Review on 🔭 Celestron C90 Mak Spotting Scope (Black) for Advanced Optical Exploration by Brian Foster

For what this scope does, it weighs next to nothing. Celestron markets it as a spotting scope with a limited lifetime warranty. I would avoid used ones as Celestron said this is for the first owner only. At $150, the $20 you save on a used device might not be worth it, especially if you need assistance on the go. At the time of ordering, this scope no longer comes with a tripod. The tripod kit and scope are still available at a slightly higher price, and the tripod can also be purchased separately from Celestron. Most reviews said the included tripod was barely adequate and seemed inclined to swap it out for a more durable tripod. As accessories you get a nylon carrying case, a 32mm Plossl eyepiece (not bad for the included eyepiece and a 39x magnification), a 45° mounting diagonal and finally an 8X21 finderscope. The finder sight is easily interchangeable as it uses a semi-standard dovetail rail and can be replaced with Celestron or Orion products such as the 50mm rail sight as well as other products. With a long focal length of 1250mm, you NEED a sturdy, heavy tripod for any type of viewing. A tripod, even with its legs not extended, can still wobble enough that focusing and using this telescope becomes a serious task. This telescope makes focusing more of a challenge because it also has a shallow depth of field. This means that if you aim at a tree a few kilometers away, you might see the center of the tree sharply, while the farther and nearer parts might be blurry. I installed it on my computer controlled German Celestron CG-5 91518 equatorial mount and it worked great in the night sky and was really nice to have a fairly solid mount to focus and work with. It looks like the inside can't be confused like some other scopes. When you approach a bright object like Spica, Saturn, etc. you will see an elongated circle indicating the object. However, this makes it easier to find the object you are looking for. Adding a dew guard will likely help with that if it bothers you. AstroZap Flexible Dew Shield for Meade ETX 90 and Celestron C-90 AZ103 Telescopes As previously mentioned, the C90 currently comes with one eyepiece, a 32mm eyepiece that gives approximately 39x magnification. You can see the rings of Saturn with this eyepiece when properly aligned and focused. I used an Explore Scientific 6.7mm eyepiece, which gave about 187x, which can be considered the "upper limit" of magnification for this scope. Although the night was windy and foggy, this telescope worked better than I expected and was able to see Saturn's rings easily! Mounted securely on the CG5 (the C90 has a dovetail with two standard 1/4X20 holes for use on photo tripods and three holes drilled for use on standard astro mounts) it was a dream to focus. I actually found it easier than my Explore Scientific 102mm f/7 Air-Spaced Triplet ED Refractive Apochromatic Telescope and didn't even bother using my Farpoint FP401 Bahtinov focusing mask for dew-shield or 3.5 diameter telescopes. Front end up to 6.5 inches to use. when focusing on the stars. It was just as easy to focus with an eyepiece or with a Canon 7d DSLR. The C90 comes threaded to fit a standard T-ring, so you don't need to order a T-adapter to use this sight in focus. When ordering a ring, be careful not to order an M42 ring as the thread size is the same but one of them has finer threads. They will connect but only last for a thread or two, and if you force this you will cross threads and mess up one or both of your devices. Note that when the 7D is attached directly to this primary focus photography scope, the moon fills almost the entire field of view of the 7D and other cameras with a similarly sized sensor. /az mount for birdwatching and ground observation. All in all I am pleasantly surprised with this scope as it exceeded my expectations!