Review : The Galileoscope from a beginner.

[jia siang]

Hi there, recently i bought a galileoscope and celestron firstscope. starting to get interested in astronomy as a beginner, i want to share with u the small experience i had and also i wanted to know whether it is true that i can see planets with such a cheap scope.i view it from my hdb flat in jurong west and i also bought a iphone app called starwalk that is something like skyscout. So using all this, i am able to identify a bright point of light that appeared around 8pm at somewhere in the west direction. pointing my iphone into the sky. i can see its venus? is it? using the galileoscope at 50 times, i can see a small bright half ball about 1/8 inch diameter. using the 6mm eyepiece from the first scope to the galileoscope which works out to be 80x magnification, ( focal lenght of scope 500mm divide by 6mm), i can see it slightly bigger, more or less 3/16inch diameter. yet is very small and cant see much and i started to get sick of it... maybe i need to take it to a less light polluted area?

[guangwei]

for me, venus is not much really nice to see, if you are lucky you can see the phases of it. at 80x you can see saturn rings and some bands on jupiter which are much more interesting.

[jia siang]

and as for firstscope, i think its worst than the galileoscope lo.. when using the 4mm eyepiece to see which i believe is venus, which is 75 times magnification, its very bright, bright that i could barely identify the round shape of venus. is this something to do with collimating my scope? can anyone gives suggestion on my observation? thanks. i will be going to tioman this weekend and i would like to bring this two scope hopefully able to see jupiter and its moon and saturn which i longed to see and hopefully, i can maybe see the full potential of this two scope?

[guangwei]

maybe you must try focusing accurately, or the ep they give are not really good? venus is too bright for me at high mag. like a diamond with splitting ends

[Airconvent]

Venus is simply too bright to be seen in a telescope. take a piece of paper, cut a smaller hole and place it over the scope objective to reduce the light.

[Chris]

Add a barlow to it... It will decrease the brightness. But I think you will need a tracking mount for that.

[kingkong]

its very bright, bright that i could barely identify the round shape of venus.

is venus suppose to be round in shape...?

[swat_pup6433]

Venus can be observed waxing and waning like our moon~ so what you were seeing might be a crescent venus, and not the optical fault of the scope.

[jia siang]

guys i went to tioman last week with the galileoscope and it was impressive. i bought a cheap tripod under 40 dollars with it. i manage to spot saturn rings and jupiters moons all using the highest mag of 125x with the 4mm ep from the firstscope, even though saturn is near the horizon at around 9pm and dim, it has no problem with the galileoscope and as for jupiter, i can see the cloud bands but needed frequent adjustment due to the rotation of the earth. As for viewing of the m45, as galileo saw it, too bad i was tired at that time and have to wait around 3 to 5 am for it to appear in the sky so after viewing jupiter, i went to sleep.. so i strongly recomend it to those who has never seen a telescope but have interest, those who dying to see saturn jupiter and no need to burn a hole in ur pocket, this is certainly NOT a toy, this is the galileoscope.

[FrostSolked]

bump.. would really like some input from the cab guys here or is it a secret??