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Hi all!
Sorry to resurrect an older thread, but I had the opportunity to have a go with this cheap ALDI scope the other night and would like to report my findings.
As a disclaimer, I consider myself a moderately experienced observer and user of telescopes, having made about 1500 observations of different objects since 2008 in a variety of scopes, so I found it fairly easy to find objects. A raw beginner may not have this advantage.
I used this scope here in Colac on a fairly good night, transparency was good and light pollution was moderate for here, helped by the nice dry air! I only used the 20mm ep supplied with the scope, the barlow and 4mm are horrible junk. I was able to locate and observe M42/M43 along with NGC1977, M45, M47, M46, M41, NGC3372 (eta Carina nebula), NGC2070 (Tarantula nebula), NGC104 (47 Tucanae) and IC2602 (Southern Pleiades). As mentioned I am reasonably well versed in finding these sorts of objects with a wide field afforded by this sort of scope.
Firstly, the good points!
1) Wide field made navigating relatively easy, if you know where you are going.
2) stars were fairly sharp across the field
3) bright nebulosity was clearly seen on larger objects
4) moving the scope was easy with the alt/az and tripod, easy to adjust. Unlike the dob version of this scope, you could move it without the entire scope moving
5) comfortable height, no need to rest on a table top
6) it is fixed collimation, but on mine it was reasonably close. Only checked it with a collimation cap, and there is no centre spot, but useable
Next, things that could be better!
1) the only way to find anything is line up the tube by eye with the area you want to search and the rove around looking for a landmark.
2) no finder of any kind
3) the inverted view created by a newt may be very confusing for a beginner
Now the bad stuff
1) using a solar filter as a cap is dangerous (as mentioned before)
2) eyepieces are ordinary, 20mm is useable, barlow and 4mm need to go in the bin
3) smart phone adapter is complete rubbish.
4) overall safety concerns of a cheap solar scope
Overall, I was quite impressed for a $100 scope. If they had done the exact same thing bit put a simple 1x finder, not even a red, just a couple of small rings that you could line up with a bright star instead of the solar filter, the crap eps and the phone adapter, this would be a passable little unit to give a child to whet the appetite for night time use. If I had a 10yo's eyes, I would probably enjoy it more. But as a solar scope it is a fail.
Malcolm
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