Orion 9005 AstroView 120ST Equatorial Refractor Telescope

Great scope. You'll have to get the filters and a few extra lenses but it's just what you need for easy viewing of planets and larger objects outside of the solar system. The view finder is excellent, too.

Just love this telescope, cannot wait for the Australian fire dust to clear out of the atmosphere to use it. Reasonable easy to assemble with the instruction sheets. Note this telescope does not have a video showing its assembly. Beautifully made, Axis scope is made for the Northern hemisphere alignment Pole star. I am in New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere, needs a glass for Octans star pattern to assist alignment. Good value for money, great service from Orion and Amazon yourselves. Packed in two boxes with bubble wrap protection. No damage in transit from Illinois. Great scope I can recommend.

Great scope. We had to return the first one because it was broken. Damaged body and lens had a crack but exchanged it and now we're good. It seemed as though our first scope was "used"... dust cap had black flakey paint all over (even inside the telescope) making it impossible to see the planets.This uses all 1.25 lenses. Does great with 2x and 3x barlows.Might wanna look into a scope carrier case and lens case. Especially if your on the go... Like camping or Want to avoid city lights. The erect prism for terrestrial viewing is worth buying. Adjustable moon filter is worth buying, as well. That's all you need for this scope.. well For basic functions. And yes you can see Saturn w correct barlows.As expected. Worth the dough for intermediate to expert level.

I was looking for a reasonably priced grab-and-go refractor that would be suitable for use by a beginner. It needed to be of reasonable size, easy to transport, and easy to set up. The lens should be as large as I could afford for less than $650, but the focal length should also be short. This will not only keep the weight down, but will also serve up a rich field of stars, and will allow viewing of faint nebulae and galaxies, which are cool bonuses. The mount should be sturdy.With those criteria in mind, I purchased the Orion 9005 AstroView 120ST Equatorial Refractor Telescope, which includes a solid equatorial mount, and pretty much met my requirements. It has a 120mm objective (about 4.7 inches), 600 mm focal length (about 2 feet), yielding a relatively fast F/5 focal ratio. The entire telescope, including equatorial mount and counterweights, is only about 36 pounds, and transports easily in the trunk or back seat of a car. It has a 1/4' x 24 screw for external camera on one of the mounting rings. A 2' focuser can be purchased separately, as can drive motors for the mount. I also fitted mine with a Telrad, which I prefer over the stock finderscope. As far as aesthetics go, this is one of the nicer scopes I have seen. Equatorial mounts have a pleasing steampunk-ish look, and the OTA (outer tube assembly) has a nice shiny black finish, and actually looks like a telescope. Unlike, for example, a Dobsonian, which tends to look like a section of drainage pipe.I have taken this scope for a side by side test drive against a 12' Newtonian reflector. The views of course were better in the larger reflector, but for example, the Orion’s short focal length let me view M81 and M82 more closely together than I could with the reflector. As would be expected from any decent refractor, views are very sharp and clear. Dollar for dollar, I consider this a pretty sweet portable telescope.

I liked the ease of setup and the look of the telescope. I used it to view a comet but quite honestly it wasn't much better than viewing the comet with the naked eye, it looks cool though and great for viewing land based objects but you lose clarity at about ten miles.

Awesome telescope wouldn’t say it’s a beginner as it takes practice to get used to. Very beautiful optics and works amazingly I bought a motorized stand for it to have auto tracking.

I would have given it a five stars, but when I opened it, I could clearly see it was a used one. There are two mounting rings that go around the scope to hold it in place and I could see where the rings had gone around the scope before. Also the scope is scratched and the front cover for the R.A. axis keeps falling off if I touch it. It worked, but when a product says, "New" I expect it to be never used. It may have been returned and repaired, there's no way to know for sure. I contacted the company and they said they'd refund my money. I sent the telescope back, they received it a week ago, but they have yet to refund my money.EDIT! 1/7/22 - They finally refunded my money, but I had to report them to Amazon and I called my CC company and told them the story. I had all my documents in order and the CC company said they'll see to it that I get a refund. The next day I got notice that it was refunded. I won't buy from Orion again.

Love the scope. The mount has a few plastic items (such as the polar alignment cap) that don't stay on well, but other than that i'm very happy.Also, I would like to see the dual focuser come stock. All in all it's a very fair price for what you get.