Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Have had ours for 3 days and have used it several hours each night. It is about the size of a big cantaloupe, very light-weight, and very portable. There are 4 simple push-button controls, 1. Power On-Off, 2. Disc rotation On-Off, 3. Power-off timer you can set for either 30min or 1hr, and 4. Tray-Open. If the timer is not set the planetarium will by default automatically power-off after 2 hours. The Tray-Open function works whether the unit power is On or Off so you can always retrieve or load your star disc independent of the power setting. Instructions indicate to use the projector from 6.5ft-7.5ft from the projection surface. However we have used it on surfaces 8ft away and it works well. There have been some complaints that the rotation motion is jerky. Not so with our unit. During 3 nights of watching (2.0-3.0 hours each night) there was only one brief jerky movement that I saw and that my wife did not. The unit operates on either a supplied plug-in transformer or a set of 3 AA batteries that can be either alkaline or rechargeable - just do not mix them. Running on batteries does not change the brightness or rotation speed but the projector runs cooler when running on batteries. The star disc rotation drive makes no noise that I can hear. The focusing ring is intuitive and easy to use. For kids, the 2 included Milton star discs are fine. However if you want an adult viewing experience then I recommend you get the Northern Hemisphere star disc, the Aurora disc, and the Scenic disc from Miller Engineering. These much, much higher quality Miller star discs change the Milton projector into a home planetarium for adults. The Miller discs are worth the extra expense. You do need to pay attention to correctly loading the star discs. It is not a fool-proof operation so pay attention to the disc loading process. The Milton box indicates the projector is to be used by those 12+. If you have a kid who has been around telescopes and likes stargazing then I think a kid as young as 10 can correctly use and enjoy this projector without supervision. Price varies over time so watch for it to drop into the $65-$85 range. Update after 6 weeks: Still greatly enjoying this projector and have added 7 Miller Engineering star discs to our library of viewing discs. Our regular viewing is settling down to about 3 nights per week and usually just for 30 minutes at a time - sleep comes very easy these nights. The variety of star discs available for this projector is what makes this planetarium work as entertainment for both kids and adults. We bought a second planetarium for our grandsons and we are told the boys are very excited about it. Pressure is now on us to "expand" their library of star discs. Many reviews criticize the projector's brightness but it is actually brighter with better optics than the Homestar Original and Homestar Pro (gen 2), both of which are far more costly than the UM Star Theater Pro. It is definitely not in the same class of home planetarium as the Homestar Extra, but for the price, it is a nice home planetarium. I have tried to post several pics of some of the star discs available for the Star Theater Pro but while Amazon reports they have successfully uploaded the images and comments, they randomly throw away most of them - very frustrating. Its odd that they encourage customers to post pictures but then discards them.