Celestron Telescope AC 70/900 LCM GoTo

[manoka]

HI Guys

I am new here and would like to ask for your expert advice. I am planning to buy a beginners telescope for about £120-160 and found this one on sale, but no reviews anywhere.

Celestron Telescope AC 70/900 LCM GoTo

http://www.astroshop.eu/celestron-telescope-ac-70-900-lcm-goto/p,21821#tab_bar_1_select

My other choice would be:

Celestron 31051 Astromaster 130EQ-MD Motor Drive Reflector Telescope

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celestron-31051-Astromaster-Reflector-Telescope/dp/B0013Z42AK/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1367864875&sr=1-2&keywords=skywatcher

Any suggestion which one I should choose? Or any other recommendations in that price range would be welcomed.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Gabor

[baggywrinkle]

The AZ tripod for the 70/900 looks a bit flimsy, the OTA is quite long and vibration could be a problem. The 130 on an EQ mount is sturdier but of course is not GOTO.

I have an Astromaster 90mm refractor on the same EQ mount. It works reasonably well and would suffer less vibration with the 130 OTA as it is shorter than the 90mm refactor version.

The light grabbing of the 130 will be better than the 70/900.

The view finders are the same on both scopes and the same as my Astromaster 90mm and quite honestly they are rubbish, the Celestron red dot finder on my 6SE is much better. Trying to use the finder on the 130 might be difficult as you would be bending over the OTA to look through it. On the 70/900 it would be easier to use. Pity Celestron did not put their standard RDF on these scopes.

[Schorhr]

Hello Gabor,

welcome!

I would not buy the small goto, as it can't show most of the objects the goto-control is able to point at :-)

With telescopes, Aperture (a large lens/mirror) is key, especially for faint objects such as galaxies and so on.

I have a 130mm aperture, 650 focal length Heritage 130p, it's the minimum aperture you should get if you want a telescope that can show some deepsky objects other then Orion nebula, Andromeda, and other bright ones.

If you want to see structure in galaxies and nebulas you may want to consider buying a 150 (6") or 200mm (8") dobsonian telescope. But most objects just stay faint, gray structures in the sky.

Dobsons don't have a eq mount so you have to follow the objects in the sky manually, but they are grab&go, and the simple dobsonian mount (wooden rocker-box) is much more stable then a budget eq-tripod :-) Plus you will have to learn your way around the sky anyway, so goto is nice, but not the holy grail when buying a telescope, quite the contrary in some cases.

[nicks90]

i have an astromaster 130 and you will not be disappointed with it.

even under light polluted skies, I can see the planets fine wth good detail and can pick out various messier objects like the clusters M13/93/5 and bodes galaxy M81/82 with relative ease from my back garden. The finder is RUBBISH, ploppy plop plops, neck breakingly bad. Whatever you buy, get a new finder - they can be had for just a few quid and make a world of difference.

its a good scope and I am thoroughly enjoying it, plus if the bug does bite and you want to upgrade, you wont loose much money selling it on 2nd hand.

Nick

[manoka]

thank you all for the answers.

G

[rowan46]

To be fair this particular goto seems to be a stripped down version containing only 4000 objects instead of the usual 40 000 so it may have been optimised for small scopes it is very light but it is also fairly wobbly