CelestronAstroMaster 70AZ Refractor with Accessory Kit

The media could not be loaded.  The Celestron Astromaster 70AZ is a lovely starter scope for anyone. After re-searching for ages and not really having an idea what is good for a beginner & what’s not I went with this.Easy to set up. Everything is very well made and it comes with two lens pieces that are 20mm & 10mm which for a beginner is more than enough.You can see the moon superbly & the craters. Aswell as other cool clusters & nebulas such as the Pleides & the Orion Nebula.Had great fun with it so far and very happy with the price.I’ve attached a photo & video of the moon. Photo with the 20mm & video with the 10mm. Both using a moon filter.

I have always been interested in space and astronomy but it had never occurred to me to purchase a telescope until recently. I always thought they were for professionals until now but after some time spent researching, I decided to buy one. Though I'm just an amateur and still learning about astronomy, I found the Celestron telescope really easy to set up and use. The instructions are easy to follow and it only took me around 15 minutes to assemble. In the box you get two lenses, a scope cover, tripod and accessory tray. There is also a red dot sight mounted next to the eyepiece which you can use when aiming the telescope. A battery is included for this. The legs have some dove tail screws on them which can be used to adjust the height as needed. I have used the telescope several times since purchase and I am amazed by the quality of what you can see on a clear night. With the help of the internet and some astronomy books, I have been already been able to a far away star, the planet Mars and of course the moon. I quickly realised though, that to gain maximum benefit from this telescope you will need as a minimum a moon filter (the moon is too bright without one) and a barlow lens (which increases magnification). Once I had purchased these additional accessories, I got a lot more out of the telescope. A minor point of criticism for the Celestron is that the handle used to move the telescope left/right/up/down is a little short making precise movements difficult. And when you do see your target in the scope, making small adjustments can be annoying as the scope tends to "bounce back" slightly. Larger movements aren't an issue. That said, for my purposes I am really happy with this product. For the price, I didn't expect a high-end professional telescope but what I got is very good indeed and has provided me with hours of fascination. If you're a beginner interested in the night sky, I would definitely recommend this telescope.

Having specifically bought this telescope for both astronomy and terrestrial viewing, I was really disappointed that Amazon's own description clearly states that it can be used for both. Those of you that know their telescopes (and I do now thanks to this experience!) will know that Newton refractors invert images - so any land images will be upside down. The point here is that I trusted Amazon's own product description and I now find that I have missed the return window. Also, it's worth saying that I would recommend that if looking to buy one of these, have a look at one in person first. The overall product quality is poor, the tripod flimsy and it feels cheap. The laser sight didn't work (as others have said) and the attachment fiddly. I've since bought another telescope which is more expensive but the quality is at another level. You get what you pay for I guess. My advice would be shop around!

The Celestron Astromaster 70AZ.Nice telescope 70mm lens, 2 x eyepieces a 10mm and a 20mm a star finder light and the 90° fitting to use for the eyepieces. The tripod isn't bad either... it has a tray for your eyepieces and bits.We bought ours to view the rings of Saturn and you can see them quite clearly but the image was small, as you might expect from a budget priced telescope. We could also see Jupiter although a bit blurry although it's many moons were quite clear next to it.Overall the 70AZ is not a bad telescope for a beginner like us but we had some misgivings with the telescope itself.On our telescope, (they may not all be like this) but the rotating wheels axel unit attached to the base to adjust the focus was skewiff while mounted on the tripod which made it look odd, there was no way of straightening this, it was like as if the person who assembled it didn't make sure it was straight before they glued and rivited the end mechanism onto the tube. There was also some very sticky lubrication grease which we got on our hands from the inner chrome focusing tube (we think) and had to use methylated spirit to get it off our hands in the early hours of the morning after viewing Jupiter and Saturn for the first time. The metal ring on the end of the telescope was loose and wouldn't stay put while removing the dust cover, there wasn't even any way of securing it, so there were a few issues we had with it sorry.If you don't have the floor space to keep this sort of telescope on it's tripod, this may not be the type tou want taking up room.Unfortunately we sent the whole thing back, we may get an equivalent at a later date because we did enjoy using this briefly but as soon as we decided to return it we packed it all back up in it's box ready to go back.Remember that no two 70AZ identical telescopes will be the same but this was our experience, don't let us put you off.We hope our information helps, thankyou for reading.