Celestron – AstroMaster 70AZ Telescope – Refractor Telescope – Fully Coated Glass Optics – Adjustable Height Tripod – Bonus Astronomy Software Package

Astromaster 70az telescope is perfect for beginners! 10 minute set up & easily saw lunar craters & other celestial bodies. Can’t wait to see saturns rings!!

Easy to assemble in a few minutes and can be watching the planets in stars with the kids in no time! Great durability and crazy views!

Can see the rings if saturn . Moons of jupiter. Great views of the moon.

The perfect first telescope! Priced just right too!

I have had this telescope for about a month, and for the first time hobbyist i really feel like i got my money’s worth. I got this specifically to see the lead up to the saturn and jupiter conjunction in december 2020. In my backyard, with moderate light pollution, i can clearly see saturn and its rings, jupiter and four of its moons, and on really clear nights the cloud bands on jupiter. I have been able to see the orion nebula and andromeda galaxy, which are awesome to find and see but aren’t going to look like the fancy photos you have seen. You can see a hazy cloud essentially, which is really rewarding but just wanting to give an accurate expectation of what is possible with this scope. You can certainly see a lot of detail on the moon surface as well, including ridges, craters, and shadows.

Also great for terrestrial viewing. During the day, while practicing with it, i was able to make out individual people on a mountain summit 18 miles from my location.

It really is quick to just yank out and set up with no adjustment needed after you set the finder scope. If you want to do any photography, or see a ton of detail in deep space objects it isn’t the greatest because it lacks the equitorial scope for long exposure pictures and the smaller diameter limits the detail you can get for low light objects, but if those are your interests you are going to spend quite a bit more. Certainly worth the money for what it is and i am very pleased with my purchase.

I love this telescope. It’s my first scope but i’ve borrowed ones in the past and knew this one would be good to learn with because it is not overly complicated and is very easy to set-up. I had it put together in less than 10 minutes. The longest time was getting the disc battery into the back of the red light finder (battery is included) and thinking i had a problem when it was just that i had not screwed the battery cover all the way down. The scope is also light for easy transportation by anyone.

I bought this in combination with the $20 powerseeker accessory kit which was a perfect match. The telescope comes with 20mm and 10mm lenses in storage containers similar to clear film canisters. The powerseeker kit comes with 15mm & 9mm lenses, red & blue filters & a moon filter in a hard black case. The filters screw onto the end of the lense that goes into the scope – easily with no issues in diameter. If you reorganize the filters to fit all of them in one spot in the case you can put all the lenses from the scope and kit in the case. It was a great deal considering the moon filter alone costs ~$15 if you buy it by itself and now i have more lenses and easy storage.

I had the scope out for the first time last night after i set it up. I easily found jupiter, sighted it in with the red dot finder (move your head until the two red dots make a single point and put that point on the object you want to look at), and then looked at it with the 20mm, adjusting the focus knob only a little. I switched over to the 9mm and saw to my amazement jupiter’s orangish colored cloud bands as well as all 4 moons quite clearly. The moon wasn’t up so no comments on that but for a first night out this was pretty impressive.

The only negative is that although the scope swings easily from side to side if you loosen the azimuth angle stop, it does not move as easily as i’d like up and down to track stars and planets as the earth spins. This may just be a break-in issue and was not that big of a deal. I had no issues with the stand (i was actually impressed with how well it was made for a telescope this cheap) but i had it at it’s lowest point as i like to sit on the ground on a blanket and spread my stuff around me.

I got this telescope about a month and a half ago. I waited to write a review so i could have some time to use it a few times. If you’re even remotely thinking about getting a telescope and you’re a beginner, don’t hesitate and just get it! Looking at all the telescopes on amazon can be overwhelming, so take the guesswork out and get this one. It’s super simple to set up and extremely easy to use. Some of the fancier telescopes require calibration steps, yes the views they produce are superior but it’s intimidating for beginners. However this one is ready to go, just point and look. I would highly recommend aligning the laser, which is super easy and takes only minutes. It’s a nice tool, point the laser on the object you want to view and it’s in your in your eyepiece when you look through the telescope. That simple. The moon looks amazing through this. Tonight i finally found saturn and jupiter. I could see saturn’s rings very clearly and 3 of jupiter’s moons. I could even see faint color bands on saturn. I would recommend an app for your phone such as sky view or sky safari so you can identify what you’re looking at or see what time each planet or star comes into view. Sky safari will show the trajectory of objects complete with times or the trajectory. It’s a great tool to have.
I’m beyond pleased with this telescope and the price can’t be beat.

This telescope was purchased as a gift for our six year old daughter. Having owned several telescopes through my teenage years and into my early twenties i expected to have a beginner set that would allow you to see the craters of the moon and perhaps look at some star clusters not visible to the naked eye. I know product descriptions mention seeing saturn’s rings but i assumed some embellishment of the products abilities and decided to purchase the gift because the setup looked sturdier than the last telescope we purchased for our daughter, which didn’t last very long. My expectations were too low and were exceeded the first time we used the telescope.

The value in this set can’t be beat. This same exact telescope is being sold at my local best buy (i’m not sure why it’s at a tech store) for $159.99. It comes with two eyepieces (45x and 90x) and has an electronic star finder which is really helpful in finding stars at night once you align it properly. We looked at purchasing several sets locally before we decided on this telescope and the features were far and away greater than similarly priced models we could find in our area.

The set is a little advanced for a 6 year old but we wanted to get a set that could stretch her understanding and her current care of her belongings. The excellent part about it is that the set can grow with her. After playing with it a few times i decided to read the user manual. To those having difficulty with different parts of the telescope i highly recommend going through the manual as it really has several tips that resolved small concerns i had (like an inaccurate viewfinder). While reading i came across the mention of several accessories that can be purchased to expand the use of the telescope.

Not only does this telescope come with eyepieces that allow our daughter to enjoy it right away there are several things that we can purchase in the future to make this telescope much more advanced. This telescope has great flexibility in its ability to grow with the astronomer. This set has by far the best potential of any set i’ve ever owned because of the additional accessories that can be purchased for it.

I paid $150-ish. Setup was easy. I used a distant tree to calibrate the viewfinder. The major con is trying to keep objects in the viewfinder because of the earth’s rotation. I try to swivel the telescope and it wants to go back to its previous position. This is aggravating but goes with the low price. I often have to use the red dot viewfinder to resight the target.
I havn’t seen the red spot on jupiter but i have seen 3 of its moons. Mars looks like a somewhat bigger orange ball. It is so cool to see saturn’s rings. They are discernible but the planet is still small in the viewfinder. Saturn and its rings are white like the moon, not colorful. The moon, though, is spectacular, once properly focused. There are a cornucopia of craters visible at every phase of of the moon. When the moon is full the craters around the circumference belie its seemingly smooth surface. My neighbor was blown away by the view and wants his own telescope. I bought a cheap 2x barlow lens and it works welk with this scope, the moon’s craters are even more impressive.
Unfortunately i have not yet seen uranus.

Most folks like reflectors but all of that collimating just turns me off. My astromaster is always ready to go in a minute’s notice and where i live (southern louisiana) that’s important. Our weather is cloudy for a large portion of the year so when the sky does clear i don’t have time to play around with aligning mirrors.

This scope is plenty powerful enough to check out the moon in great detail, jupiter (you can see the cloud bands) and saturn (rings are visible). It is also fine for the larger and brighter messier objects like m31 (andromeda galaxy) and m42 (orion nebula). I do suggest eventually getting the celestron lens addon kit for it though as that opens up so many more options and the lenses are just a better quality.

Lastly i will comment on the tripod. I am giving this scope a 5 star rating despite the tripod. It’s not that it’s flimsy, it’s fairly sturdy, but the clutch system makes it really hard to get it set onto a moving object and then to re-position when it moves. Honestly, i usually just mount this scope on top of one of my sturdy video tripods and it works even better. There are threads on the bottom of the scope’s dovetail mount that allow you to mount it to a standard tripod and that wins lots of brownie points with me.

I dropped a star due to the annoying telescope mount on the tripod. Even with the mechanisms unlocked, when i first got the telescope, the mount was very hard to rotate, both horizontally and vertically. Basically, it is so stiff that once you put enough pressure to overcome the friction, it suddenly shoots past your target. I will provide directions on how reduce this problem, but plan on buying an 8 mm hex key (or 5/16 inch hex key) and super lube synthetic grease.

I had a beginner telescope since i was 8 or 10 years old and shared it with my kids from time to time until it fell apart somewhere in my late 30s. I’m now past 60 and wanted to be able occasionally look at the moon and planets again, without breaking the bank. I first bought a $150 80mm hexeum telescope, but returned it a few days later, realizing that i would have to spend lots more to replace every eyepiece and and drill some holes to install a better finder scope. So, it took a big breath, and bought the celestron 102az for $300.

When it arrived, i pulled the large refractor scope out of the box and was impressed. The telescope is best described as advanced beginner or pre-intermediate. I put it together and adjusted the finder scope while it was still daylight. After nightfall saw jupiter and at least 4 moons and saturn with its rings and at least one moon. The red-spot finder was a big help in targeting the planets and the eyepieces were pretty good for inexpensive keller lenses. I also bought a 2x and a 3x svbony barlow lens to make the images bigger. I was impressed by the quality of the images, even with the beginner eyepieces.

Now for the tripod. I know some reviewers expect a heavier tripod, but i found it sturdy enough, especially after trying the lightweight tripod that came with the $150 hexeum telescope that i returned. However, the telescope mount was very, very stiff for both horizontal rotation (azimuth) and vertical up and down (altitude). I tried oiling various parts with wd-40 and light oil, but that solution failed.

After email correspondence with celestron and reading about similar complaints online, here is what i found. Between the tripod legs, under the mount, there is an overtightened bolt that attaches the horizontal rotating plate to the base that attaches to the legs. Turn the mount upside-down, then use an 8mm (or 5/16 inch) hex key (same thing as an allen wrench) to loosen the bottom bolt counter-clockwise about a quarter turn. If that’s not enough, turn it a hair more. Now flip it back over and try rotating the mount horizontally. If unlocked, it should turn smoothly and freely with almost no friction.

The altitude (up and down) mechanism is a little harder to fix. The altitude mechanism attaches the telescope to a horizontally split tube that rotates around two parallel black disks, one on each side of the altitude mechanism, the disks are hidden by an orange cap on one side and grey metal on the other side, but they are visible though the hoizontal split (or gap) in the mechanism. You may need a bright light or flashlight to look in the gap and see the black disks. The twisting handle, called the pan handle, reduces the size of the horizontal split (gap), causing the tube to grip onto the disks. Unfortunately, even when completely loosened, there still too much friction on the disks. To reduce the friction, buy some super lube multipurpose synthetic grease, then take a toothpick or skewer and dab some grease on the edge of the black disks, which can only be reached through the horizontal ‘split’ or gap in the altitude tube. After you dab in some grease, loosen the pan handle lever and rotate the altitude down and up, over and back in order to spread the grease. I had to dab the grease on the edges of the gap a several times and at multiple altitudes. Although the altitude rotation is not as smooth as i would like, it is a lot better with the synthetic grease.

One more detail. Unlike the hexeum telescope, the celestron astromaster 102az does not come with a free carry bag. A decent carry bag is not cheap but is a worthwhile purchase to protect your telescope, especially if you ever need to store the telescope, move to a new apartment, or travel with the telescope.

The key to success is setting the finderscope accurately. If you get that right, you’re all set. Tonight i had a terrific view of the full moon and even saw three of jupiter’s moons. My only dislike is i am tall and it is a bit challenging to view through the eyepiece. I have found sitting on a low stool helps a lot.

I purchased this telescope a couple of weeks ago and i got to say that i have been having a blast. The setup was no longer than 10 min, and it took me less than 2 min to center my first target, iv been using the tripod on marble floors so idk how well it would work on not-so-stable surfaces but for me, its good. The telescope came with 2 eyepieces the 10mm and 20mm, at first i thought i wouldn’t be enough to see any sky objects, fortunately, i was wrong, the first night i was able to spot saturn with the 10mm eyepiece, even though it looked really small i was able to distinguish the rings, i even took pictures (which look bad in comparison of what i see with my eyes) the next day i was able to see jupiter (as small as saturn) and i could see the stripes and 3 tiny dots next to it which were the moons i was also able to see mars which looked like a slightly bigger orange/red star. This was all with the 10mm eyepiece without a barlow lens. Even though i purchased this telescope i think there are better telescopes for the price range so i encourage viewers to keep looking for better options. The telescope and the tripod are pretty lightweight i carry it around my house back and forth and its not trouble. About the packaging and shipment, i live outside the us and the telescope box arrived in great condition. I think its a great purchase and something you will definitely enjoy using.

The mount is sticky and irritating especially at higher magnification.
The optics are amazing.
It is hard to get it stuck in the right spot to view an object but for stuff in the solar system it is absolutely worth it. There is some flex in the tripod, so you will move it to an object you want to view and the field of viewing will bounce back, so you have to mess with it a bit to get it centered.
Ultimately i’m glad i bought it because it’s worlds better than the binoculars i was using before. If you have the patience to get the az70 in the right spot, even with just the 2 lenses it comes with, you’ll get a clear image of saturn with the gaps between the rings and planet and even the shadow of the rings on the planet if the air conditions are good. You can make out the cloud bands on jupiter and lordy the moon looks amazing. Not so great for deep space objects, i was able to find andromeda galaxy and the eagle nebula but their presence is underwhelming in the 70mm aperture.
Also this scope is very impressive looking, like the stereotypical ‘telescope’ most people think of when they think telescope. It is long and big and the tripod looks super cool even if it is less than optimal. For the price i think it is a decent buy and you will see lots of detail on planets and the moon. I can’t emphasize enough how cool the moon looks in this thing, i wasn’t even interested in looking at the moon until i pointed this thing at it but now…
In conclusion: the mount the tripod kinda suck but the scope its’ self is great for resolving binary stars and getting good views of planets and the moon.

It looks better than the picture. My friend thinks it is beautifully standing in my living room.

Good for terrestrial use if you keep the power lower than 100x, especially for backyard bird watching.

For celestial use, the street light is a little strong for us. But the moon is amazing. I saw one faint belt of jupiter when i just got the scope. The space between the rings of saturn and the planet are clearly seen. My son is very happy. But i do not see the cassini division. The fourth star in the trapazium in orion nebula is visible. Our next target is the great nebula in andromeda. The insteresting part is that i feel i can see more than when i just got the scope. So the skils do help a lot.

The two eyepieces are not plossl. I think they are kellner. The fov of the 10mm is narrow. The 20mm one is more comfortable to use. The center image quality of both lenses is good. They are enough for entry level users.

The tube is a little long. When view targets close to zenith, the eyepiece position is pretty low. It is not convenient for adult users, but very good for young kids. My three-years-old one enjoys the beautiful view of our moon very much.

The mount is shaky when reach 100x. But i think it is fair for an entry level scope. I did go to a telescope center to try the sturdy celestron omni 102 and orion xt6. They are bulky and heavy. I still like the celestron 90az for casual watching.

The red-dot starfinder is almost useless at night. You can not see the two circles in the finder, so can not precisely locate stars. I just look from the top and side of the long tube to align the scope to my target. It is hard for dim targets. You need a better finder. The worst thing is you have to find a way to mount your new finder.

Update:
finally we saw the great nebula (m31) in andromeda tonight. It is a faint white-gray smudge. From forums, we know that is only the brighter core. But we are very excited. It is 2.5 million light years away! If i move my eye, i think i can feel the spiral structure. The best power for us to view it is 50x-60x.

Originally i thought the plastic diagonal does not fit my celestron 8-24zoom. Finally it shows the 8-24 zoom is a defective one (the diameter is too big).

I purchased this for my wife for christmas. I gave it to her a few days early, so that we could view the conjunction of saturn and jupiter. We went to a park along the mississippi river, in new orleans. So we still had some light pollution to deal with.

But we were extremely happy with this telescope. It seems to be well made, and was easy to assemble and align the sight.

The laser sight is a great included accessory. It made finding our target easy.

As advertised, we could clearly see saturn and the rings, along with jupiter’s moons. A great first outing for us newbies, and we look forward to lots of star gazing.

It is a little bigger than anticipated. The tube is almost three feet long. So we can take it on our car travels, but not flights.

I dinged it by one star, because it was sometimes hard to keep the telescope locked on the target. I would sight it in and lock down the mount, only to find that (due to the mount) the scope had drifted off target. That was frustrating.

But once lined up properly and focused in, it was pretty awesome.

So far, so good. We are new to telescopes and this is our first foray. So far we’ve been able to see a stunning image of the moon. Setup was very easy. I have only one complaint so far. The telescope will not stay at exactly the point you have aimed at as you tighten the tripod arm which secures the vertical position. So basically when you finish tightening, as soon as you let go, the tube will move up slightly. This is very frustrating especially with higher magnification as you have to compensate for this effect sometimes to the point where your target is not even in view so that when you finish tightening it moves up to your desired target. Considering the very reasonable price, i’m not going to lose sleep over it but i know that i’ll probably want to get a more stable tripod soon. Or maybe i’m missing something here, but doesn’t seem like it.

[update] it’s the next night. It’s impossible to tighten the panhandle without raising the altitude. For viewing the moon it’s just an annoyance. For viewing planets at 50x (with the 20mm eyepiece) it’s a major challenge to keep your target in view as you tighten (but i was able to get a stunning view of saturn — the optics are very crisp). Viewing planets or any individual star or group of stars at 100x is well nigh impossible because of the way that the altitude changes as you tighten the panhandle. To view planets at 100x you will need a better tripod mount. Lowering my rating to 3 stars. 🙁

[another update] the problem is too much vertical play in the azimuth which throws off altitude. Making sure the azimuth is completely tightened before adjusting altitude helps. But it does not solve the problem. Not sure there’s anything to be done except get a better tripod mount.

[one more update] celestron customer service has been great. Service is part and parcel of a product, so i re-up to four stars.

The telescope works well but for the price is pretty basic comes with no magnifyer no carry bag and the add ons are pretty pricey. I chose this telescope because the brand is supposedly top quality but there are better deals that u can get the same thing and more for less.

I bought this telescope as a upgrade to an older telescope i had. Even though i would call this a step above the lowest level it’s not a bad telescope. I am able to get sharp images of jupiter and saturn. My biggest complaint is the tri-pod. It does not matter what you do the tri pod will move on you. I’ve had it tightened down as much as i can and it will still move on you. Requires constant adjusting which makes it very frustrating. Now i’m probably going to have to buy a more expensive tri pod.

My background: this is my first real telescope so i am what i would like to call a straight up amateur at stargazing. I live in the suburbs of the dfw area soooo……. Obviously i have limited objects to see from my backyard. I can’t really do the pro’s and the con’s as i am just an average guy getting into something new. With that being said, here is the skinny on it:

great grab and go scope. Essentially 2 major components: the tripod and the actual ‘scope’. Then you have 2 lenses that come with it. The moon is incredible in detail. I was able to get it on mars after much effort and you can see the red of it but it is still pretty tiny even with the scope.

Some of the things i didn’t like. It is really hard to follow smaller objects with the lever. It doesn’t ‘glide’ and is not smooth.the scope has a battery that lights up 2 red dots you use to align it with objects in the sky. The red dots actually are pretty pitiful overall as it glares at night and mix that with the lever that is rough it makes finding and following smaller items more difficult. Also, if there is moisture in the air, it fogs up the scope, the lens, and it makes it a hopeless night. Not really against the telescope though on the foggy lens, just mother nature being inconvenient like usual.

Final verdict: i love it for a first time scope, easy to use, very clear picture. I want to by the lens kit to enhance the experience and possibly upgrade to a better telescope after more practice.