It's a Trashco!!!

[part timer]

The Tasco 114mm aperture 900mm focal length ‘Galaxsee’ Newtonian reflector

This is a review of my first telescope; it was purchased some years ago from a camera shop. At that time I had spent many years as an avid ‘armchair’ astronomer and had observed with a pair of cheap soviet 8x30 binoculars for about 16 years. I was fully aware of the poor reputation of Tasco telescopes but at that time there were not so many telescope dealers (the internet existed but was at this time very low key and certainly there were no online retailers). I was also aware that Patrick Moore had many times repeated his view, that a six inch reflector was the minimum that should be considered. However, I had enough money for this telescope and it was immediately available. I had no idea where else to look for a telescope and I didn’t want to wait indefinitely.

Upon taking the telescope home and unpacking it I was very impressed. It was larger than I expected and quite heavy. The general build quality seemed reasonable for the most part (exceptions to follow) and it was accompanied by the best and most thorough set of instructions I have ever received with any telescope. Assembly took about an hour but could have been less; I just enjoyed the process greatly after all those years of waiting for a telescope!

Now I shall briefly review the year or so in which I used this telescope.

Initially polar alignment of the mount was confusing and I am sure I was not aligning on Polaris for several months! The mount was solid and of reasonable quality. There seemed to be a lot of knobs, which became quite confusing and fiddly for a beginner. The telescope seemed to vibrate a lot when focussing but was not so bad when actually observing.

The tube was painted internally an effective matt black colour and the focuser was very sooth (although it was made of plastic). There was a single vane secondary holder which held the secondary very well. The tube as a whole seemed of good quality.

It was obvious to me (a total beginner) that the accessories accompanying the scope were poor.

They comprised:-

A 20mm Huygenian eyepiece

A 4mm Ramsden eyepiece

A 2x barlow lens

A 5x20 finderscope

Now the finder was plastic, with plastic lenses and was stopped down to less than 10mm. It could see the brightest stars and the moon and planets but that was all.

The barlow lens was also plastic and was awful. I mean really, really bad.

The view through the two eyepieces was quite good and I got some good views of the moon.

Unfortunately, after many months the moon and some stars was all had seen! I tried and tried but could not find Andromeda and so on. Just about the time I was getting bored I saw a bright star over in the east and as I knew Saturn was around I had a look. It was indeed the ringed planet and I was hooked! Later I did manage to find several deep sky objects including M57, M31 and some open clusters. I also got nice views of Jupiter.

I decided that a larger telescope was what I needed and eventually got one. The Tasco went back in its box and was eventually given away to a friend who never used it.

That friend recently moved away and didn’t want to take the scope with him and asked if I’d take it back. I said yes and promptly stuck in the loft. However I did start to think about using the mount for my PST and 90mm Maksutov. This led to the unpacking and dusting off of the old scope.

I then had a fall and killed my Maksutov, leaving me with no way of peering at low objects as my main telescope is mounted to low to see them over my high fences.

About a week ago I decided to fit the 6x30 finder from the Mak to the Tasco and use my much more modern eyepieces to see if I could use this scope as a stopgap. The results have been astounding! With the benefit of experience and a decent finder scope I have found every visible object in Turn left at Orion and a few more from my star atlases. I have been shocked at how much brighter the image is than I remember. I see detail in all objects and find the views to be not much worse than in my six inch TAL reflector. Three days ago I was able to observe Jupiter and was awestruck by the most detailed view I can remember! There was a fantastic level of detail in the belts. The focuser is still really smooth and vibration is not as bad as I remember.

The mount is very solid and can be leaned on when in use. It is difficult to polar align as tightening the lock screws invariably causes a misalignment but you get good at ‘aiming off’ after a while. The mount is let down by the number of knobs and things which are difficult to tighten in many positions and often cause the mount to drift off target. When properly tightened however the mount does what it’s supposed to very well and the slow motion cables are a nice touch. This tube is right at the limit of what this mount can carry so no photography is possible (maybe a webcam). The mount is infact an EQ2 which is a bit better than the mounts supplied with this kind of scope today by Skywatcher and so on.

So to summarise, this scope has turned out to be a cracking little scope. It is a great shame that Tasco choose to sell their stuff at such high prices with such poor accessories. Instead of starting a lifelong hobby this scope almost killed it. All it took was a decent finder and some usable eyepieces to reveal the inner beauty of this telescope. I could have save a lot of money if I’d found out sooner and would probably still use this scope now as my main scope, it really is that good!

My final advice would be to NEVER purchase a new Tasco telescope but if you have some eyepieces and a finder and are looking for a good scope for a young teenager or something portable for holidays and so on then trawl ebay as these are on there all the time and may give you a surprisingly good deal!

[mike-h]

My first telescope was a Tasco 50mm refractor. Paid £100 in 1993. It was very poor. Put me off telescoping for 15 years. Eyepieces were small and nasty. The mount may as well have been made of jelly for all its sturdiness and precision.

If you want good value useful equipment then Skywatcher does the job. I bought a 250px dob for £312 this year. In a completely different league to the Tasco (okay the SW was more expensive). How time and technology moves on.

You did well to get good use out of yours.

Mike H

[Beulah]

Phew, these cheap telescope manufacturers are doing a good job putting people off astronomy.

The trouble is, it is really hard to convince those who are looking into getting a new telescope that spending £200 + is a good minimum starting point.

Although the price of telescopes have come down in recent years, people still think they are expensive, yet can shell out hundreds for a new games console, and spend many more hundreds on games over the next few years (equivalent to telescope peripherals). To me having access in magnifying views of the occasional, clear night sky with a good quality scope is much more valuable than investing in than any game.

[crepitis]

My first scope was a terrible e-bay generic reflector "Optrons" or "Seben" I cant remember which, suffice to say I wish I had come somewhere like this forum first before I parted with my cash, Its heartening to see so many people coming here first to ask for opinions on which beginner scope to buy, but for every one who comes here for advice, another few must just buy "Blind" and be put off the hobby for ever.

[The Warthog]

My second scope was a Tasco Luminova 4.5" reflector. I used it with Kellner and Plossl eps, and it was a much better scope than my Meade 4.5" scope.

[alfingido]

Another Tasco beginner here. It was a 40mm refractor with a slide focusing eyepiece. That must have been about 1968 or so. I had it for my Birthday, about a week later, my little Brother took it apart. It was never the same afterwards, there were a lot of pieces in that eyepiece / slide tube!

But, in the week or so that it worked I had some ( to me then) great views of the moon and started a lifelong interest in skywatching.

So, they are not all bad...

Allan

[Astro_Baby]

Tasco at one time were great scopes as well whick makes it a bigger shame to see the mess they got into.

While cheap scopes are often seen as a put off to the hobby its probably fair to say that for younger children cheap scopes often encourage them into the hobby in later life.

[bish]

I had a 60mm Tasco when I was a kid (early 80's). From what I remember it was x25, x50 and x75 and was quite heavy on it's wooden mount. There was no finderscope. I loved looking at the Moon with it but never found much else (I had one book on astronomy and it didn't really help in finding things). It was a love hate for me. I loved just having a telescope and looking at the Moon but never got very far and then it broke anyway!

[Darren B]

My first telescope was a Tasco 60mm refactor which cost £99 from Argos, it was all I could afford in 1997. Telescopes cost more in them days e.g. a konus ST80 cost £299 for just the OTA and the Celestron version was more. The finder scope wasn't that great, the mount was shaky and the eyepiece selection was poor (12.5mm =x58 & 4mm = 175). It gave good views of the moon and the views of Jupiter and Saturn were alright. I manage to get hold of a 20mm (x35) and 6mm (x117) eyepieces. The view of the planets were sharper in the 6mm eyepiece. The only DSO I saw was the Andromeda galaxy due to the lousy finder. I had no regrets buying it as it's a start on my journey on astronomy.

[part timer]

Yes, my Tasco is, at the end of the day an early Synta telescope and is entirely of the same standard as the Celestron and Helios scopes of the time.

There were generally two problems with such scopes. The first was very poor quality control. This affected all brands in those days and seems to have been most prevalent in refractors.

(as a side issue these refractors can usually be made usable by rotating the two lens elements with regard to each other and constantly checking image quality. This is frustrating and time consuming (and will never make your Tasco a Tak!) but they were generally thrown together in the factory and never checked)

The Newtownians that Tasco sold were often quite good and came on mounts which are beefier (a bit) than todays similar telescopes. Unfortunatly they usually cost twice the fair price and came with finderscopes, eyepieces and barlows which were increadibly poor quality and entirely unsuited to the the telescope (667x on 114mm newt!!!!!)

If these were changed the scope is nice and usable and certainly no worse than a modern skywatcher equivalent.

[MoonNut]

My first scope was a Tasco 60mm refractor bought for £89 in 2000.

The eyepieces and finder were carp and it was soon replaced by a Celestron C150HD.

A couple of years ago I dug it out of storage, the eyepiece holder will accept 1.25" (it has a plastic adaptor for the .965 or what ever they are) and I fitted a red dot finder, a few other mods i.e. painting the inside of the focus tube matt black and I now have a nice little grab and go! I have even fitted a peice of Baader Solar Film in the lens cap so it is also useful for quick scoofs at the sun.

It is quite a good scope now and I still use it regularly, although I would not recommend such a small scope to aspiring astronomers, it certainly did not put me off!

It is used regularly, has a place in my collection and it will remain there.

In fact I am going to add it to my signature.

[Highflight]

My first scope was a Tasco. Bought it from Argos for £199. Never did see anything worthwhile through it. Gave it to Oxfam in the end. At least it came to some good use eventually. lol.

[DaveS]

Just tried resurecting my old Tasco 60 mm vintage '70s from Dixons. It's on a simple Eq mount that dad made (He was a toolmaker).

To anyone else in London, sorry...it seems resurecting an old scope is nearly as effective as buying a new one for cloud formation .

Anyway, the OG is quite a nice Fraunhoffer design and the finder is a half-way decent 5x20.

The only decent EP that will fit its 24.5mm focuser is a 9mm Ortho which I've just cleaned.

As I recal it cost about £25, which in '70 was equivilent to about £250 today. Really wanted the 70mm next to it, but that cost £100+ (I think).

Will give it another go whist waiting for enough cash for a Megrez 90 / HEQ5 combo.

Dave

[Beardy Bob]

For about the same price as these old tascos you can buy a nice ST-80 these days. Skywatcher have really put the cat amongst the pigeons at all levels of telescoping. Sure, you still (rightly) pay big money for top-end, precision or custom-made stuff, but it seems to have made other telescope 'mass-producers' (e.g. celestron) buck their ideas up and drive prices down a bit if nothing else!

That sounds like I work for skywatcher - I don't!

[Beardy Bob]

PS I have no idea what my first scope was, but it put me off for about 20 years!

In fact, now I think of it, it might have been a Tasco actually!

[dweebostar]

i agree with bob above. skywatcher do great starter scopes, like the st acros, and the 150p reflector on an eq32 was nice too.(my first scope) and the equinox refactors are quality scopes at a good price. dweebo

[Jase_v2]

My wife has bought me a Luminova 114mm - and from what Ive read on here and ont net, the standard lenses , finder scope and barlow are pretty poor. Any advice? Cheers in advance Jase

[part timer]

Jase,

sorry I just tried to post a long winded reply but the page timed out and I lost it!

[part timer]

In short,

you will need a finder the one you have is bad (very)

A finder scope shoue from Skywatcher will fit on the screws for your finder.

Then you can buy either a 6x30 finder or a red dot one (most will fit the SW shoe)

DO NOT get the standard Skywatcher red dot thing (it's as rubbish as the finder you've got!!)

Plossl eyepieces of 25mm and 9mm and a 2x barlow will do fine

to start with

[part timer]

Just to add,

The GSO plossls are quite cheap and quite good.

The only problem may be, if you wear glasses then the 9mm Plossl will not be much use for you as you will need to pt your eye too close to the lens.

In tis case there are some other eyepieces that may suit better such as the BST explorers.

[Jase_v2]

Hiya Partimer - many thanks for the advice - will start by upgrading as you've suggested and making the best of what Ive got for now. My wife had great intentions and Id hate to upset her by putting it on ebay! We get some great dark sky's were I live and just want to make the most of them. Cheers again

Jase

[gooseholla]

My first scope was an 8 inch Celestron Newtonian. I decided to start off properly lol

[Anweniel]

We get some great dark sky's were I live and just want to make the most of them

I would say the dark sky puts you at a great advantage, at 114mm it may be a little shy of aperture for a reflector type telescope but I wouldnt be overly put off by this. As stated in the original post from this thread, with a little experience and upgrading such a scope can be put to good use and I hope you take part timer

advice and make the most of it.

Expectation can be the biggest killer I think, with nice glossy hubble pics all over the net, shiny planet pictures on telescope boxes and the fantastic array of images compiled by amateur astronomers such as on this forum, can all lead to disappointment if you dont have realistic ideas of what you should see through the scope. I own a 130mm skywatcher reflector and find the views pretty amazing especially in my heavily light polluted skies, but as a realist didnt expect to be galaxy hunting with it.

Have a play with the Tasco, get the upgrades if you can and keep the Mrs happy too and I think you should be onto a winner

[Rustmonkey]

I have a Tasco 70mm sat in my car as I write.

I have had it years and it has spent most of its time up the loft. When I became part of the Brian Cox phenomena early this year I upgraded to my SW150pl.

I work shifts which include nights and I am lucky that with my job I get to patrol dark sites. The SW is a big beast for a grab and go so I dragged the Tasco out of the loft and gave it a good clean up.

The mount is pretty poor but it works. The scope is less than ideal but I managed to adapt it to fit my SW EP's and Barlow which makes a big difference. It isn't great but as a quick grab and go, it's fine. I spent an hour last night checking out Jupiter, Venus, M45 and M42. Yes they are cheap and nasty but given a little TLC and a few minor Mods can give reasonable viewing. Only issue I have is that the finder scope is missing so finding stuff is......INTERESTING.