The first telescope that I looked through.

[Guest]

This telescope was a Tasco model 4VTE. This was a 40 mm achromat with a built in zoom lens able to adjust from 25x to 30x,35x,40x,45x and 50x.

The tube is 52 cm long.

It belonged to my school friend Peter (he has just bought a nice Williams Optics Zenithstar 66mm). It had a table tripod. It must have been a decent telescope as it showed the phases of Venus, Saturn and it's rings and Jupiter and moons. We were mesmerised. This particular one I bought on ebay for £11 about 15 years ago and it works fine. I would love to get some tube rings for it and fit a dovetail bar to properly mount it. Any advice of where I could get small diameter rings from. The tube diameter is 45 mm. It has a nice rack & pinion focussed.

So there you have it. I first used it late 1973. But hankered after a telescope since being a child in the 1960's. I remember Scientific and Technical telescope shop adverts in the daily news papers "Bring the Moon and stars into your back garden" was the slogan. I ask you. We did go on to buy a 75mm f16 refractor from Scientific and Technical in 1981. I used that telescope until the late 1990's. It was sold to fund a 9" f6 Newtonian.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Guest
Spelling mistake.

[John]

Those old Japanese refractors had good objective lenses in them. My 1st scope was a Tasco 60mm F/13.3 of a similar vintage to yours and it produces good views for it's aperture. The thing that let them down was a wobbly mount and simple eyepieces but then again you don't really need complex eyepieces at F/13.

I see yours has the Circle-K logo on the label so made by Kowa perhaps ?

 

 

[Guest]

I had not noticed the Circle K mark John.

Good spot. I shall always keep it. As my friend tells me that he still has his original somewhere.

[Guest]

 

Below is a link to this Tasco refractor.

It was never going to be a rich field telescope showing bright wide field views. But my goodness seeing planetary details for the first time was wow!

There are a few on ebay claiming to be from 1966.

Tasco 4VTE 'Asteroid' Review http://www.scopeviews.co.uk/Tasco4VTE.htm

[estwing]

My first scope, still have it, still use it..

 

[estwing]

...and the first object I spotted with it was Saturn...I could not believe what I was seeing, fantastic.