luckyjasonc's profile

Good telescope and a great value!

Simple, well made wide-field doublet that is a great value. The hood is metal, as well as the focuser. The optics are good, great considering the cost of this scope. Still, you will experience chromatic aberration (purple/yellowish/greenish fringing) on brighter objects. The alt-az mount is good enough for this light weight scope, though I would highly suggest NOT using the fine tuning knobs. The backlash is too much, and is a pain to adjust. These knobs really do not need to be used anyway, do to the wide field of view the Infinity 80 has. The 3 MA (modified achromat) eyepieces included are good enough for entry level use, and will perform just fine even if you are just a casual observer with no plans to upgrade. The 1.25" 90 degree diagonal is a correct image Amici-style prism, meaning, the image through the eyepiece with this diagonal will be correct; not mirrored or reversed. This will make the Infinity scope usable for terrestrial use, and will make panning the night sky easier for newer astronomers. The included 2X Barlow (doubles the magnification of an eyepiece) is of low quality, but will do okay if not overly tasked. Basically, do not use the 6.3mm MA eyepiece with this Barlow. The Red Dot finder works fine as long as you adjust it so when you center the red dot on an object, that object will be somewhere near the center of the FOV of the MA 26mm eyepiece. It's an easy procedure. This short focal length (400mm) wide-field telescope is best suite for panoramic night time views of the heavens and the moon, and less suited for planetary observing. I could still see the rings of Saturn using the MA 26mm eyepiece mounted with the 2x Barlow resulting in a magnification of 31x. I highly recommend the Meade Infinity 80mm f/5 telescope for those new to astronomy; good optics, solid and not complicated mount for this scope and decent accessories to get the job done at a great price-point. As a grab-and-go telescope, why I bought this scope, I would also recommend the 80mm short tube. However, I use a different Alt-Az mount, diagonal and eyepieces. Still, this telescope is still a great value.