Celestron 21061 AstroMaster 70AZ Refractor Telescope, Blue
Celestron 21061 AstroMaster 70AZ Refractor Telescope, Blue
Manual Alt-Azimuth Mount
Locating celestial objects is a breeze thanks to AstroMaster’s intuitive altazimuth mount and pan handle. The telescope also features a sturdy, full-height adjustable steel tripod.
Portability
Grab and go! This compact, lightweight telescope is your perfect companion for star parties, camping trips, and impromptu garden observing sessions.
Objects to Observe
Quality, all-glass optics deliver crisp views of the Moon, the rings around Saturn, and Jupiter’s Galilean moons. Or explore beyond our Solar System—the Orion Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, and more.
Better Viewing
Includes everything you need to get started with astronomy: two 1.25” eyepieces (20mm and 10mm), StarPointer red dot finderscope,erect image diagonal, and free Starry Night astronomy software.
 |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AstroMaster 102AZ | |||
| Aperture | 70mm (2.76″) | 90mm (3.54″) | 102mm (4.0″) |
| Focal Length | 900mm (35″) | 1000mm (90″) | 660mm (23.6″) |
| Focal Ratio | f/13 | f/11 | f/6.25 |
| Magnification (with included eyepieces) | 45x, 90x | 50x,100x | 33x,66x |
| Limiting Magnitude | 11.7 | 12.3 | 1.37 |
| Low Useful Magnification | 10x | 13x | 14x |
| High Useful Magnification | 165x | 213x | 240x |
| Assembled Weigth | 11.0lbs (5.0 kg) | 12.4 lbs (5.6 kg) | 14.1lbs (6.4 kg) |
| Weight: | 18 Pounds |
| Dimensions: | 38 x 13 x 10 centimetres |
| Brand: | Celestron |
| Model: | 21061 |
| Part: | 21061 |
| Colour: | Blue |
| Dimensions: | 38 x 13 x 10 centimetres |
| Origin: | China |
If you are looking for a good quality, beginners/introductory telescope, this is definitely what I recommend! It is easy to assemble, easy to use and absolutely exceptional value for money. I bought this for my partner for a Christmas present as we both love space and stargazing. We have seen some amazing views of the moon
I recommend buying a 2 and a 5 Barlow lens to go with the 20mm and the 10mm eyepieces! You can find them inexpensive on Amazon too.
The tripod is very simple to get set up which is great when you want to quickly get it set up. The tray is very helpful also and so is the red dot finder.
A fault I do have is that the screws don’t hold the scope tightly so when you are looking into the telescope, you have to hold it and adjust it often, which can get a bit frustrating but it’s only a minor issue for something this great at such a great price.
*The images are taken using the 10mm eyepiece with a 2 Barlow lens*
Used for Stargazing. Easy to assemble. Light piece of kit.
Very good telescope for amateur the quality is very good not too heavy.
The finder scope is a little flimsy and difficult to use at times.
Nice telescope 70mm lens, 2 x eyepieces a 10mm and a 20mm a star finder light and the 90 fitting to use for the eyepieces. The tripod isn’t bad either… it has a tray for your eyepieces and bits.
We bought ours to view the rings of Saturn and you can see them quite clearly but the image was small, as you might expect from a budget priced telescope. We could also see Jupiter although a bit blurry although it’s many moons were quite clear next to it.
Overall the 70AZ is not a bad telescope for a beginner like us but we had some misgivings with the telescope itself.
On our telescope, (they may not all be like this) but the rotating wheels axel unit attached to the base to adjust the focus was skewiff while mounted on the tripod which made it look odd, there was no way of straightening this, it was like as if the person who assembled it didn’t make sure it was straight before they glued and rivited the end mechanism onto the tube. There was also some very sticky lubrication grease which we got on our hands from the inner chrome focusing tube (we think) and had to use methylated spirit to get it off our hands in the early hours of the morning after viewing Jupiter and Saturn for the first time. The metal ring on the end of the telescope was loose and wouldn’t stay put while removing the dust cover, there wasn’t even any way of securing it, so there were a few issues we had with it sorry.
If you don’t have the floor space to keep this sort of telescope on it’s tripod, this may not be the type tou want taking up room.
Unfortunately we sent the whole thing back, we may get an equivalent at a later date because we did enjoy using this briefly but as soon as we decided to return it we packed it all back up in it’s box ready to go back.
Remember that no two 70AZ identical telescopes will be the same but this was our experience, don’t let us put you off.
We hope our information helps, thankyou for reading.
Bought as a present for my boyfriend, he loved it.
Very easy to assemble in 5-10 Minutes and ready to use.
Not very easy to carry due to its size, so we Had to buy a case to carry it.
Recommended for beginners as it s really easy to use. Good value for money
I haven’t replied to durability as only recently purchased. However, it looks strong and sturdy. It has excellent viewing and this has been confirmed by visitors who have looked through the scope. Celestron is a good and trusted name and I would highly recommend this Telescope. The stand is stable and easy to assemble. Pans and elevates smoothly.
A first class Telescope and ideal for beginners.
Easy to set up. Everything is very well made and it comes with two lens pieces that are 20mm & 10mm which for a beginner is more than enough.
You can see the moon superbly & the craters. Aswell as other cool clusters & nebulas such as the Pleides & the Orion Nebula.
Had great fun with it so far and very happy with the price.
I’ve attached a photo & video of the moon. Photo with the 20mm & video with the 10mm. Both using a moon filter.
As a complete novice, I learned that using this on stars is pointless (other than for seeing a few more stars in the distance), so really it’s only useful for looking at the moon, planets and other more easily visible celestial phenomenon.
The greatest problem I have had with the scope is the mount. It does not allow for precision scanning of the sky and you have to pull/push the telescope itself into position. Also, once it is in position, it does not stay there and moves – this makes it hard to look at an object for a while or to take pictures (you may need to purchase additional kits to take pictures, i got a kit for my nikkon camera). But lets be honest here, for the price, the makers have to cut corners on something and in this instance, the mount lost out. You can buy different mounts which allow for much more precision as they have twisty knobs which tilt the scope in minute directions and hold it there.
I’ve had great fun learning with this telescope over the last few months, and i am now upgrading to a skywatcher one (with a better mount!). If you are a beginner, don’t know if astronomy is for you and don’t want to spend ridiculous amounts of money then this could be the scope for you. If you are hoping to see massive cloudy nebulas and great details of planets (i.e all the lines and the great red spot of jupiter) then avoid this scope and invest in something more expensive. Bear in mind that the multicoloured nebulas you see in magazines are the result of thousands of photos stacked upon each other, with coloured filters and hours of work – you wont see these sorts of images with your eyes.
Performance wise the telescope is good, the red dot finder is reasonably easy to set up, but when looking at objects overhead you have to get right under it which needs some contortions at times. i would recommend this scope to starters, it’s light weight and reasonable construction make it worth the 65.00 spent. The 50AZ was 40 cheaper but absolutely useless, i wrote a review about it, but in summary i was deeply saddened by celestrons decision to let the 50AZ be marketed under their name. especially as their other products of 60mm and upwards are all good budget kit.
Dont believe all you may read on other sites telling you that you need a big reflector telescope to see anything. these long focal length refractors are virtually CA free (chromatic aberation) and give good views for beginners. the whole myth of poor optics on small refractors comes from cheap telescopes like the 50AZ and other toyshop telescopes.
If only you could increase the magnification with for example a Barlow Lens, it would be awesome. But because of the tripod it’s extremely difficult to center the image at 70x. It’s basically a camera tripod; in that you have to unlock the horizontal axis, turn the telescope, lock the horizontal, unlock the vertical, align the telescope and lock the vertical again. And finally wait for the vibrations from all that to stabilize.
But again, the telescope itself is really good.
After reading several reviews on other Telescopes ranging from budget to ridiculous, this seemed the better option, Dad has found it easy to use and view the stars with, so as a cheaper scope that will keep his attention this has been a useful and handy introduction to Astronomy, maybe in a couple of years he may need an upgrade to a more expensive model, but for now this does the job very well.
Definitely recommended for the budding astronomer.
I would highly recommend an additional purchase of the Celestron eyepiece set to use with this scope. The refractor comes with two eyepieces, a 20mm & 10mm. The 20mm is ok but the 10mm in my opinion is a poor eyepiece. Since purchasing the eyepiece set I don’t think I have bothered with either of the two included eyepieces as the set one’s are far better quality (in particular the 32mm eyepiece). Getting back to the telescope I was impressed with the build quality of both the tripod and scope. The tripod is an Alt-Azimuth. At first I regretted not getting an equatorial mount for the scope which is recommended over the Alt-Azimuth for astronomy. I’m not so bothered about it now as I find the tripod very easy to set up which means I can get it out of the house and into the garden quickly. My son has also used the scope for spotting on the seafront which an Alt-Azimuth is recommended for so you now have more than one use for the telescope. Perhaps in the future we may purchase an equatorial mount when it’s time to upgrade but this suits us perfectly for now.
The scope has a dove tail mount for the tripod, I noticed some reviewers complain about the scope wobbling at the mount which I have also experienced but I got round this by taking my time carefully mounting the scope to the tripod. Once done you don’t really need to do this again as I tend to put the telescope away by removing the tray and collapsing the tripod legs rather than removing the scope from the tripod.
With the stock 20mm eyepiece you will see Jupiter and it’s four largest moons, the phases of Venus, Saturn with it’s rings visible and as expected with most telescopes very clear close up images of the moon. I think this is excellent for what is a sub 100 telescope.
There are of course things not to like at this price range. I’ve already commented on what I think about the stock eyepieces. My only other gripe is with the diagonal which has a cheap plastic feel to it. It’s perfectly functional but I found over time it loosened with the screws not doing a good job of holding it tightly to the back of the scope. I ended up replacing this for a better quality celestron diagonal which cost about 25. Money well spent.
Hopefully you can see an image I have attached of the moon taken with a compact camera mounted to this telescope via a 32mm eyepiece. Definitely recommend upgrading your eyepieces, that said at less than 100 this is the scope to get and perfect for starting out in Astronomy.
Update – 19-Sep-2012 :-
Just like to add that I recently purchased a Telrad red dot finder to use with this telescope which I’m very glad I did as it helped me locate the Andromeda Galaxy last night! Seeing conditions were as good as they get with no moon but still some light pollution what with living 35 miles outside of London and near an airport. People who say that this scope is limited to just solar objects are wrong! You can use this for viewing Deep Sky Objects (DSO) as well. Ok Andromeda was just a faint grey smudge but I still managed to locate it with this telescope using the stock 20mm eyepiece. Simply amazing!
I have used the telescope about 3 times since I’ve had it but it’s mainly because I’m busy with studying at the moment but I have had chance to have a good look at the moon and was very impressed. I got a very sharp image and could easily make out craters on the moon.
I did some star gazing in my back garden one night but was not terribly impressed as, like somebody on here already pointed out, the telescope only really makes more stars visible and makes the stars which are already visible slighly brighter.
Not yet had change to look at Saturn but plan to do so when I get chance!
Oh, one other thing, I bought the moon filter. I don’t know if it’s worth 15 to be honest (inc delivery). Without the filter the moon still looked amazing. It just lowered the brightness of it a bit.
I used the telescope to view some countryside from out of my bedroom window and could see a house that was barely visible with my naked eyes which was impressive. Very clear picture.
People are right about the verticle lock, you need to aim the scope below what you want to view before tightening but I beleive with practice this would become easy.
Will probably update my review once I have had more time using it. I’m off to the lake district at the end of June so will be taking it with me there. Hopefully will get some nice darkness to test it out properly.
I think the telescope is good then, but I have nothing to compare it with.
Thanks,
Ross