The Worst Telescope You Owned/Looked Through.

[allan gould]

The worst that I have ever looked through was a Meade 16"SCT.
Lacked definition and wouldnt come to a proper focus and the image shift was almost across the whole field of view in the eyepiece.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman

Undeniably by far the worst telescope I have ever used and owned was a Bausch and Lomb (= Criterion) 4000.

This little four inch Schmidt-Cassegrain was essentially unable to show anything on the planets but the two major belts of Jupiter. I doubt if it could even split Cassini's division on Saturn.

Paradoxically, on account of its small size and very light weight, it was still a very very useful scope for carting around on holidays, as I am not much of a planetary observer, and the deep sky views were significantly better than they had been through a 3 inch unitron refractor that I owned.
I used it with a small and lightweight altaz mount, and took it overseas, giving me my first views of far northern deep sky objects (from the Mohave Desert.)

Light transmission seemed to be good on my model, and the fuzzy planetary views did not bother madbadgalaxyman, who tends to ignore planets.

All of which is to say that even optically poor 4-5 inch SCs do have their uses, as they are small and light to move around.

In "The Backyard Astronomer's Guide" Dickenson &Dyer assert that a really good 8" SCT will give as good a planetary image as a 5" refractor, which suggests that it is unrealistic to expect too much from a 4" SCT as far as planets go.

Can it really have been your worst scope? You seem pretty fond of it! To me, DSOs are the bread and butter of telescopes, while planets are the nice to haves.

Great fun scanning around the far northern sky with a small telescope, is it not? I do it in Italy every couple of years.
Cheers,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by allan gould

The worst that I have ever looked through was a Meade 16"SCT.
Lacked definition and wouldnt come to a proper focus and the image shift was almost across the whole field of view in the eyepiece.

That's a lot of money to spend on a dud telescope. Did the owner give any indication that it settles down after some time, or that it required collimation?
Regards,
Renato

[Stardrifter_WA]

Hi all,

I have been fortunate in that I have never owned a poor telescope, having worked in an specialist optical business, I knew better.

However, the worst telescope I have ever looked through, which will come as no surprise really, is a "Focal" brand. I think, from memory, it was a K Mart brand around the early eighties. A Coke bottle would have given better focus on the Moon.

It was bought for a child (sound familiar?) and because they couldn't even see the Moon with it (it was just a big blurry blob), they brought into our store. They returned it and ended up buying a decent 60mm from me.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a singular event, it happened a lot. I now work in education, and realise that I was also an educator way back then too.

However, on the other end of the scale, the best telescope I had the privilege to use frequently was a 24" Boller and Chivens Cassegrain. Now that was a nice instrument to look through. Although I used it for photometry, I did, occasionally, looked through it visually. The object that really sticks in my mind is looking into the heart of Omega Centauri.

I have had the privilege of seeing some very fine surveillance optics too, including high end (military) night vision equipment. Some of this stuff few people get to see, and some of it was just mind blowing. They can be watching you and you would never know it?

So, I was lucky, I learned about telescope optics well before I could ever afford to buy them. If I had deep pockets, I would have the best available, but it is all a compromise, on the affordability scale. I know that if I had a spare million, I would have one very fine instrument. Now where did I put my Lotto form? Alas, that will never happen. I know that if I bought every ticket in a "chook raffle", bar one, I still wouldn't win it.

Cheers Pete

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by brian nordstrom

mine was a horrible Celestron 'First Scope' ( ha ha , what a joke ! ) 50 refractor .
I picked this up at Cashies for $30? just for a try and all I can say about this scope is ,,,,, I am glad I grabbed it off the market before a starry eyed new first timer got hold of this rubbish , never a truer word spoken about this trash ,,, HOBBY KILLER !!! .

I dumped this thing , could not even see myself giving it away ,,
( more plastic than Michael Jacksons face )
An emberrasment .

Brian.

My first telescope was also a 50 mm "department store" refractor, but in my case, it was "good enough" to show me things I couldn't see with the naked eye, and to convince me that I wanted to see more!

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Lucky you as you must have got the only good one , I would have loved it at 14 years old when I started this hobby but as StardrifterWA says " , we become some sort of expert's over the years ". and as you say it started you off on our sweet hobby and that's not a bad thing .

On the 'Plactic' comment , I stripped the objective and all 3 eyepieces and there was not one ! piece of glass in any ,, all PLASTIC !!! shame on you Celestron ... and the only metal in the whole thing was the OTA ( Alloy) and the focuser shaft and the nuts and bolts ( steel ? ) ,, it was a joke alright .

Brian.

Originally Posted by julianh72

My first telescope was also a 50 mm "department store" refractor, but in my case, it was "good enough" to show me things I couldn't see with the naked eye, and to convince me that I wanted to see more!

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

My greatest lemon was a Long Pernq 90mm "APO" refractor. Smokey low contrast images, heaps of magenta and blue CA on everything I looked at. It was actually worse than my 120mm Skywatcher achro refractor. In complete disappointment, I sent it back.

The latest Meade refractors are also cheap, plastic and wobbly. I bought an SN102 OTA and while the optics are fine, the focuser is a joke. It's all plastic. Thin plastic! The rack and pinion are plastic and as such the plastic teeth wear / strip very easily. It will be upgraded to a GSO Crayford in the future. The diagonal it comes with is plastic. Thin plastic!

Looks like both Meade and Celestron have gone to the dogs lately.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Stardrifter_WA

Hi all,

However, the worst telescope I have ever looked through, which will come as no surprise really, is a "Focal" brand. I think, from memory, it was a K Mart brand around the early eighties. A Coke bottle would have given better focus on the Moon.

Cheers Pete

Hi Peter,
The K-mart Focal brand was a mixed bag. Their cheapest telescopes were just as you described. But their 76mm reflector and 114mm reflector were actually quite good - if you were fortunate enough to either buy a well collimated one, or knew how to collimate them.

I was a new member of a pistol club at the time, where people needed spotting scopes to see where they'd hit the target at long distance. The advice then was to head to K-mart and buy the Focal spotting scope at $165, as it was half the price of the next readily available one, and just as good (on targets, that is).

Also, their $75 refractor wasn't that good on stars, but okay for general viewing of boats in the bay. Friends had one, and it was way better than the much later Galaxee one I described as the worst one in my original post.
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

My greatest lemon was a Long Pernq 90mm "APO" refractor. Smokey low contrast images, heaps of magenta and blue CA on everything I looked at. It was actually worse than my 120mm Skywatcher achro refractor. In complete disappointment, I sent it back.

That is remarkable. Did they charge you APO prices for it?
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

My first telescope was also a 50 mm "department store" refractor, but in my case, it was "good enough" to show me things I couldn't see with the naked eye, and to convince me that I wanted to see more!

Some can indeed be good enough. I bought a Celestron Powerseeker 50, 50mm refractor from Dick Smiths about 5 years ago for $36. I bought it out of idle curiosity. It was hard to use, till I loosened up the mount a bit, with some sand paper.

But I was quite surprised, it gave clean images of Jupiter and Saturn, without the flare and gross chromatic aberration that I had been expecting. It was better than the long tube 90mm Meade Achromat I mentioned below.

I suspect that a beginner who knew how to find planets would have been very satisfied with that $36 expenditure. Plenty of his or her friends would have been wowed by those images.

Seeing that it was half okay, I bought one for my then young nephew to muck around with, who lives on a ten acre property surrounded by lots of other 10 and 20 acre properties. He said it was very good, especially for looking at the distant neighbour's backyard and seeing all "those naked persons".
Regards,
Renato

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

That is remarkable. Did they charge you APO prices for it?
Regards,
Renato

A semi-apo price at $800, but this thing wasn't even that in performance. Perhaps it was faulty, but I keep reading of others similar experiences with this brand.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

My greatest lemon was a Long Pernq 90mm "APO" refractor. Smokey low contrast images, heaps of magenta and blue CA on everything I looked at. It was actually worse than my 120mm Skywatcher achro refractor. In complete disappointment, I sent it back. The latest Meade refractors are also cheap, plastic and wobbly. I bought an SN102 OTA and while the optics are fine, the focuser is a joke. It's all plastic. Thin plastic! The rack and pinion are plastic and as such the plastic teeth wear / strip very easily. It will be upgraded to a GSO Crayford in the future. The diagonal it comes with is plastic. Thin plastic!

Looks like both Meade and Celestron have gone to the dogs lately.

I forgot, in my previous post, that I bought a Long Perng 90mm Apo as well. As you say, absolute rubbish-I sent mine back, too.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

...

But the absolute worst telescope I've ever seen was two years 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....
Renato

Just for you Renato. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Tasco-Tel...item338d4f3262

The dust obviously adds to the value.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Just for you Renato. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Tasco-Tel...item338d4f3262

The dust obviously adds to the value.

$700 - for that!!!

Staggering the prices some people put on Ebay.
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

A semi-apo price at $800, but this thing wasn't even that in performance. Perhaps it was faulty, but I keep reading of others similar experiences with this brand.

This is what I do not understand - you and others pay $800 for a semi-APO and get such lousy chromatic aberration performance.

Meanwhile I buy a short tube 102mm achromat refractor, the "Celestron WideView Spotting Scope" with 500mm focal length for $150 on Ebay (original price nearly double that) and find I can put the power on it up to 220X or more and get good images with only a bit of chromatic aberration - when I use the Baader achromat filter it, turns the image yellow but only improves the it very slightly.

So how come Celestron can make a cheap and good achromat, while Long Pern make an expensive and lousy Semi-APO?
Cheers,
Renato

[Rob_K]

I haven't owned many telescopes, all in my sig except my first scope which I had for many years, a 60mm refractor, Dick Smith or some other chain store brand, can't remember. Loved it. But I've looked through all sorts.

To me the telescope doesn't matter, skies are everything. The Universe is amazing at any scale through just about any scope or type of eyepiece if the skies are dark. I do draw the line at most plastic 'toy' scopes though. I once bought a $15 plastic scope from Go-Low as a joke. At first it surprised me - Jupiter & moons looked surprisingly good. Then I looked at a bright star.... and it had moons too! And the next bright star!!

My own experience is that anything with glass works well as long as it's not faulty and as long as it's not pushed. I think the worst views I've ever had are through quite respectable 10 & 12" dobs newly-purchased by people new to the hobby. Collimation aside, the tendency is to use overly high mags that create horrible fuzzy grey stars and altogether vomitous views! Waste of a light bucket if you ask me, I feel like screaming "Back off, back off"!

Cheers -

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Hi Renato,

Long Perng actually can make some decent scopes-they make more than 50% of all William Optics scopes.
The 90mm we are talking about was very well made -its just the lens that was crap!

[raymo]

My Skywatcher SW 80 was stunning value for money, as I have said in another thread. $199 from the now defunct B.T.O.W. Slight yellow one side of focus on the moon, and slight violet the other side, and virtually
no colour if the focus is spot on. The focuser is poor, but a little tension on the focuser lock screw takes care of the slop. The tripod is solid, and has slow motions, and a moveable scope mounting block.
raymo

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Larryp

Hi Renato,

Long Perng actually can make some decent scopes-they make more than 50% of all William Optics scopes.
The 90mm we are talking about was very well made -its just the lens that was crap!

Hi Laurie,
I know that Long Pern make decent telescopes, but the 90mm one that Kevin Comet Catcher is talking about sounds pretty poor.
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Rob_K

To me the telescope doesn't matter, skies are everything. The Universe is amazing at any scale through just about any scope or type of eyepiece if the skies are dark.

-

I used to share the same thought as you, that somehow or other you can make some use out of any telescope for observing something in the sky.

But that changed when I tried the Galaxee I mentioned in the first post.

Imagine my surprise when I tried looking at trees and mountains from my friends' place, and seeing a tiny part in the centre of the image in focus, going to total blur all around the edges?

True, if one was happy observing something in the sky using the very narrow area in the centre of the field of view, and to ignore the other 90% of the image, I suppose one could do something with this telescope. But the natural reaction is that one would really want to do is kick it.
Cheers,
Renato