Tag Archives: Cheap Telescopes

Celestron FirstScope Review

Photo: Celestron FirstScope

The FirstScope and included 20mm and 10mm eyepeices.

Small, inexpensive telescopes have an appeal all their own. Ideally they are simple to use and though they don’t collect the most light or have the highest quality optics or most robust construction, under a clear night sky they can reveal a host of wonders. In practice few of these cheap telescopes actually live up to these aspirations and many of them are so flawed in optics or mechanics as to be more frustrating than fun.

The Celestron FirstScope (you can also find it at Amazon) is a small, 76mm, reflector that has interested me for some time. It is incredibly inexpensive; the regular price is under $50 and I’ve seen it on sale for under $35 from time to time. So what makes the FirstScope any different from countless other cheap telescopes?

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Amazon Deal: Celestron FirstScope

firstscope

[Update Feb. 24: The one-day sale is over and as of this writing the price at Amazon is back to the regular price of $45.49.]

Amazon has the Celestron FirstScope for $33.99 as the deal of the day.

This simple, cheap telescope is best suited to low power, wide field viewing (think 10-30x) so if you’re looking for great performance on the Moon and planets you’ll want a different scope. I’ve been thinking about adding one of these to my scope collection for a while now and this deal was enough to get me to bite.

Hopefully I’ll get to view Comet Lovejoy through the FirstScope before it fades. In any case I should have a full review posted sometime in the next few weeks.

[Update Feb. 28: The full review for the Celestron FirstScope has been posted.]

-Dave

Original content copyright 2015 by David Philips. All Rights Reserved. This post may contain links to affiliate sites; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.