Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveO
True, but I wasn't exactly planning to replace my SkyWatcher just yet!! 
Was thinking more of one for my son and possibly to give the school. The shipping costs are a bit high though, so thought I'd see what others thought of them. |
I was actually about to print a retraction of sorts. I went outside had a quick look at jupiter through mine. Through the basic lens, it is actually quite ok. I would say not really much worse than my skywatcher 8 at a fairly low magnification. You can pick out all the moons and so forth. I probably got unlucky in that my barlow lens were a bit chipped and quite frankly, turns a good jupiter view into muck. Hence the disappointment and the swift stroke to order a dob. Honestly, when it comes to a planetary view, I'm hard to please so if you're son is a bit more forgiving I'm sure it'll blow him away. The moon looked sufficiently interesting, for instance.
The scope ended up costing over $50 inc shipping (could be more now) and then a further $50 to mount it. When you start getting to that price, I would imagine andrews has something that could well equal / surpass that but I have to admit, for $15 US, it is a lot of scope.
At the $100 price point, I think andrews low cost range might begin to be more enticing, though.