Quote:
Originally Posted by Renato1
The worst telescope I own is one of those tiny Celestron First Scopes that came out for the 2009 Year of Astronomy. It probably did more to damage amateur/recreational astronomy than anything else that year or since. I paid $20 for it on Ebay, and that was too much. Anyone who paid $90 or so dollars for it new, I suspect would have been bitterly disappointed.
At the time, it was either US Sky & Telescope or US Astronomy magazine that did a glowing review of it stating how good it was for such a price, and the sharp images it produced. Whichever magazine it was, it must have damaged its reputation, because yes you can get a barely sharp image, but only if the object you are looking at is held exactly in the centre of the field of view. Any slight movement away from the centre makes the star or planets start to distort shockingly, to the point of being abysmal at the edge of the field. Any pair of binoculars showed better images of the moon than this "telescope".
The only thing good about that telescope is that it looks pretty neat on top of a book shelf, and it impresses my friends' kids (though I won't let them look through it and ruin the illusion).
But the absolute worst telescope I've ever seen was two years before the Celestron First Scope came out when some friends spent several hundred dollars on a telescope to look at ships in the bay, and asked me to have a look at it, as something was wrong. The telescope was a Tasco Galaxsee 114mm reflector with a tube length half the size of what one usually sees, 500mm focal length from memory. They lent it to me, the images of stars were junk, I collimated it, the images were still junk. I made up little aperture masks which should have shown me several pin point dots of the stars, but instead showed huge flares/ little comet shapes aimed at the edge of the field.
What the Galaxsee in fact was, was the big brother of the later Celestron First Scope. I was really quite astounded. At the time, I'd actually been quite impressed with cheap Tasco refractors and Tasco long tube reflectors, as they were noticeably better than the cheap telescopes that were around 15 years earlier. I just couldn't believe that a company like Tasco could put their name on such a piece of junk, and charge big dollars for it.
What's the worst telescope you've owned or have seen through?
Regards,
Renato
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Haven't looked through one and don't plan to, but the $79.95 70mm "525 power" refractor Kogan is flogging at the moment is isn't exactly going to give a lot of folks a lot of fun....
Cheers,
- Earl