Home > Consumer Reviews > Celestron Table Top 76 Telescope

When Tasco bought Celestron a while ago, there were two immediate results. One was that Tasco brought a large cash influx to Celestron that finaiced the development and production of a number of excellent new scopes, like the Nexstar series. The other was the relabeling of a number of Tasco scopes as Celestrons- including the unit under review.

This scope is a 3" short focus Newtonian scope on a flimsy tabletop tripod. It's an attractive looking little package, but as an astronomical telescope it lacks both a stable mount and sharp, contrasty optics. The various 60mm refractors sold by Celestron and Meade for a similar price are a better choice for the beginner on a budget.

As much as I hate to say it, avoid this telescope. I bought it expecting very little, and was still disappointed. In it's defense, it is a small, very portable scope. Also, if it broke, I wouldn't be heart-broken. Also, it isn't too bad for showing kids about different types of telescopes. It also isn't too bad to look at the moon with, but I recommend buying a moon filter. And, you can see the rings of saturn in the scope, which quite honestly is almost worth the $99 price tag, despite all the flaws. And this scope has a lot of flaws. Just looking at the box, I know I'm going to be disappointed. Lots of cool pictures of planets and galaxies that I know will never be seen in this scope. Set up was quite easy, but without even looking through it I notice that the cheap high power eyepiece might as well be thrown away. The low power eyepiece is fairly good, however. The single arm mount was a neat idea, but unfortunately the thing vibrates like a tuning fork anytime you touch it. Looking through the scope, the optics need some adjustment to correct flaws, and this is a routine matter with reflector scopes, but there is no way to correct this scope easily, and no instructions on how to do so. Buying a better medium power eyepiece and moon filter helped considerably into making this a usable instrument, but then the final flaw really kicks in...unless you're really, really short, be prepared for significant back strain. You have to either get on all hand and knees, or carefully lean over whatever table you put this on to see through it; if you touch the scope or the table, forget about looking through it due to excessive motion (like most scopes, but this one has a "table top" mount).

Overall, not a great scope. There are certainly worse ones out there (some for sale here at Amazon, so I would give this a 1.5 star rating if possible, but...), but for under $300 I would recommend going for an 80mm refractor with a good mount. I also have the 70mm Celestron firstscope EQ, and to be honest, despite more effort to set that scope up, use it a whole lot more!

I think most folks who don't like it are new to scopes.

Here's the flat truth. For a 3" scope it's really very good. Celestrons optics are by far the best I have looked through. They don't play the "Gotcha game" like Meade either. You get a 20mm and 4mm eyepiece. PERFECT. Why? 600/20=30x. 600/4mm=150x.
They give you a 2x barlow which you use with the 20mm to get 60X (600/20=30x) (30x2=60x)

Since reality in optics will tell you you can only get 50x per inch of aperature. The usable magnification for any 3" scope is 50x3=150. Here is your scale.

0...........30.............60...................150.

NICELY EVEN SPACED OUT FOR FULL RANGE OF MAGNIFICATIONS.

It does have the older .96 eyepieces but don't let that fool you. I get really good
images with this for a three inch scope. NO! you are not going to see details on mars or a spiral image of galaxies with ANY 3" scope. ANY 3" SCOPE!

But if you try many 3" scopes. You will come back to this one. It's very smooth and easy to track with. You'll get used to it in 5 min. It's pretty easy to adjust as well. The spotter could be better, But spot something in th house in the scope dead center in the 20mm eyepiece. Tighten the tripod right there. Then adjust the spotter cross hatches on that image you have centered in the eyepiece. Once you get that. Do not mess with the spotter. It get get knocked off alignment if you bump it good. Now spot a star with it. The 20mm will be dead on. The key! "Do not touch your spotter. Don't grab it. Don't hit it. And it will be great. You should not anyway. Common sense.

To align the mirrors are all done from the screws on the front spyder. Very easy once you get the hang of it. Yes. Front not bottom mirror.

Now. If this was mead's scope they would give you a 40mm and a 4mm eyepice. Why?
it would give you. 15x , 30x and 150x They know you will be begging for the eyepiece to get that missing 60-70x magnification. So give us MORE MONEY and meade will be glad to sell it to you. Meade loves those games and Meade has very poor tripods. My lx 80 is collecting dust and I use this celestron far more. I won't even get going about meades clutching mechanism breakages and poor software.

Neat terrestrial scope for 80 bucks, terrible if you want to look at anything farther than the moon. Blame it all on the shaky table top tripod. You finally get something centered in the large eyepiece, you carefully remove it and go for the gusto, the tiny 4mm .965" eyepiece. Plop it in, and the object is gone. You very carefully pull on the tripod and slowly drag a leg, searching for Jupiter again, but it is long gone. The mount is not equitorial so you need to adjust both azimuth and elevation (which are backwards when you are trying to look for something, not real easy for a beginner)to try and get a body in view. The spotting scope is marginal in its ability to stay aligned with the tube. All this in a Celestron? How about a rebadged Tasco "Comet Chaser". And collimation, how about no primary mirror adjustment. Granted there is a cell back there but it is behind the mounting screws, you need to remove the mirror to attempt any collimation beck there. As for the secondary, there are 3 2mm allen screws that can collimate the secondary mirror, but it is a delicate balance between the philips screw that holds the mirror and the adjusters. I was never able to get the entire primary mirror to be reflected in the secondary, but that may have something to do with the hybrid focuser lens that gives you 600mm from an 11 inch tube. This got me into astronomy and Im ready to get a 6 inch Baytronix w/ EQ mount for 159 on Epray. Anyone ever see a T mount for a .965 eyepiece?