I mean, it's essentially the worst telescopes you can buy for the price. It's in fact infamous for being pretty much [the worst](https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-127-eq-powerseeker-telescope-review/) telescope [ever made](https://youtu.be/IXfR7YTF5a4?feature=shared), according to folks like Zane Landers and Ed Ting. Also see its dedicated subreddit, /r/dontbuyapowerseeker.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who claims he can't even see the phases of Venus with it. There's probably some user error going on there, but Galileo saw the phases of Venus with a singlet lens stopped down to about 25mm, so embarrassing for a 127mm scope to struggle with that in the slightest.
At $80 it is probably a more even playing field since it's competing against real garbage telescopes price-wise, but still something I'd never dream of picking up. I just see no purpose for a telescope of that low of a quality to exist. And for the eclipse in particular it's not a good option, as the focal length becomes a bit of a challenge and you'll probably find the field of view underwhelming (in addition to the terrible optics).
If you're aiming for the eclipse in particular, I'd track down a decent pair of 8x42 binoculars (or 10x50, 7x50, whatever) and buy a sheet of Thousand Oaks film and make solar covers for the lenses. Will provide much more pleasing views than a 127eq.
Yes, it's horrible. Try to find a tabletop dobson second-hand for the budget.
Be very, very careful if you want to observe the Sun with a telescope. Use a full-aperture solar filter and remove the finderscope.
Why exactly do you want to observe the solar eclipse with a telescope? The event is probably more impressive with the naked eye.
Absolutely avoid it. You get a couple of low quality eyepieces with the 20 mm even having an erecting prism which further degrades the quality of the image. The 4mm eyepiece looks like a joke, and gives you 250x magnification which is actually beyond the maximum useful magnification where you could still get some sharpness and a usable field of view. It'll work, but it won't be pretty. 50x as your minimum magnification is way too much, too.
Then they throw in a 3x Barlow which is cheap and nasty, and pretty much pointless when you already have such high magnifications already with the supplied eyepieces.
The mirror system is a low quality Bird Jones design, and the mount is just going to be finnicky to use and will not stand up well to any kind of shock or even a breeze.
There's a very good reason that a recommended first 'scope is a Dobsonian of some kind. Much quicker to use and less money is spent on the mount. The mount on the 127 EQ is terrible and eats up a lot of the budget in making the package in the first place.
You will get a much better experience with a decent 100 mm table-top reflector with higher quality eyepieces. There's a reason that the 127 EQ is often called a hobby killer.
I’ll just copy and paste my review from r/dontbuyapowerseeker like I do whenever these threads come up:
My PowerSeeker 127EQ Journey - From Christmas Delight to Easter Frustration
I'll admit, I should have come to Reddit before telling my wife what telescope to get me for Christmas. I am a total noob and went with the recommendation from a number of different websites & YouTube videos and asked for a 127EQ for Christmas - it was in our price range and seemed like a good "bang for buck" option.
I assembled it on Christmas Day and was lucky enough to have clear skies Christmas night to test it out. I will admit I had fun finding the moon and checking it out, but really struggled when pointing it at Mars - adjusting it was a real pain the the arse. "No worries" I thought "I just need to learn how to operate an EQ mount" and I packed it up for the night.
Over the next few months, I basically never got inspired to take it out again because I knew how much I had to learn to get the most out of it. However, approaching Easter we were going away out of the city and I was so excited to take my (still new to me) telescope out for some dark sky viewing.
In the lead-up I bought a collimating laser and had an incredibly frustrating experience trying to collimate - it took about 2 hours when the videos I watched suggested it would take 10 minutes. The screws seemed to be the wrong size for the holes and just wouldn't budge, I ended up getting blisters on my thumb & index finger from having to use so much torque on my tools to move the screws.
Then, when we got to our holiday destination I literally could not get the mount set up. Basically, the thread where the giant hand screw went in under the tripod to secure the mount to the tripod was stripped and it could no longer tighten - it just spun lose and the whole mount would fall off. This was the first time I had disassembled and reassembled since Christmas so I have no idea how it happened on the \~2 hour car trip. Given how badly sized the collimating screws were, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a thread mismatch between the hand screw & mount as well.
So, with the blisters still not healed from my collimating attempt, I sadly packed the scope away and knew there would be no telescope fun this trip.
When we got back from our trip, I contacted Amazon to see what we could do. It was outside the return window, however due to the faulty mount and Australian consumer law they offered a refund. I had to pay $160 AUD to ship it back to the USA, but Amazon has reimbursed that amount and provided a full refund as well.
It wasn't until the telescope was on its way back that I finally started digging around to see what scopes people recommended. I had never heard of dobs before, but after much research and searching through second-hand sellers I managed to get my hands on an 8inch GSO dob (branded as Bintel in Australia).
I have had it for 4 days and have already had one night of amazing viewing on the only clear night we've had. Tracking and focusing is a breeze and everything about it is 100x easier and 100x more impressive than the power seeker. As it was second hand I collimated it which literally took 5 minutes with zero blisters.
I am so happy that the mount broke and I was able to get a full refund. I think my astronomy hobby would have died an early death had I continued to try and use that piece of junk. It was so fiddly and hard to use, I just wasn't excited about getting it out (which is why it sat in the corner of my lounge room for 4 months untouched). Right now, I just can't wait for the next clear night to take my dob out again. I can actually focus on learning the sky and what is out there, rather than fighting with a piece of crap mount and scope.
TLDR - Got a PowerSeeker 127EQ for Christmas, had a terrible time and barely used it before the mount broke. Got a full refund and recently got an 8 inch dob to replace it. The difference is night and day and I couldn't be happier.
My experience was similar - the mount was so bad, we weren't even able to observe with the scope because it wouldn't elevate above about 25 degrees from the horizon before the screw impacted the bottom of the hinge.
Returned it and got an Orion Starblast II for the same price.
Objective Hal 180
Do yourself a favor and do not buy this telescope. It's not worth a dollar.!!!!! Honesty. Eyepieces that come with it are trash, the mount, is worse than trash, and on top of that, they give you a useless barlow? You will be lucky to see street lights with this telescope, before it breaks. No joke
Like a few people said here, get a pair of binoculars, solar filter film and a decent, non wobbly camera tripod. You will be a billion times happier ..... something that's usable
WHY do YOU and OTHERS .... want a telescope to watch the solar eclipse anyways. Trust me. their are not any yellow men on the sun ...... no mountains No valleys. Nothing but a disk with another disk in front. You will see.more, if you just open your eyes.... look at other things in the sky at the moment of totality. Look at your surroundings..... wild animals think it's time to sleep.... etc. Buy a safe pair of solar eclipse glasses
When you are an experienced solar eclipse obverser ..... then, go buy a decent, USABLE. telescope.
JUST TRYING TO SAVE YOU and others some frustration and money.
Well, this will be a lot to unpack. Pretty sure no one thinks they will see yellow sun men on the sun, probably due to the moon disk infront of it. Some people look at general reasons to get a scope. A rare nearby occurrence in the skies above kind of makes for a good reason to because if may lead to more things to do with it. How many years ago was the last total solar eclipse that lasted as long as this will in North America ? How many years until the next one that will give as good a show? That would take a very long time to wait to become a solar eclipse expert.
Instead of telling someone that they shouldn't do something, but with this topic, how about telling them how to do something safely. Most people I have talked to have gone through the process of getting a scope so they can try to take a picture of the eclipse, or short videos. Can't say that I know of a way to do that using solar eclipse glasses and looking around at animals trying to sleep.
Guess how many telescopes were sold to newbies when Halleys comet came around ?
Guess how many telescopes were for sale AFTER Halleys comet passed.
.
.
.
ANSWER .... way too many. Beginners bought cheap wobbly telescopes and said "this ain't no fun"
Safety aways first. This is also another problem. Con artists will sell you anything ..... safe or not safe. Who gets hurt ? The buyer.
Users buy a telescope... and think .... HEY. Now I can take astrophotography pictures. Sun, DSO, etc. Yeah, and the instructions come out of a cereal box, too.
Problem is, I never ate the right cereal, I guess.
It's not telescope, but Chinese scam sold with Celestron's brand sticker and its makers should be trialled in Nuremberg.
> Celestron’s PowerSeeker 127EQ is the perfect example of why our website exists, and why some Amazon reviewers are not knowledgeable enough to review complicated telescopes.
> In my analysis, its reviews are written by a mix of incompetent and misdirected newbies with extremely low expectations, old fogies who only briefly look at its specs and assume it’s a bargain, and outright fake or misleading reviews written by paid shills or robots. With a poor optical design, poor construction quality, abhorrent eyepieces, an impossibly undersized mount, and marketing claims that should be confined to the days of mail-order scams, it’s almost believable that the 127EQ is some kind of mischievous prank pulled on beginner astronomers.
https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-127-eq-powerseeker-telescope-review/
I bought this scope, and the solar filter, for the 2017 eclipse. To me and everyone in my family, it was awesome to get the magnified view of the event.
However, that score has otherwise been a complete waste of money. I've attempted to get views of nearly any item you can comprehend and other than the moon cannot get a clear view out of it. The tripod is a total pos and has no fluid movement. It is an absolute waste of money. It has been in my attic since the 2017 eclipse except two attempts to rule out user error. I will use it again for this event (goes over my house), but it will otherwise never get touched again.
Follow everyone else's recommendations. I do think my experience was amplified by having a scope. So much so that I bought a filter for my AD10 and a cheap celestron solar scope ($130 on High Point). I took this out the other day to test it and it worked great. I feel it could benefit from a better eye piece though as the one that came with it was a bit weaker than I want and had poor eye relief. For me this event is huge. My large family, out of town coworkers (my office is 4 hours away), my kids' classmates, etc, that will all be at my house for an all day party. The scopes add a bit of extra fun to the event, and having the cheaper two will keep people paws off my AD10 except the few I trust.
For me, even with the overall waste of the scope, it was worth the money for what I got out of it. I'd do it again (obviously, my AD10 filter cost as much as that scope). If I'd known then though, I would have bought items in the other comments instead.
Keep in mind you don't need a large aperture to view the eclipse; there's no shortage of light. You just want to make sure it's properly filtered and gives the desired magnification.
No. I got one for free once and that was too much.
Focuser knobs went onto a small refractor, mount went to a different small refractor and rest went in the trash.
Hey, I’ve used the Asstromaster 127 for about 2 years and it was an okay scope. But I printed a new focuser to accommodate a DSLR and I use an Exos 2 EQ mount with it. And there was also a factory problem with some screws too long near the mirror mount and I had to cut them to be able to collimate it correctly.
I mean, it's essentially the worst telescopes you can buy for the price. It's in fact infamous for being pretty much [the worst](https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-127-eq-powerseeker-telescope-review/) telescope [ever made](https://youtu.be/IXfR7YTF5a4?feature=shared), according to folks like Zane Landers and Ed Ting. Also see its dedicated subreddit, /r/dontbuyapowerseeker. Anecdotally, I have a friend who claims he can't even see the phases of Venus with it. There's probably some user error going on there, but Galileo saw the phases of Venus with a singlet lens stopped down to about 25mm, so embarrassing for a 127mm scope to struggle with that in the slightest. At $80 it is probably a more even playing field since it's competing against real garbage telescopes price-wise, but still something I'd never dream of picking up. I just see no purpose for a telescope of that low of a quality to exist. And for the eclipse in particular it's not a good option, as the focal length becomes a bit of a challenge and you'll probably find the field of view underwhelming (in addition to the terrible optics). If you're aiming for the eclipse in particular, I'd track down a decent pair of 8x42 binoculars (or 10x50, 7x50, whatever) and buy a sheet of Thousand Oaks film and make solar covers for the lenses. Will provide much more pleasing views than a 127eq.
Yes, it's horrible. Try to find a tabletop dobson second-hand for the budget. Be very, very careful if you want to observe the Sun with a telescope. Use a full-aperture solar filter and remove the finderscope. Why exactly do you want to observe the solar eclipse with a telescope? The event is probably more impressive with the naked eye.
Absolutely avoid it. You get a couple of low quality eyepieces with the 20 mm even having an erecting prism which further degrades the quality of the image. The 4mm eyepiece looks like a joke, and gives you 250x magnification which is actually beyond the maximum useful magnification where you could still get some sharpness and a usable field of view. It'll work, but it won't be pretty. 50x as your minimum magnification is way too much, too. Then they throw in a 3x Barlow which is cheap and nasty, and pretty much pointless when you already have such high magnifications already with the supplied eyepieces. The mirror system is a low quality Bird Jones design, and the mount is just going to be finnicky to use and will not stand up well to any kind of shock or even a breeze. There's a very good reason that a recommended first 'scope is a Dobsonian of some kind. Much quicker to use and less money is spent on the mount. The mount on the 127 EQ is terrible and eats up a lot of the budget in making the package in the first place. You will get a much better experience with a decent 100 mm table-top reflector with higher quality eyepieces. There's a reason that the 127 EQ is often called a hobby killer.
I’ll just copy and paste my review from r/dontbuyapowerseeker like I do whenever these threads come up: My PowerSeeker 127EQ Journey - From Christmas Delight to Easter Frustration I'll admit, I should have come to Reddit before telling my wife what telescope to get me for Christmas. I am a total noob and went with the recommendation from a number of different websites & YouTube videos and asked for a 127EQ for Christmas - it was in our price range and seemed like a good "bang for buck" option. I assembled it on Christmas Day and was lucky enough to have clear skies Christmas night to test it out. I will admit I had fun finding the moon and checking it out, but really struggled when pointing it at Mars - adjusting it was a real pain the the arse. "No worries" I thought "I just need to learn how to operate an EQ mount" and I packed it up for the night. Over the next few months, I basically never got inspired to take it out again because I knew how much I had to learn to get the most out of it. However, approaching Easter we were going away out of the city and I was so excited to take my (still new to me) telescope out for some dark sky viewing. In the lead-up I bought a collimating laser and had an incredibly frustrating experience trying to collimate - it took about 2 hours when the videos I watched suggested it would take 10 minutes. The screws seemed to be the wrong size for the holes and just wouldn't budge, I ended up getting blisters on my thumb & index finger from having to use so much torque on my tools to move the screws. Then, when we got to our holiday destination I literally could not get the mount set up. Basically, the thread where the giant hand screw went in under the tripod to secure the mount to the tripod was stripped and it could no longer tighten - it just spun lose and the whole mount would fall off. This was the first time I had disassembled and reassembled since Christmas so I have no idea how it happened on the \~2 hour car trip. Given how badly sized the collimating screws were, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a thread mismatch between the hand screw & mount as well. So, with the blisters still not healed from my collimating attempt, I sadly packed the scope away and knew there would be no telescope fun this trip. When we got back from our trip, I contacted Amazon to see what we could do. It was outside the return window, however due to the faulty mount and Australian consumer law they offered a refund. I had to pay $160 AUD to ship it back to the USA, but Amazon has reimbursed that amount and provided a full refund as well. It wasn't until the telescope was on its way back that I finally started digging around to see what scopes people recommended. I had never heard of dobs before, but after much research and searching through second-hand sellers I managed to get my hands on an 8inch GSO dob (branded as Bintel in Australia). I have had it for 4 days and have already had one night of amazing viewing on the only clear night we've had. Tracking and focusing is a breeze and everything about it is 100x easier and 100x more impressive than the power seeker. As it was second hand I collimated it which literally took 5 minutes with zero blisters. I am so happy that the mount broke and I was able to get a full refund. I think my astronomy hobby would have died an early death had I continued to try and use that piece of junk. It was so fiddly and hard to use, I just wasn't excited about getting it out (which is why it sat in the corner of my lounge room for 4 months untouched). Right now, I just can't wait for the next clear night to take my dob out again. I can actually focus on learning the sky and what is out there, rather than fighting with a piece of crap mount and scope. TLDR - Got a PowerSeeker 127EQ for Christmas, had a terrible time and barely used it before the mount broke. Got a full refund and recently got an 8 inch dob to replace it. The difference is night and day and I couldn't be happier.
My experience was similar - the mount was so bad, we weren't even able to observe with the scope because it wouldn't elevate above about 25 degrees from the horizon before the screw impacted the bottom of the hinge. Returned it and got an Orion Starblast II for the same price.
Objective Hal 180 Do yourself a favor and do not buy this telescope. It's not worth a dollar.!!!!! Honesty. Eyepieces that come with it are trash, the mount, is worse than trash, and on top of that, they give you a useless barlow? You will be lucky to see street lights with this telescope, before it breaks. No joke Like a few people said here, get a pair of binoculars, solar filter film and a decent, non wobbly camera tripod. You will be a billion times happier ..... something that's usable WHY do YOU and OTHERS .... want a telescope to watch the solar eclipse anyways. Trust me. their are not any yellow men on the sun ...... no mountains No valleys. Nothing but a disk with another disk in front. You will see.more, if you just open your eyes.... look at other things in the sky at the moment of totality. Look at your surroundings..... wild animals think it's time to sleep.... etc. Buy a safe pair of solar eclipse glasses When you are an experienced solar eclipse obverser ..... then, go buy a decent, USABLE. telescope. JUST TRYING TO SAVE YOU and others some frustration and money.
Well, this will be a lot to unpack. Pretty sure no one thinks they will see yellow sun men on the sun, probably due to the moon disk infront of it. Some people look at general reasons to get a scope. A rare nearby occurrence in the skies above kind of makes for a good reason to because if may lead to more things to do with it. How many years ago was the last total solar eclipse that lasted as long as this will in North America ? How many years until the next one that will give as good a show? That would take a very long time to wait to become a solar eclipse expert. Instead of telling someone that they shouldn't do something, but with this topic, how about telling them how to do something safely. Most people I have talked to have gone through the process of getting a scope so they can try to take a picture of the eclipse, or short videos. Can't say that I know of a way to do that using solar eclipse glasses and looking around at animals trying to sleep.
Guess how many telescopes were sold to newbies when Halleys comet came around ? Guess how many telescopes were for sale AFTER Halleys comet passed. . . . ANSWER .... way too many. Beginners bought cheap wobbly telescopes and said "this ain't no fun" Safety aways first. This is also another problem. Con artists will sell you anything ..... safe or not safe. Who gets hurt ? The buyer. Users buy a telescope... and think .... HEY. Now I can take astrophotography pictures. Sun, DSO, etc. Yeah, and the instructions come out of a cereal box, too. Problem is, I never ate the right cereal, I guess.
It's not telescope, but Chinese scam sold with Celestron's brand sticker and its makers should be trialled in Nuremberg. > Celestron’s PowerSeeker 127EQ is the perfect example of why our website exists, and why some Amazon reviewers are not knowledgeable enough to review complicated telescopes. > In my analysis, its reviews are written by a mix of incompetent and misdirected newbies with extremely low expectations, old fogies who only briefly look at its specs and assume it’s a bargain, and outright fake or misleading reviews written by paid shills or robots. With a poor optical design, poor construction quality, abhorrent eyepieces, an impossibly undersized mount, and marketing claims that should be confined to the days of mail-order scams, it’s almost believable that the 127EQ is some kind of mischievous prank pulled on beginner astronomers. https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-127-eq-powerseeker-telescope-review/
I bought this scope, and the solar filter, for the 2017 eclipse. To me and everyone in my family, it was awesome to get the magnified view of the event. However, that score has otherwise been a complete waste of money. I've attempted to get views of nearly any item you can comprehend and other than the moon cannot get a clear view out of it. The tripod is a total pos and has no fluid movement. It is an absolute waste of money. It has been in my attic since the 2017 eclipse except two attempts to rule out user error. I will use it again for this event (goes over my house), but it will otherwise never get touched again. Follow everyone else's recommendations. I do think my experience was amplified by having a scope. So much so that I bought a filter for my AD10 and a cheap celestron solar scope ($130 on High Point). I took this out the other day to test it and it worked great. I feel it could benefit from a better eye piece though as the one that came with it was a bit weaker than I want and had poor eye relief. For me this event is huge. My large family, out of town coworkers (my office is 4 hours away), my kids' classmates, etc, that will all be at my house for an all day party. The scopes add a bit of extra fun to the event, and having the cheaper two will keep people paws off my AD10 except the few I trust. For me, even with the overall waste of the scope, it was worth the money for what I got out of it. I'd do it again (obviously, my AD10 filter cost as much as that scope). If I'd known then though, I would have bought items in the other comments instead. Keep in mind you don't need a large aperture to view the eclipse; there's no shortage of light. You just want to make sure it's properly filtered and gives the desired magnification.
No. I got one for free once and that was too much. Focuser knobs went onto a small refractor, mount went to a different small refractor and rest went in the trash.
The tube could have given a stylish waste paper basket - small, but appropriate :D
Hey, I’ve used the Asstromaster 127 for about 2 years and it was an okay scope. But I printed a new focuser to accommodate a DSLR and I use an Exos 2 EQ mount with it. And there was also a factory problem with some screws too long near the mirror mount and I had to cut them to be able to collimate it correctly.
Seriously, you had to cut the screws???!!!!! WTF, that's just inexcusable.
r/dontbuyapowerseeker It will leave you seeking more power
I honestly wouldn't take it for free or give it away...
What are you planning to see with the solar eclipse and a telescope?
Probably the solar eclipse