Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm writing this detailed review as an adult beginner who is getting back into astronomy from the comfort of my light polluted suburban backyard. I assume that many of those that are looking at this telescope are also beginners and are looking for an affordable, but serious entry into astronomy/first telescope. Once setup, this telescope potentially fits the bill and will very likely pique your interest in astronomy, prompting you to fully immerse yourself into this hobby (and spending additional dollars). I've owned this telescope for all of one month and in this short time, I have accumulated nearly $500 worth of quality eyepieces and will be picking up a huge telescope with a 10" mirror to get the most out of those pricey lenses. I'll still use this scope, but I'll be making a new mount for it. What this should tell you is that if you're the type that gets obsessive and invested in your hobbies, you really might be better off starting with a better and bigger telescope. The Astromaster 130EQ is a decent telescope with decent optics, but it carries a number of severe limitations; I will go into the details of each. OVERVIEW: This is a Newtonian reflector type telescope with a primary mirror size of 130mm, or about 5". The primary mirror is an important part of the telescope that determines how much light from the cosmos it can gather and direct to your eye through the eyepiece. The 5" mirror in this telescope is considered smaller by telescope standards and it will limit how faint of an object in space that you can see. It will also limit how detailed of a view to expect. This telescope uses an equatorial mount which is daunting for beginners to use, as it pivots and rotates off axis in order to track stars' rotation, as opposed to simply rotating left and right and up and down from a central axis. It's good for an amateur astronomer to understand how to setup and use an equatorial mount, but there are some glaring deficiencies with the mount that come with this package. The equatorial mount will cause many beginners to ditch it or give up the hobby due to how frustrating it is. VIEW EXPECTATIONS: With the included eyepieces only, views of the moon will be great. You will see many more stars than you could see with your naked eye. You will see Jupiter as a pale larger dot with 4 bright points of light, which are its moons. With Saturn, you will see a larger dot and the oblong shape of its rings...but you will not be able to see the split in the middle (Cassini division). Mars will just look like a solid red pinpoint. Nebulas will look like faint wisps. Better quality eyepieces will NEED to be bought to see any details of planets, galaxies, and star clusters and achieve higher magnifications. If you buy a good barlow and good eyepieces, you will be able to see so much more, such as the banding on jupiter, and tiny clusters of stars. Having good eyepieces makes this telescope so much more enjoyable to use. ACCESSORIES: The 10mm and 20mm eyepieces this telescope comes with are extremely poor quality and you must put your eye uncomfortably close to the eyepiece in order to see anything. Wear glasses? Forget it. The optical clarity of the included eyepieces is really bad and most things will look a little "fuzzy". You will need to buy better eyepieces. I strongly recommend the Celestron 8-24mm adjustable zoom eyepiece which is a great all-in-one. The fundamental way to understand how eyepieces work is to understand that the eyepiece determines your magnification. The Astromaster 130EQ has a focal length of 650mm. If you use the 10mm eyepiece, then you will achieve 65X magnification. Focal length 650mm divided by 10mm eyepiece = 65 magnification. Therefore, using the same logic, the 20mm eyepiece results in 650mm/20mm = 32.5X magnification. If you buy a higher quality zoom eyepiece like the one I mentioned, it will give you a range from 8mm (81.25X mag) through 24mm (27X mag). If you buy a "helper" eyepiece called a barlow, it can double the magnification of any eyepieces you have. Commonly, people buy 2X barlows. If you were to only get a 2X barlow and an 8-24 zoom eyepiece, you'd have magnifications of 27X-81.25X (zoom ep) and 54X-162.5X (zoom ep + 2x barlow) right at your fingertips. That's about as high magnification as you want to go with this telescope, as this telescope will max out around 180X usable magnification due to the smaller size of the primary mirror and the conditions of the atmosphere impacting how well things can be seen from the ground. This telescope also comes with a red dot finder scope that will help you aim it at objects. I found it easy to use once I tightened the screws holding it to the telescope and calibrated it. Read the instructions on how to calibrate the finder, it's not hard to set up. MOUNT: The mount is simply bad and suffers from excessive vibrations that take many seconds to stabilize before you can see an image in the eyepiece that isn't shaking. Any and all adjustments you make with this mount will result in needing many seconds waiting for your view to stop shaking excessively. The fine adjustment controls on the mount are inconsistent, where adjustments can feel excessively grainy, or like the controls aren't engaging at all... until they suddenly do. It may adjust smoothly in one direction, but not the other. One of the adjustments uses a metal on metal screw that eats into the mount, resulting in the mount cannibalizing itself and wearing out and becoming more inconsistent over time. I wind up hand rotating the tube and locking each axis since the fine adjustment controls do not work properly. This by far is the weakest part of the telescope and the one that risks losing potential amateur astronomers. I strongly recommend looking at telescopes with a simple, easy to use "dobsonian" mount instead. OVERALL: If you really want to enjoy this telescope for a long time, you will need to buy decent eyepieces at minimum. A zoom eyepiece and 2x barlow (~$90) is the minimum I'd recommend. A screw on 25% moon filter is also recommended (~$20) to improve moon viewing. This telescope is not forgiving of inexpensive, cheaply made eyepieces, so don't even think about those packages that offer a half dozen eyepieces and assorted filters for $100. Once you have decent eyepieces to use, you will need to learn how to work around the poor mount so you can reliably and steadily point the telescope at objects. If you really want to get into astronomy as a beginner on a budget, I'd recommend getting a telescope with a dobsonian mount, such as an Orion Skyquest XT6 6", or Apertura AD6 6". While the actual telescope on the Astromaster 130 is good, everything else in the package (mount, eyepieces) is bad. I don't necessarily regret purchasing this telescope, since it kicked my interest into astronomy into high gear, I only wish I was better informed before I bought it.