Celestron PowerSeeker 127 EQ

Good – First up, I have to say I'm not an expert on Telescopes... I bought one for looking at the moon, checking out the stars at times and generally having fun with the kids. The Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ I bought from Dick Smith, which was handy because you can still negotiate with the managers and after a quick chat, I took one home for under $200!.

They come boxed and the installation is easier than you might expect when you start to take everything out of boxes. The equatorial mount is easy to connect and although it feels flimsy, it's reasonably functional when assembled, leading me to beleive that the flimsy appearance looks worse than it actually is in use.

Two eyepieces come with it, and there's a Barlow lense that fits between the eyepiece and the telescope to give you more zoom, but it's not that useful and leads to nice rainbow coloured stars which while looking nice, really don't inspire you with confidence in the product.

The remaining lenses, a 250x and 50x from memory, were fine, although the 50x was much nicer to look at and have fantastic views of the moon. With the 250x I was able to find Venus and see it well, noticing it seemed larger than the stars.

I really don't know much about setting up the mount to use properly, so I just pointed it in the general direction and started twisting the knobs. To that extent, this is a fantastic telescope - just that one little feature makes it possible to quickly find what I want to look at without having to tap the tube back and forth like I have with other cheap models.

Anyway, I took it out and ran into a friend who was president of the Astronomical Society at some point and so he was keen to look at it.

Despite the cheap manufacture, he was actually very impressed with it and suggested that for the price, it was exceptional value, then suprising me even more when he said he might get one to play with.

I guess that's possibly quite an endorsement (and I know he was giving an honest opinion).

He did mention that it's not really 127mm - it seems they cheat with the eyepiece, which means you possibly can't use eyepieces from other telescopes I assume.

But I'm happy with it. When I want it, it's there and it didn't cost much. I was able to adjust the mirror and get better results and the image is fine. The moon through this is incredible, but I'm told it will do a lot better.

The problems I have with it?

The lower adjustment on the mount is poor - it just pushes a cam out which can cause the telescope to tilt over. Also the counterweight is quite insufficient for the weight of the scope.

Additionally, the spotting scope is loose and can't be tightened enough, so keeps going out of centre while I'me using it. That's such a pain that I'll araldyte it.

But I'm happy - it's everything I wanted at a price that I could afford. Several friends have bought this model since on recommendation, and all have been happy.

As I said, I don't know much about stargazing, but this seems a good compromise between a quality (expensive) model and the cheap garbage sitting around at the bottom of the sub$200 range.

For it's price, I'd almost give it five stars, but with the shoddy assembly, I really can't justify it. The price. For what you get, it's great value and gives good results. Comes with an equatorial mount which you adjust with knobs. Needs work out of the box to give good results and has chromatic abberation at higher zoom levels. Tripod seems flimsy and parts are loose fitting at times. Not so well made.