Beginner Xiaomi Astronomical Telescope Test - Excellent for Christmas!

The CELESTRON SCTW-70 is the entry level, but holds pleasant surprises.

Unpacking, assembly, test:

Introductory

The thing is, I have to write an article now on a topic I don’t understand. That is, more precisely, I do not understand enough. So this article is born from the pen of a very novice amateur for other very novice amateurs!

Stories like this always start with the fact that I wanted to be an astronomer as a kid. Well, I didn't want to. I go on, I don’t want to be that now either, and I don’t particularly care about astronomy. I like to stare at the starry sky, watch the satellites crashing through the sky, last summer I also saw the comet, the eclipse many, many years ago.

I love astrophotos, nebulae, galaxies, planets, and everything else up there. I’ve also read articles on the subject, but I’ve never had the patience to really dig into myself.

After that, you can rightly ask me what the hell I bought myself an astronomical telescope for! The answer is simple, I wanted to try it because it’s cheap because it’s Xiaomi, because you’ve bought quite a bit of it through me. So I wondered what this structure could know if they loved it so much.

He’s standing here in my living room now, and I’m starting to understand why you can fall in love with the stars. I can only hope I didn’t get cold in the garden last night while adjusting my new binoculars for about 3 hours.

What binoculars should a beginner choose?

I also read about this topic afterwards, the answers vary from nothing to a solution of many hundreds of thousands of forints. Have a man on your feet who aligns between the many good tips, but I still try to cut order between the lines!

Anyone who tells a beginner not to start with binoculars says it can get bored quite quickly enough, and I’ve experienced this in the past. I bought a tube many, many years ago, it was crappy. I couldn’t find the planets, I looked at the moon twice, then went to his box and sold it later.

Of course, there is an easy way to find the planets, but about that a little later.

So don’t spend a lot because if you don’t come in and sell it, you won’t fall for it much. Or, if you buy it really cheap, it’s specifically nothing, maybe you even win the deal.

So, what to take if we don’t want to spend a lot of money but still want some sense of success. Experts say a small telescope is needed for this purpose. Small binoculars are lens binoculars less than 10 centimeters in diameter or mirror binoculars less than 15 centimeters.

The former are simpler, and they are also recommended for monitoring from light-polluted places (meaning there is no blind darkness, for example, the light from the lights is filtered in). Mirror binoculars are brighter, but because of this (supposedly) they also collect better artificial light that infiltrates.

Lens and mirror telescopes also differ in their intended use, the former being recommended for planetary observation, the latter for deep space objects, as long as a small mirror telescope has sufficient magnification for this. I don't think so.

That is, if you want a simple one that is easy to set up and use, stay with a small lens binoculars like the CELESTRON SCTW-70.

Accessories, assembly

In the box you will find a stainless steel tripod on which you can mount the binoculars. It also comes with a tray for holding various eyepieces, others, e.g. you can do the phone holder when not in use.

We also find a 6 x 24 mini binoculars, which is actually the optical viewfinder, which I will write about later. We get a 20 mm eyepiece (25x magnification) and we get a 4 mm aspherical lens (125x magnification).

These are accompanied by a double teleconverter, which provides the maximum 250x magnification promised by the manufacturer. Accessories also include a 90-degree mirror to help us look at the sky more easily.

Last but not least, here’s our binoculars, to which the manufacturer immediately comes with a waterproof carrying case along with a shoulder strap. We can go out into nature!

Assembly is easy. Slide the mating piece at the bottom of the binoculars into the rail on the stand, tighten the screw. We put the viewfinder in its place, we put the 90-degree mirror in it, the 20mm eyepiece in it, and we can already look down at the sky.

If you want a larger magnification, you can install the double teleconverter between the binoculars and the 90-degree mirror, if you also want to mount your phone, you will need the 4mm eyepiece and the phone holder.

The total assembly takes approx. 10 minutes and luckily simple. Fortunately, because the description is only in Chinese, so we don’t get much help. But, if you have a picture of the assembled structure, it will work for you too!

Okay, let's see what the CELESTRON SCTW-70 knows!

Paper form

It’s really just going to be the paper form, in short!

So, the lens is made of glass (not evident), is 70 millimeters in diameter, and has also been given a multi-layer coating, which is said to improve the performance of the lens. Interestingly, according to the description, it is able to collect 100x as much light as our eyes.

I read on the net that the viewing angle has been significantly widened compared to previous models and the high quality eyepieces provide clear visibility without distortion.

The focal length is 500 millimeters. As I wrote above, different eyepieces come with it, so you can get different magnifications by replacing them. These can be 25x, 50x or 125x, or you can even toss this with a double Barlow lens, which doubles the magnification to a maximum of 250x.

I have already written above about the viewfinder and the phone holder, as I mentioned the stand. All you need to know about this is that the height of the foot is adjustable, so it can be used well on sloping ground, or even for smaller children.

That's pretty much it, now the experience can come!

Experiences

Getting started is a good experience. The assembly is good, the materials are also, the body of the binoculars is, for example, aluminum, in which various plastic parts fit. The carrying case for the binoculars is also impeccable, if you want to go off-road it will come in handy.

Assembling for the first time will only take 10 minutes, if you already know where it belongs, then in 3-4 minutes the stuff is ready for action. What might take a little longer is to install the phone, but it’s not really complicated either.

The point is to attach the phone holder to the phone first. If this is the case, find the lens you want to use and adjust the part that will fit the eyepiece. If this is the case, attach the phone holder in place.

A return to the lens section. It is by no means certain that the main lens on your phone will be best for taking photos or videos with binoculars. If you have an ultra-wide camera try it too, but make no mistake, even a macro camera can be good if you don't base 2 megapixel pieces.

There is another important piece, the setting of which will make it very EASY to use the binoculars, and that is the viewfinder. Adjust as accurately as possible. I did this by selecting a remote point on the church tower during the day, fixing the binoculars so that it could not turn, and then aiming the viewfinder at the same point. It is easier this way than in the evening to clown with him in the dark, e.g. with the moon, which is constantly and rather quickly floating out of sight.

Okay, we put the binoculars together, let's take a look!

It’s likely that everyone will be targeting the moon first, it’s big enough and easy to find. You may want to start looking at smaller magnifications and no phone price. If you’re not home yet on the subject, you should definitely drop your chin.

It is said that the image of the CELESTRON SCTW-70 is sharp, contrasting, and so it really is, not a little bit, but a lot. Sure, if you want a bigger magnification, the amount of light will decrease, but it’s worth experimenting with, it’s really wonderful to see.

When it was already the amount of light, I was reminded of something I hadn’t talked about before. The cap on the front of the binoculars can be removed all at once, but you can only remove the middle. This is good because when observing terrestrial targets, especially in scorching sunshine, the amount of incoming light can be reduced.

This can come in handy with, say, a full moon, but basically, it’s worth letting in the maximum amount of light at night, especially if you want to observe planets.

Because indeed, we can already observe planets with this telescope. Honestly, I didn’t look at what to expect from a binoculars with a 70mm lens, so then it was quite shocking to see that in the case of Jupiter, I see not just a spot of light but a disk, but even streaks of clouds when the weather is clear.

Jupiter and his moons

Then when I realized that the lights lined up next to it were not stars, but moons. I don’t want to write nonsense, but if I remember correctly the Io on the right and the Europa, Ganymades, and Callisto on the left were visible the night I first discovered them. He was equally surprised that Saturn’s rings were visible, not just a speck of light.

This is certainly not new to an astronomer or even an amateur astronomer, but it was for me. I really wasn’t prepared for this, my couple was approx. he was able to lure him in three hours. It was very cold.

 Before I forget. So nowadays it’s not at all difficult to shoot into what, where we find it in the sky. There are some very good programs for this for both Android and iOS, some that sense our situation and as we turn we see the starry sky on our phone. The program prints the names of the planets and everything else, and even draws the constellations. So, we get away with a lot of searching.

But let's talk about bad things too. Luckily, there’s not much of it, and it can all be traced back to one thing, setting up a reticle. Unfortunately, the binoculars have a small backlash in the vertical direction, so e.g. the planets are not very easy to shoot in the middle of the field of view. Finding is not a problem if you have set the sight correctly.

The other problem is that videotaping and photographing with the phone is not real, at least not as it was invented. Fortunately, there is a solution!

The problem is that only the rim of the larger magnification eyepiece is such that the phone holder can be attached to it. On this, however, it is quite difficult to adjust the focus, the brightness is not enough to e.g. to photograph a planet (it may have been a place without light pollution), the moon slips out of view too quickly.

Unfortunately, the cameras on the phones are more designed to shoot with them in good light, so even though they give quite good apertures to the cameras on the phone, it’s not perfect for night-time binocular photography.

I spent a few evenings with it until I found the right settings, it’s worth using Pro mode on your phone and setting everything up manually.

The solution was to remove the rubber ring from the smaller magnification eyepiece that fits our face so I could already mount the phone holder for that. So, you can make pictures and videos that can already be evaluated.

The image below shows the part of the church tower marked with an arrow

However, when observing terrestrial targets, the situation is not bad with the original solution either, especially if the sun is shining. In such cases, we do not use staggered magnification because of why. Among the pictures is one made of a sphere on top of a church about 300 meters away. And it’s not the biggest magnification, but it was the best picture quality.

So, with this binoculars, you can safely go out and even photograph wild birds, if you look in from 200 meters on the back of a deer you will see it in your mouth.

So all in all, there were these two problematic things, I think it’s acceptable at this price level.

What else can you expect?

Well, the structure is light enough, so if you can, use it in a place where you can stab the pointed legs of the stand into the ground. It helps a lot with stability. I advise you if you want to take photos or videos, get some penny Bluetooth remote control or a penny smart watch with which you can bake the camera. If you press the screen, the image will flicker.

Keep in mind that the higher the magnification you use, the less light gets to your eyes (or the camera’s camera). This is not the fault of the telescope, but of physics, you can complain not to Xiaomi, but to the creator about it.

Summary

Honestly, the astronomical wind blew. Let’s say I didn’t even have time this summer to get on my bike and go for a healthy hoop, so somehow I feel like there wouldn’t be much to spy on the sky or go out somewhere to take pictures of wildlife.

Along with that, for the first time in my life, I felt the taste of the thing and I have to say it’s not bad. In fact! Maybe one day, when I’m a millionaire in time, I’ll buy myself a more serious structure (of course, if I have the frame on it because they’re no longer cheap) and get amazed at photographing the sky.

I think this binoculars is great to start with. Cheap, but not crappy, even looking at the sky gives you the experience of falling in love with watching the stars and planets, and if you don't get the yarn from a much more expensive one. At least I think so.

Due to its easy installation, adjustability and weight, it is also ideal for teenagers, but I think that adults like me can find a lot of fun in it. If you’ve aroused your curiosity, want to get a taste of the experience, feel free to buy it, you won’t be disappointed.

The price remained at the end. Since Christmas is coming and I thought this binoculars could be a really good gift for many families, I begged my contact until he gave me, to put it mildly, a pleasant discount. It means that a BGHU1106 with a coupon code we can buy it for HUF 51 instead of HUF 202, in addition, from a Czech warehouse, so it arrives quickly and we don't have to deal with customs clearance either.

Of course, the special offer is not endless, especially so the shelves are emptied quickly before Christmas, so whoever is slow is guaranteed to fall behind!

If you liked the binoculars and the special price, you can buy it by clicking on the link below:

Xiaomi CELESTRON SCTW-70 astronomer telescope

The store indicated to me that the binoculars in the article are running out very quickly. If we run out of stock, a binocular with the same price and the same price will be available from the same manufacturer from an EU warehouse, this is:

 

Shopping here, a BGbdc9af with coupon code:

CELESTRON 70mm astronomer telescope