Explore Scientific 88-20114 Aurora Ii Flat Black 114Mm Slow Motion AZ Mount Telescope,

Everything I expected. The mount and tripod are excellent especially for this price range. It’s an all metal mount which had a nice weight to it and I believe the tripod is stainless steel as well. After setting this up (don’t even need the instructions) I was up and running and everything seemed to work perfectly. Nice and stable on the tripod and mount. Really I can’t think of anything negative considering what you are paying. I would say this is probably the best telescope, mount setup at this price ($110 on Amazon at the time of this review). Even at the normal $200 price that this is at on other websites like Explore Scientific’s own website it still beats most telescopes and mount setups if not all all of them in this price bracket. As for the optics on the optical tube itself from both the primary and secondary mirrors, they are decent with even half way decent eyepieces included. I found the 26mm certainly to be of decent quality in terms of optics and had a good feel to it. It also provides great wide field of views. The 9.7mm is not as good but still fine (small eye relief). You can’t expect everything at this price anyways and either way you can always buy better eyepieces later on at the standard 1.25in size which you’re going to want to do trust me.My only grip with this scope really is just the red dot finder and the focuser. The red dot finder is cheap so it’s not the best quality nor is it easy to align. Brightness of the red dot is good but sometimes it goes out of alignment easily when hitting it slightly. However, when the alignment is good (which can be hard again to get right) it does accurately point you to what you are looking at in the eyepiece so that’s good. Just not easily. As for the focuser, well that is plastic and not sure how well it will hold up long term but it’s probably possible (at least it looks like) to put an all metal one on which this mount and tripod can definitely support. Other than this, it’s a great telescope. As for the collimating process, it’s easy enough on a bright star but just so you’re aware no collimating dot on the mirror is present to help aid in collimating but that’s fine. Sometimes those aren’t even true center on the primary mirror from factory which causes problems so really I don’t believe it even matters in this case. As you can again collimate on a bright star like Polaris or Vega (look up on how to do this it’s easy).So for this price and what is provided in this package, I’d say buy this up. It’s way better than anything else in this price range I can think of especially compared to the poor Celestron PowerSeeker 127 which has a poor EQ1 (equatorial mount) instead and far worse optics (bird Jones design). I also prefer AZ mounts anyways because it’s way more portable and not nearly as hard to master or use from night to night though EQ’s do have their use. Anyways what are you waiting for?! Buy this now.

This is a good telescope for beginners. I purchased this twice, not for the telescope but for the tripod. The tripod is worth more than the telescope when it's on sale for $69. The tripod is an alt+Azimuth so it's worth it just to purchase the telescope. The telescope itself works well though. Images are not the sharpest when using the telescope but it's low cost and lightweight.

Justo como lo esperaba, la caja es grande y depende del costo por peso de cada empresa de envío, pero el artículo es excelente y supera las expectativas.

I am an advanced amateur and I bought this scope only for its mount. I wanted a nice alt-azimuth mount for a small grab and go refractor and this was better in terms of weight and features than stand alone mounts currently for sale in the US. I did, however, evaluate the entire telescope and report that here. Explore Scientific is a reputable brand and even though this is at the low end of their product range almost everything about the telescope is done about the best way possible for the price point.Pros:The telescope plus mount is very light and easy to carry out and set up to use.The mount is easy to point and the slow motion controls work well.The mount uses a vixen compatible dovetail style attachment to the telescope.114mm gathers a decent amount of light for seeing fainter deep sky objects than a small refractor.The eyepieces are sharper than I expected considering their low build quality.After proper collimation the telescope is capable of showing some bands on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.Low price/good valueCons:The manual that comes with this scope is so bad it is useless. Assembly isn't hard and if you have trouble there is a youtube video showing you how to assemble it.One of the slow motion controls was binding when the scope arrived. Opening up the gear box and reinstalling it resolved the issue.Out of the box, the secondary mirror adjustments screws were so loose that it is lucky that it didn't fall off and damage the optics.Given the loose mirror, the telescope was unusable out of the box and required collimation. This telescope isn't that easy to collimate. The primary mirror doesn't have a center mark to make it easier. This is an notable omission in an otherwise well thought out telescope. I used a laser collimator to adjust it and merely eyeballed the mirror center for that. It wasn't perfect but good enough to see some detail on Jupiter.I suspect that even with perfect collimation that this scope won't give as detailed views of the planets as a good quality 80mm longer focal length achromat. The primary mirror is probably spherical and will be limited by that aberration. Most likely this scope will need to be recollimated especially if it is moved for travel. The need for collimation is the main reason this scope is not well suited for beginners. This telescope mount plus a long focal length refractor for planets or a short focal length refractor for wide field views would be great for beginners. For a beginner able to learn how to collimate it, this scope will give brighter views of deep sky objects than a small refractor and its short focal length will also give wide field views.

UPDATE:CUSTOMER SUPPORT FROM EXPLORE SCIENTIFIC WAS GREAT!!! they send me all broken/missing parts and now I have my telescope OK!I just received the package, packaging was OK but:1. The secondary mirror was loose and moves freeley inside the telescope body hitting the primary mirror.2. 2 of the 4 screws that hold and align the secondary mirror where loose too, and when I moved the telescope body can be hear them knocking inside3. The primary mirror has a lot of scratches.4. There is a missing screw that supports the black ring in the front of the telescope5. There is a black nut inside the telescope body, and I think (not sure) is the one that holds the missing screw ( point number 4).6. Not quite sure but to me there is a missing piece in the bracket that holds the telescope to the tripod.You can see all of this on the annexed pictures