refractors

Here are some things I like about this product:
- easy to assemble, lightweight, and very mobile
- sturdy tripod
- great auto goto feature and easy to calliberate. Can find stars, messier objects, etc, in a matter of minutes. Very cool and slick feature
- decent quality eye pieces
- RS-232 connection is a little tricky, you may need assistance from Celestron to get started there.

Here are some things I don't like about this product
- the hand controller wirings and the batter wirings can get all caught up if you are not careful.
- it does not have enough magnification and aperture to see detail of celestial objects other than the moon. It is a great spotter type telescope which may supplement your high powerered manual telescope to cut down time in finding objects
- check all the parts before you setup the telescope, I received damaged, missing parts and had to get replacements
- I was able to find a number of deep sky objects in the sky with this telescope but could not see much detail other than bright dot(s), still it is pretty neat to locate these objects at the touch of a button

Another Recommendation
Buy the Dobsonion from Orion. It costs the same amount of money (about [$$$]), it doesn't have the auto goto features like Celestrons, but you get a lot more viewing power i.e. focal length of 1200 mm vs. 400 mm, aperture of 150 mm vs. 80 mm, better view finder etc.

Andy

I'm a novice as far as telescopes goes. Actually this is my first one. Getting it to work won't take more than 5 minutes (including the unpacking) Assembling it is very straightforward.

For terrestial objects I am very happy with it. I was able to see crisp images of objects more than 20 miles away.

The hand control is also easy to use. It is a battery eater. And be careful, if you leave the battery pack connected, the next day you will realize they are gone.

As far as magnification, I feel a little bit dissapointed. I was able to see Jupiter and 4 of it's moons, also Saturn is visible along it's rings. However the image is so small you'll get a headache after a couple of minutes due to the strain on your eyes. The moon looks great. I was also able to see what I presume was a satellite. It was like a very small lighted dot blinking and moving very fast on the sky for 1 or 2 minutes.

Overall it is a good telescope, but if you are a first timer, don't expect to see the planets as big balloons with all kinds of patterns.

Having shopped around, a lot, and keeping it below $$$, this is a great telescope. The red diode star finder makes zero-ing in on objects a snap! Really! What a neet invention. This telescope is too easy to set up. And the computer control works great too. For the $$$, this IS a very nice product. My ONLY suggestion is to also order a stronger eyepiece than what comes with it. The two that come with this scope dont do it justice. Mars looks great, and with a stronger eyepiece, you can see the dark bloches/spots on Mars. It wont be like the big close-ups from the hubble, but you'll enjoy what you see. And the moon is so clear and close up, you will feel like you can take a walk on it. The tripod is ok, a little flimsy but does its job. A happy purchase...