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It's well built, kind of tough, and has ample space in it. After some reading of the instructions, I discovered I should use the lunar filter (it's blue) to take a picture of the moon with my cell phone. If I could do it over again, I'd probably only buy two or three really nice eye pieces. The eye relief (the space between your eye and the eyepiece) requires you to push your eyeball into the lens. If you choose to spend a little more and get a wide field lens as well, you'll be loving life. In conclusion, skip the kit.
So, we find that with the included eyepiece, it has a magnification of 60x. For instance, my scope is a Celestron 6se. It's cheap. My 6se came with a 25mm. As a matter of fact, nearly all of the eyepieces have horrible eye relief. It's focal length is 1500mm. You'll get tons more use out of just those two eyepieces (plus the lens included with your scope) than you will with the kit. If you wanted to splurge, you could get a wide view eyepiece for $120.
I'm sure some people know how to use them, but I don't see myself getting much milage out of them for the time being. You now have a good range of magnifications to see just about anything in the night's sky. A few times, pulling the protective cover off of the 9mm, I felt as if I was going to break it. It seems like they're made in China - completely out of plastic. I'm not sure of why or what I should use the filters for. It cut down on the brightness but gave the moon a slight blue tinge.
The case everything comes in is actually really nice. So then I'd get a 10mm X-Cel eyepiece (with more eye relief), a barlow lens, and maybe a wide field eyepiece from Celestron's Ultima LX series. The barlow suffers from the same problem. Of everything that came with the kit, I plan on holding on to the case for sure. You have to be pretty close to the opening in order to see anything. You could easily add a few more eyepieces.
Figure out which eyepiece you'll want by taking the focal length of your scope and dividing it by the eyepiece. With the barlow, you can get 120x and 300x (probably pushing it). After viewing a few messier objects, I'm going to want one. An X-Cel 10mm lens costs $50, a better quality barlow will set you back $35. All of the eyepieces feel cheap. I tried out a few more and I don't think I liked them. With a 10mm eyepiece, you'll get 150x. The 4mm eyepiece that comes with it is completely unusable.
Before, the moon was way too bright to snap a picture of, so I guess that's one reason to use a filter. The one I use most from the kit is the 9mm lens.
But at least it's decent. The picture I took looks like it's in grey scale.
I guarantee it. I could see paying $20 for one.
The kit is overpriced. Optically, it's alright.
Already, you'd have a nice set of magnifications with real quality eyepieces that's 40-50 dollars less than the kit.
The filters were really "cheap" too. This kit may be alright for some, but I found them lacking in quality of fit and build and would not recommend them to anyone who has the desire to use the high-power eyepieces (9x, 6x, 4x, etc). I'm fairly new to astronomy, but I expected better quality when I purchased this eyepiece kit from Celestron. After reading some of the reviews here, I was convinced that these were going to be some decent eyepieces and filters. I bought these because of the low price tag, and for the most part, I regret not just buying one or two better quality eyepieces from Televue.
The extreme small ones are too dark to use. Optical qualites are fairly limited. lens seperately. Since I am a beginner I occasionally use this. But, I keep thinking of purchasing eyepieces of higher grades in the future. It might be better to purchase 15mm and Barlow(sp).
I highly recommend this for all beginners like me, Great case. I paid a little over 120 and they just dropped it 5. Has extra room for your other eyepieces. You just can't beat the price. Wait they just did. Eyepieces all work great and you get the filters also.
Most of these eyepieces are uselss because the Celestron telescopes don't have the quality optics necessary to take advantage of their power. Bought this kit for a Celestron NextStar 8-inch SC scope. The most powerful eye piece (not lens or filter) would probaly only be usefull for looking directly at the sun (it's soooooo dark).It's much like mounting a 24-power Leupold scope on an Uzi: It ain't gonna do anything for your accuracy.
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