Orion SkyScanner 100mm TableTop Reflector Telescope - Compact & Portable Beginner Astronomy Telescope Ideal for Adult and Family Stargazing

My first telescope which I chose from reviews for less than $200. Easy to set up and use from the well-packaged box. Had to watch a few easy-to-find videos on youtube about the assembly and viewing to make sure I did it right and got some tips - made it much simpler. Got the telescope to see what I could view of mars while it was closer to moon, still, was only a small disc not even worth seeing with my vision (slightly blurry with glasses on and off). Glasses were actually in the way. According to manual, I need to look into additional eyepieces that have “longer eye relief” when wearing glasses. Also, may need that for viewing other small (far away) planets such as jupiter and saturn with glasses on. Next was the view of the moon which was a late riser on 08/01/18. Waited till after midnight to see it which was 3/4ths full on a clear night. Got a great view of it and look forward to a full moon. I put my iphone 5 camera up to lens as best and as steady as I could, posted couple pics. Used 10mm eyepiece with 2x Barlow (sold separately). Moon was bright, but was able to view without a moon filter (sold separately). If it were a full moon on a clear night, may need a moon filter with that Barlow 2x. Have not looked at Jupiter and saturn yet. I am 56. Could see moon very clearly without glasses (2.0 R/2.75 L, Farsighted). First-timer seeing the moon so close in a telescope was like wow! & woughhhhh!!! & awesome & freakish! I am only 5’2 so sitting on ground with telescope in front on ground made scope too long for me to lean over to look into eyepiece without nudging it out of focus. Was easier and steadier for me to sit on ledge of cushioned lawn chair with a steady foot stool in front of me with telescope on it. Did not use EZ Finder 2 Reflex Sight. I will later get a 4mm eyepiece and a Barlow 3x in hopes for larger/closer views of Saturn, etc. Very satisfied for the price and excited about more viewing. Will enjoy this as long as it lasts. Praise God for telescopes and outer space wonders!

This a a great portable field telescope when used with a high quality Barlow lens. I put this on a Celesteon Equatorial tripod mount with a little adaption. It works flawlessly. This is great for both the amarture and professional astronomer for its portability. The culminating process of this is very easy but tricky to align precisely. Especially when you want a clear image through a high resolution Barlow lense. Surprisingly the eyepieces are actually very well chosen to go with this telescope, especially under very dark skies. It may not be of the same quality of a cassegrain, but it packs a portable punch for the low price. Now I should point out that if you want to see planets like Saturn or Jupiter through this telescope, you'll need a good quality Barlow lens. I use two barrows, one by Siruis, and the other by Edmund Scientific. Meade also makes great Barlow lenses. This telescope is well suited for wide feild views of large open star clusters like Pleades or the double cluster near Cassiopeia. It can pick up light as faint as Dumbel nebula and even The Veil. For all those beginners out there this telescope will be a lot of fun to learn to use and observe through. Happy stargazing.

I live in urban areas in Hong Kong under heavily light polluted sky and the faintest stars I can see with naked eye is only up to 1.5mag. This is my review based on 4 to 5 nights of usage after receiving the scope for 2 weeks. The package is double boxed and arrived safe. Tested the collimation and it's only slightly off center after traveling half of the Earth to reach home. This is the first Newtonian scope I own so I take some time to take it all apart to understand how every part works, adjusted the collimation, made small improvements such as painting the edge of the secondary mirror black to help improving contrast and added setting circles to both axis to help "push to" objects quickly. I prefer not to use the red dot finder even it fully works because for bright objects, putting in a 25mm eyepiece (from my previous scope) got a magnification of 16X which is already a good "finder scope" range of magnification for me. And for any dimmer objects, red dot won't help much so I better locate it using an Phone app + the setting circles. The scope and mount is very light weight compared with any other 4 inch telescope setup so I can easily bring it out to any location just packing everything in a single backpack, and carry a photo tripod on my hand. Setup / pack up only take less than 5 minutes so it's very efficient. This is my second telescope, the first one I owned is Nexstar 4SE with a similar aperture of 102mm but a much longer focal length of 1325mm, and is a Maksutov-Cassegrain. As I compared the image quality with my old scopes which is also 4 inch, I can say both of their optical performance are similar under the same magnifications. I had viewed the moon which is bright and clear, the stars as pinpoints with slight diffraction spikes for those brighter ones, and even Neptune can be spotted as a dim blue star light dot. The provided eyepiece are OK and very light weight but provide up to 40X magnification only. So later I'm planning to purchase a better quality one with 4.7mm to push up the magnification to 85X so that I can continue my review on Mars / Jupiter / Saturn. For a 4 inch scope, I can say it's performance is pretty comparable with any other more expensive 4 inch refractors / catadioptrics and I'll recommend it if you know what to be expected for a 4 inch scope.

When I was a kid, I had a Sears 3" refractor. I actually got good use out of that scope. I was able to see the rings of Saturn and the spot on Jupiter as well as its Galilean moons. Fast-forward to my early-/mid- adulthood (with a 7 y/o son), and I wanted to get a scope with a larger primary diameter. Light research on the web showed me that reflectors were the way to go. One improvement that I was looking forward to was the absence of chromatic aberration. To tell you the truth, I don't know if it's just that I haven't used my refractor in a long time, but the SkyScanner blows the 3" refractor away in clarity. Clearly the increased aperture improves the view greatly. The mount on this scope is also a joy to use compared to the Sears refractor. The Sears scope had thumb screws and support rods that could barely keep the scope aimed on your target. The SkyScanner has a grippable knob to turn the stabilizing screw --- easier to tighten and loosen. As bonus, the mount of the SkyScanner has a tripod-mount hole. I put a Dolica quick-mount plate on it. This makes it easy to mount and unmount from my Dolica tripod, which I also use for photography. The SkyScanner's rubber feet are taller than the quick-mount plate, so I can leave the plate attached when not mounted on the tripod. Dolica has very affordable tripods that are very stable and configurable into various heights and base widths. I set the scope and tripod at a height that is good for both my son and me. Get the Orion 05662 1.25-Inch 13 Percent Transmission Moon Filter (Black) for looking at the moon.

Great for beginners with limited space. This Is my first real telescope aside from a cheap refractor I had many moons ago. This telescope is great if you are looking to get into astronomy. I have played around with it for about a month now and have had a great experience so far. The main mirror is not able to be collimated and that was almost a deal breaker for me but I’m glad I went for it. I did buy a collimating eyepiece and the secondary mirror took a tiny bit of adjustment but it was pretty dead on right out of the box. It has performed well many nights now. The red dot finder holds center once adjusted despite being taken off and stored in between viewings. I did purchase a few extras and would recommend at first getting a 2x Barlow then maybe moving on to a 6mm eyepiece as well. The photos I included utilize the Barlow and the 6mm eyepiece. I have pushed it all the way to 200x magnification with a 4mm eyepiece and the Barlow and the image is not to bad but at that level is isn’t super crisp. I live in heavy light pollution but on clear nights have spotted M13, M92, M32, as well as the rings of Saturn. Overall very pleased and would recommend for the absolute beginner. If you have a few more bucks to spend there is plenty out there that are better, but this is a good jumping off point to see if you enjoy the hobby.

This Newtonian reflector telescope is very well made and very easy to use. If you have realistic expectations (it is not going to produce a stunning large image of Saturn, even at 200x magnification, which is its maximum useful magnification), they will be fulfilled by this model. You would likely need a few additional Barlow lenses (I would recommend the affordable and well made lenses by Meade, such as their 3x and 2x Barlow lenses--around 30$ per lens), but other than that, you will be able to view the night sky comfortably with this scope. It is great for observing the planets and their moons (mostly Jupiter's), the Moon, and even some deep sky objects like the Great Orion nebula. The provided eyepieces offer a 20x and a 40x magnification. With a 3x Barlow lens, you can make that a 60x and a 120x magnification, which would allow you to see the planets (their image will be still reasonably small, though, but if the Barlow lens is of good quality, it will be quite clear). The only part that requires a bit of assembly is the EZ Finder II Reflex Sight. Make sure that you align it with the object that you see in your eyepiece when daylight is lower (maybe 30-40 minutes before twilight, so that you can see clearly the LED red dot). Aligning is reasonably easy (I had no prior experience doing so) and it works well. Once you attach the EZ Finder II to the scope, you are good to go. You can put the scope on a small 3- or 4-legged stool, or on a table. You can also use a tripod that has a 1/4 screw (or a quick-release plate). The scope will weigh about 7 to 7.5 pounds with the Barlow lenses, so the tripod should be able to support that weight. At this price, there is a lot that you can do with this Newtonian beginner's model, and it is very well made. This is my second telescope (until now I've been mostly using Celestron astronomical binoculars), and I am enjoying watching the starry skies with it!

Ok. I'm not an astronomer. Not even a junior astronomer. And I certainly didn't stay at a particular line of hotels whose tagline involves being smarter.... But I am blown away at the quality and clarity of this little telescope. Admittedly, trying to get it pointed at an object is sometimes a little cumbersome, especially objects high in the sky (have to get under the scope to use the red dot) or really low on the horizon (have to lean waaaay over to look through the eyepiece). But even with those minor issues, I still have to give this little scope 5 stars. The optical quality is simply amazing. Someone had mentioned being able to see Saturn (and clear enough to see the rings) using this scope. I will be honest, I doubted that such a small scope would be able to pick out such a distant object. Well, tonight while trying to see if the moon was visible in my backyard (sadly, it wasn't) I happened to see a surprisingly bright object - broke out the ol' Google Sky Map and sure enough, it was Saturn. And I saw the opportunity to test the other person's review. I really wish that I had a photo adapter for this thing now. Because lo and behold, there was Saturn. Admittedly, it was small in the eyepiece. But as I tweaked the focus knob ever so slightly, there were Saturn's rings, clear as a bell. It didn't matter that it was only a couple millimeters wide in the eyepiece. I could still see Saturn, and its rings, distinctly. And that's *with* all the light pollution of living in a suburb of a fairly large city. And that. Was. Awesome! My wife (who is not an astronomy buff in the least) then came out (ok, I practically dragged her out) and after a second of looking, saw the rings herself, and was just as excited as I was. Even my three year old (whom I actually bought this scope for) was able to see it, and while she didn't entirely understand what we were so excited about, also thought it was pretty neat. HIGHLY recommend this scope for the entry level astronomer. Because you *will* see some neat objects with it. Imperfections aside, this is a fantastic bang for the buck.

I haven't actually used this telescope very much yet, although I did get a wonderful view of the full moon in June. We've had a lot of cloud cover at night, so I'm waiting for a really clear night. However, last night, despite the clouds, I went out to play with this Orion and decided that I prefer not to wear my glasses when I look through (I'm very nearsighted and wear bifocals, and the glasses tend to fall off when I bend down). I was able to kind of focus on some stars but they seemed a bit splotchy. So I did some research and discovered that, while you can remove your glasses and focus on the sky with the telescope, if you have an astigmatism in your preferred eye, which I do, you either need to keep the glasses on or buy an astigmatism correction lens (available on Amazon for $95) to screw into the telescope. You can see large objects like the moon well enough, even with an astigmatism, but stars and far planets are problematic.. I don't know what I'm going to do about the astigmatism problem. I've already bought a Barlow and a moon filter, so I'm invested. Be aware that if you get into astronomy, even if the telescope doesn't cost much, you're going to end up buying a lot of basic peripheral equipment, and if you don't want to make it a major investment, don't even start. Use binoculars or your own eyes instead. I was also using my binoculars last night, and they were more comfortable and worked rather well.

Telescope très compact léger et rapide pour de l'observation ! Très agréable avec un oculaire de 10mm pour du planète terre tel que Saturne ou le balais des 4 lunes de Jupiter et impressionnant avec la lune !! J'ai commencé en décembre seulement sans grande connaissance. Rapport qualité prix impeccable. Emballage au top.

Dieses Teleskop muss man nicht noch zusammen bauen. Lediglich den EZ-II Finder montieren, justieren und dann kann es los gehen mit der nächtlichen Himmelsbeobachtung. Auch die beiliegenden Okulare sind von guter Qualität. Klares Bild. Keine Verzerrungen. Der SkyScanner ist ausserdem standfest. Kein Zittern oder wackeln. Platzsparend und auch leicht zu transportieren und zu bedie en. Übrigens: Die Bedienungsanleitung in Deutsch gibt es im Internet zum downloaden. Für mich als Astronomieeinsteigerin ist der Kauf des SkyScanner 100 die richtige Entscheidung gewesen. Auch der Kundenservice bzgl. einer Anfrage war super. Thank you again Taylor M. Hier stimmt das Preis-und Leistungsverhältnis. Kann ich nur empfehlen. Clear Skies

Excellent if you're starting out. Would recommend purchasing a 2 x Barlow and 5 x Barlow for the 1.25" 10ml eyepiece provided (Plossl lens). EZ finder was simple setup - Find the top of something tall nearby to calibrate the aim, works as intended. Great value, compact size and easy operation. Very good value for money.

Estoy muy contento con la compra me mi telescopio, si quieres empezar con el hobby de la astronomía y no tienes idea de por donde empezar este telescopio es ideal, es facil de usar de buena calidad, facil de transportar y mover y es ideal si tu vives en la ciudad por su precio y porque te da vistas agradables de la luna y de objetos iconicos como Sirio, Orion, las Pleiades y sobre todo la Luna. Puedes cambiar los "eyesight" a unos de mejor calidad si quieres, por eso es una excelente compra ya que te la puedes pasar bien con lo que tienes o puedes ir haciendole mejoras como un zoom o mejores eyesights y ya cuando estes listo para hacer la inversión puedes hacer el upgrade, pero este es genial para empezar.

El precio es genial, es manejable y los oculares que incluye son de buena calidad, aunque son básicos y hay que hacerse con más. No es para nada un juguete. Se pueden ver detalles increíbles de la luna, la nebulosa de orión, y otros objetos del cielo profundo. Si no tienes mucho espacio, este telescopio es perfecto para iniciarse.