabulous viewing at a great magnification. Nice rig here.

The Celestron 21045 offers a 4.5 inch reflecting mirror and gathers three times more starlight than popular 60mm refractors. The Powerseeker package includes two eyepieces (K20 and SR4), a plastic 3x barlow, and a lightweight equatorial mount. The Tripod is an excellent composition and quite steady. At 30 pounds, it is a nice and serious piece of star-gazing equipment. In my experience, it is hard to find units offering this much power for under $100. Using the K20 eyepiece included as standard equipment, about 45x magnification, it’s easy to see the Andromeda Galaxy and its smaller satellite galaxy M32. That’s some good power!

Click here to see product reviews and more data on this great item.