Tribal-Wolf

The 130EQ Celestron is potentially a good scope, it has a parabolic mirror even though their website says it doesn't, and it certainly looks the part. The main issues seem to be a rubbish red dot finder that is not removable and there is no centre spot on the primary mirror making collimation impossible unless you remove the mirror in mark one on. The general build quality is not quite as good as Skywatcher which is probably why they're only £125 brand new. I would go for the Skywatcher 130P if that's your limit but a couple of month ago I was where you are now and decided to save a bit more for something bigger. Why not go for a 150P Dobsonian or even better a 200P, you wont regret it.

Mirror cleaning, I hear sharp intake of breath or two lol

Reply email I have just received:

'Hi Chris,

Thank you again for pointing out the error and for your patience and understanding. I have notified management regarding the inaccurate information in the knowledgebase article, so a change can be made.

I hope you will now be able to purchase an AstroMaster 130EQ with confidence knowing your telescope will have a fine parabolic mirror.

Warm Regards,

Kevin K.

Celestron Marketing Team'

All good stuff then lol.

I thought I would post this as it will probably be of some interest to people who have or are considering buying a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ.

I was looking into them recently and found a website that was selling them and list the scope as having a parabolic mirror. On Celestrons own website they state that the scope has a spherical mirror so I thought I would email the other company telling them this and that they may be misleading people.

The reply from them was this:

'Hello Mr C*****t,

Thanks a lot for your e-mail and your remarks!

To the best of our knowledge, including tests we have performed on the telescopes in question, all those instruments where we state that the optics are parabolic indeed have parabolic optics. This includes Astromaster 130. However it is correct that the smaller telescopes than the Astromaster 130 have no parabolic mirror.

Best regards,

Patrick Woitala

Telescope-Service'.

After getting this reply I thought lets ask them directly and see what they say so I then emailed Celestron and got a couple of emails, the first said:

'Dear Mr. C*****t,

Thank you for your message. I have submitted your inquiry regarding 'if the AstroMaster 130 uses a parabolic or spherical primary mirror' to our Product Development Manager. As soon as I hear back from him, I will let you know the answer.

Sincerely,

Kevin K.

Celestron Marketing Team'.

.....and then today.....

'Dear Mr. C*****t,

According to our Product Manager, the AstroMaster 130EQ does indeed use a parabolic (not spherical) primary mirror in its optical tube. I personally could not find where it stated (on Celestron's website for the AstroMaster 130EQ) that the mirror is spherical. If you could direct me to the page which states the primary mirror is spherical, I will inform the Marketing Manager to make any neccessary changes.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you for your feedback and hope you will enjoy using the telescope.

Sincerely,

Kevin K.

Celestron Marketing Team'.

So as you can see the Celestron 130EQ does in fact have a parabolic primary mirror which means for the price is an extremely good value telescope.

I hope this helps in any buying decisions for anyone considering this scope. It may not make a huge difference but the more info you have the better.

Now I'm off to show them page with the error lol.

Thanks for reading,

Chris.