Pros: Low price, not quite your average department store telescope
Cons: Low price means low quality, wobbly mount, too plasticky
The Bottom Line: Skip it. For the $60 I paid for this, you can buy a good pair of binoculars which will be much more versatile and portable than the Celestron telescope.
indyantilles's Full Review: Celestron FirstScope 60 EQ (142 x 60mm) Telescope
Telescopes are a finicky business. There's no such thing as a good, cheap scope-- either it's a good scope (or, if your scope costs as much as your car, a GREAT scope) or a cheap scope. This discrepancy is immediately apparent when one looks at the massive price gaps between $100 'cheap' scopes, $300 'good' scopes, and $1000+ for 'great' scopes.
Unfortunately, many unsuspecting novice stargazers or relatives and friends thereof are caught offguard at their local Walmart or Sears when faced with telescopes that come in fancy boxes that proclaim '600X magnification!' when in truth only professional astronomical equipment can boast such numbers. Real telescopes don't have to boast of their capabilities, as their buyers know full well what they're capable of doing, and what they're not.
With that in mind, the Celestron 60mm Firstscope is hard to generalize. On one hand it comes in a fancy box with nice pictures of galaxies and nebula that you cannot hope to see with this small scope, and comes at a department-store-like price (I bought mine for $60). On the other hand, Celestron is a reputable telescope company with lots of fine products to their merit. What gives?
The Celestron Firstscope 60 is the stereotypical first telescope for my amateur astronomers. It has a 60mm millimeter lens-- often considered the absolute minimum aperture for any telescope, but far less often the suggested minimum-- low-quality 20mm and 8mm eyepieces that no real astronomer in his right mind would use, and lots of plastic. All of this only reinforces the belief that Celestron was attempting to pawn this off on some poor parents looking for an educational toy for their child.
The mount is mainly aluminum, and has telescoping legs and an accessories tray for holding two 1.25" eyepieces (those preferred by most astronomers for decent views) and four slots for .965" eyepieces (a sure sign you've bought a department store scope, since .965" pieces have narrow fields of view and offer poor optics). There are two other holes for which I have not the faintest idea what they are used for. The tripod mount looks rather flimsy, and you'd be right; if you lack a good deal of coordination, you'll find your poor little scope toppled over onto the cold ground.
The finderscope is a 5x24 size, and it's fairly useless. The lenses are plastic, easily scratched, and the finderscope doesn't have enough power to really aid you in anything but possibly the darkest skies. Unfortunately, I live in a major city with horrendous light pollution. To make matters worse, it's nearly impossible to align the finderscope properly to make it consistent with what you're seeing in the telescope. You'll have to learn to approximate, or simply go without the use of the finder.
What about views? Obviously this is the most important aspect of any telescope.
Not surprisingly, the Moon looks great. However, this is really not an accurate judge of this scope's abilities-- even the lousiest scope can deliver decent images of the Moon. Even up to 140X (possible with the 5mm eyepiece) the telescope remains sharp, and the views are inspiring, if I do say so myself.
It's downhill from there. The planets lose most of their color; Jupiter, a majestic large Jovian world in which several distinct cloud bands should be apparent, looks white. Saturn is a nice butterscotch color, and the rings are visible (and even Cassini's division, on a good night) but still no cloud bands.
And deep sky objects are nothing more than white smudges.
The optics are decent, probably above department scope quality, but what really kills the scope is the shaky mount. It's nearly impossible to accurately point the scope without shaking it so badly that you lose track of what you're trying to view. With some patience you can make this scope work, but the point is you shouldn't have to do this; telescopes should be much easier to use than this.
It's all too bad. Celestron's reputation is irreparably marred by this product. It's a hair above the department store Bushnells and Tascos, but still far below a good Orion refractor, and well below a Televue. If you're really dying for a scope, only have a $100 to spent, don't want a nice pair of binoculars, and lack common sense, then MAYBE you should consider the Celestron Firstscope 60.
If you want a telescope, then save up a few hundred more and go look at a nice Orion, or, if you're willing to part with a cool grand, one of the excellent Televue telescopes. They won't disappoint, unlike this one.
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