Celestron 52265 C90 Maksutov Spotting Scope

I wanted to have a very basic telescope to take a photo for the moon, I found Celestron C90 good one even it's spotting scope. and it is so easy to operate. the focal lenght is 1200 mm .

For the price yes it worth it.

As the eyeballs get older, it gets harder and harder to see bullet holes at 100 yards and 200 yards, and my previous 60mm 12x scope was just not helping enough. So I picked this up for my birthday and have tried it out in a variety of different roles.

This is a fairly heavy scope, so you need a very solid stand. The desktop mount from my previous scope was not in the right ballpark. Fortunately I found an old heavy-duty tripod in the closet and have been reasonably pleased -- the stand is excellent for spotting, but not quite stable enough for effective photography.

At first I was concerned that the minimum magnification of 38x would be too much, but it turned out to be perfect for 100 yard and 200 yard shooting at the range. The field of view was about 2 targets wide at 100 yards, with 30-caliber holes very easy to spot and very easy to see the details that you need to distinguish a single hole from overlapping hits.

I also tried some photography using an adapter with my Canon A570IS 7.1 Mpixel camera. I had to use the optical zoom function on the camera to get a full field of view, so the minimum magnification was very high. The effective resolution that I got from the images was much less than the 7.1 Mpixel nominal resolution of the camera, but I have not been able to experiment enough to attribute the loss of resolution to poor focus (which is quite tricky at these levels of magnification), camera jitter, camera optics, or Celestron optics (unlikely). If I could find a serious industrial strength tripod with hydraulic adjustment I suspect that the results would be more exciting.

Definitely glad to have this scope -- maybe I will figure out how to attach it to my astronomical tripod to see if I can find a star or two....

This is a good spotting scope, and for the money it is hard to get something better. The only reason why I am giving it 4 stars is that if you want to use it as a 1200mm lens for your DSLR camera, you will be dissapointed. I also found the included eye piece to be slightly unconfortable, and I had to keep my eye/head very still or else the image will dissapear.

Pros:
Cheaper than many other spotting scopes.
Accepts standard telescope eye pieces
No chromatic aberrations
Low distortion
Well built - it fell off my tripod twice (the tripod mount was not the best) and it survived without any damage.
It can be used both for terrestrial and astronomical use.
Can be mounted (with a T-ring adaper) to a DSLR camera (prime focus).

Cons:
A little bulky and heavy, so you need a GOOD tripod. Don't even think of using a cheap Chinese tripod, it will just not work with it.
f/13.3, which is pretty slow. That means it's not so good for low light conditions, and if you plan to use it as a telephoto lens, you'll need a high ISO (something like 800 or 1600, even during optimal conditions). Keep in mind that the long focal length will magnify even the smallest vibration.
The resolution is not so good when used as a telephoto lens. For example, if you take a picture of a full moon, and then view the picture at 100%, it will not be sharp, no matter how much you try. Same thing with birds and other terrestrial objects. And this is not due to the atmosphere movement.
Due to the design (secondary mirror obstructs some of the light), the real aperture is slightly smaller, and you lose a little contrast as well.
If you plan to use it as a telephoto lens, you should be aware that focusing is very, very difficult. Unless if you have a camera capable of Live View, you will find that many photos are out of focus. This is also due to the very shallow depth of field.

To conclude the review, if you do not plan to use it for photography, then you can't go wrong with it. If you do plan to use it for photography as well, go on flickr.com and search for Celestron c90 to see some samples from different users, then decide if the quality is good enough for you.

I am not an expert on telescopes, my first, but this telescope appears to be a well constructed, compact, excellent viewing and easy to use instrument, which would suffice as a great viewing, convenient terrestial or astronomical telescope.

I bought this scope for birding. I am a ametuar birder.

C90 is a catadioptric scope which folds the light path in the optical tube. The pro of this design is that it can be made short and compact and well-seal for waterproof. C90 is relative short and large aperture among spotting scopes. The other good thing is that you can use hundreds of 1.25" eyepiece for it.

The optics: its optics is good. The front glass is coated with a purple-tint anti-reflecting layer. And there is a flip-mirror inside the rear part which can reflect the light to its 90 degree window for astronomic observation (like the star diagonals). From the 90 degree window, the image is crisp and very good details (much better than my Minox 62 ED). It comes with a 45 degree erecting prism; however, the prism is a cheap stuff. It is not coated and degree the image obviously. I strongly suggest replace it with better multicoated prism or a star diagonals.

I have tried a Baader 8-24mm Zoom on C90. Wow, that is sooooooo nice! The color, contrast and detail is very good. Color is very accurate. I found that the its 32mm plossl has yellow-tint. I really enjoy birding with this zoom.

That's my review on C90.