Celestron 52291 C5 Spotting Scope 50x Magnification with 25mm Eyepiece, Multi-Coated Optics, Rubber Armored

Lovely quality telescope, arrived well collimated and gives fantastic views when the weather allows.The vinyl carry case is a lovely addition, very useful.The supplied accessories are just OK, I'm not using any of them so I can't comment on them.No idea why this is a "spotting scope", they took these up on the Space Shuttle! The one bonus is you get a limited lifetime warranty because it is.Needs a dewshield in the UK because it Dews easily, probably worth investing in a heater too.Light weight means you can mount it on almost anything.

Excellent telescope which I use for astronomy. I bought the celestron alt-azi tripod and a laser pointer (see photo, and used an O ring to keep it straight) as the finder supplied isn't very good. I can set the telescope up in minutes so can grab views of the moon and planets at the drop of a hat! I tried other eyepieces but found the one supplied is good quality and the right magnification. Jupiter and its moons are sharp and the bands are visible. Very pleased!

It's often quoted that the best telescope for you is the one you'll use the most, and out of the four I currently own this has definitely seen the most mounted time. It's a great size and weight, and even after I superglued a red-dot finder base to the exterior it still fits in the supplied case and will stuff into a rucksack with plenty of room to spare. The tripod is a bit flimsy but still good for the bundled kind; the slow motion controls in particular are a nice addition in this price bracket. The view will wobble a lot at the high magnification end if you extend the pier, but if you can use it without doing so it's actually fairly sturdy.Another nice feature for the price is the ability to use any 1.25' eyepiece via the adaptor. The included zoom eyepiece is pretty decent, though the picture dims and softens significantly at 75x. It doesn't render it unuseable - the moon in particular doesn't suffer, in fact it can actually make it easier to view if it is bright - but the limitations of the scope's f/ration and apeture do kick in. Between 25 - 50x the views are crisp, bright and contrasty and with only a little colour fringeing on my copy, but your mileage may vary (the factory QC of scopes in this range is notoriously iffy, and if you get a duff one you should attempt at least one return to see if the result improve significantly with another go). Saturn and Jupiter's sweet spot for me was around 50 - 60x; expect to be able to see Saturn's rings and make out some basic cloud bands on Jupiter, as well as the Galilean moons. You will be able to see a handful of deep-sky objects with this telescope, but not in any great colour or detail; the Orion Nebula and Andromeda galaxy will be grey smudges, but again, there are limits at this size and focal ratio. It's a planetary telescope by design, and in those areas it performs admirably for what you pay.I've had mine about nine months now, and loan to friends to introduce them to astronomy. It's an easy to use, easy to store, fun tool that will give you hours of pleasing views on the moon and solar system targets, as well as colourful bright-stars, and the occasional view of something more cosmic. For daytime it's great for whipping out and getting a look at something interesting that's visiting the garden. Highly recommended.

I downgraded from an old 4.5 inch reflector telescope as it has become the proverbial coat rack - it's just heavy for spontaneous use, especially with the British weather. This scope can be easily grabbed with one hand and taken onto my balcony table for a quick bit of bird watching (I am monitoring some city falcons). The image is clear at x25 but does dim at x75 with apparent loss of clarity, and it does require refocussing upon zooming. At x75 the image is not as sharp. But the zoom feature is convenient; the mount an intuitive and simple alt/azm (left-right and up-down); the image is not reversed or upsidedown - all of this pluses over areflector scope.For star-gazing though there is a shortcoming - there is no finderscope so it can take a few moments to have it point, say, at a bright planet, even at tle lowest magnification of x25. Googling around, I found a workaround : put an empty biro into the grove on the casing and fasten with a rubber band, but it is still not adequate e.g. for binary stars. I ended up purchasing a red-dot finder and fastening with rubber bands and blue-tack and now it is perfiectly good for lunar and planetory viewing. The moon's crators are clearly visible, Saturn's rings visible, albeit its a small disk in the eyepiece, and I managed to split the smaller of the horse-and-rider binary star. The zoom eyepiece does not support standard filters so using it to look at a full moon is uncomfortable so you may want to stick your own 1.25 eyepiece in with filter.I find the tripod just about useable; I tend to push it approximately in place (where it wobbles quite a bit) then use the fine-tune alt/azm knobs.For photographing birds I purchased a Seben camera adaptor to take pictures using a compact camera. This does not work well because the scope is so light and the adaptor, being solid metal, is too heavy such that the scope tilts back (or I risk overtightening the knobs on the tripod). I then purchaed a celestron T-ring and DSLR adapter for my Nikon D50. This worked, and especially it achieved focus (which is a known problem with other telescopes), but it is very hard to get focus (due to focus seeming to have some mechanical lag plus image on the DSLR's focussing screen looks strangely mottled). It was more practical to hold a compact to the eyepiece.Overall I'm happy because of the convenience of grabbing it now and again (and several times in an evening), but finderscope would have been nice. Do expect some degree of fuzziness at higher magnifications (above x30). In hindsight I think a Celestron Uitima may have been a better choice for me (80mm or better) as it has a sighting tube and thread for a DSLR; but I do enjoy using this and this is the final proof.