Silver Baytronix AstroQuest 6″ Short Tube Reflector Telescope EQ Mount

Short Tube 6 Inch Newtonian Reflector Telescope. This is large aperture reflector at the bargain price that makes your introduction to serious high-power viewing affordable. This 6 inch reflector scope boasts a “short tube” design, with a built-in corrector that yields an 1400mm focal length with just a 19 inch primary tube. As a result, this scope packs a serious high-power punch, with magnification up to 400x making it ideal for lunar and planetary observation. You can see outstanding detail when viewing the moon you’ll spot the Rings of Saturn and the Moons of Jupiter. Included is an adjustable full-sized aluminum tripod with a built-in accessory tray. This scope has an Equatorial Mount, so it can be polar aligned to track the movements of stars parade across the night sky. Use the declination circle, hour circle and latitude scale to quickly locate any celestial body. Thanks to precision worm gears and a substantial counter weight, the telescope can be balanced so that the slightest finger touch turn of the flexi cables will move the telescope with a smooth, steady motion. An optional right-ascension motor drive is available. Two medium power 1.25″ diameter Plossl eyepieces (25mm & 10mm) and a Barlow 2x lens are included. Additional 1.25″ eyepieces are available. Also included is a dust-free cleaning cloth, a map of the surface of the moon and a moon filter designed for reducing moon glare, and a poster of the solar system. The primary mirror is collimated (aligned) at the factory, but the scope does not include collimation aides, tools or instructions. All reflector telescopes show an inverted image, so purchase an optional erector eyepiece for daytime terrestrial viewing. Because the included paper instructions offer limited guidance, we provide buyers with an online full-color photograph, step-by-step assembly guide so you’ll be up and running without having to struggle with a complex assembly diagram.
Customer Review: Will fall short of expectations
First and foremost let me say that this is not a telescope for a newcomer to the hobby. That being said, it is not a terrible telescope outright. It simply over promises and under delivers. The Baytronix 150 is a Chinese made reflector (i.e. it magnifies using mirrors instead of lenses) that has been very popular on ebay and other internet sites for some time. I purchased one not for the scope itself, but because I needed a tripod for my Meade Schmidt-Newtonian. The tripod was more than satisfactory for my needs and fit my budget. Think of the tripod as a knock off of a vixen type model. some other reviews describe this tripod as an eq-2 equivalent, but it is much more robust than that. So being that I was buying a tripod and getting a telescope out of the deal, I took the plunge. After all, I already owned a short tube refractor from Baytronix that I use as a camping scope, and though that too had its shortcomings, it was not a bad scope in its own right. When it arrived, my first impression of the 150 is that it was ethetically extremely unattractive. It looks like a little garbage can or a corn-cob pipe. Armed with this at star parties, you will be happy that the hobby is a night time activity. Baytronix claims that the focal length is 1400mm. Actually, it’s a 600mm barrel, with a 100mm extension tube, accompanied by a 2x corrector (read barlow) that attempts to give the scope the equivalent focal length of 1400. Like many low end telescopes, Baytronix hopes that high numbers will convince buyers to buy, but the engineering malfeasance leads to a lot of trade offs. Before moving forward, I should point out that not all telescopes are created equal. The telescope that gives you crisp clear images of the planets my not give you a similar view of nebulas or galaxies. With such a short tube, a telescope like the 150 is designed to look at faint deep space objects, not planets. With the mirror bending light at such a sharp angle, bright, close objects, like planets, tend to show a bright ring around them as the light is unable to meet perfectly at one location. This is less of an issue with dimmer objects. Once again, piece of advice, if you are new to the hobby and want to see planets, look into getting a good refractor (one that uses lenses, not mirrors). So this is Baytronix’s problem. The scope’s design lends itself for use as a large field, low power scope, but is being forced into the role of a high powered scope thanks to the 2x corrector. Removing the corrector lens is not an option (I did so by the way, but had to remove the entire focuser to do so). Even if removing the corrector was not a chore, the image never comes into focus without it. The other major problem with this scope includes the fact that you cannot easily remove the primary mirror for cleaning (as in you will never want to try, ever) and that the scope is very difficult to colliminate due to the lack of thumb screws. And yes, the finder is no great gift, but you can focus it by turning the eyepiece, so don’t give up on it outright. So is this telescope a bust? Not entirely. I did a side by side comparison between this scope and a better built 4.5 inch, true low power reflector to do a comparison (putting it against my meade 6 inch would be too cruel). I wanted to compare brightness between the two, see if the corrector lens reduced light flow to the eye and just what could and couldn’t be seen. To achieve balance, I used a 40mm eyepiece on the Baytronix, giving me a magnification of 35x (vs the smaller scope with a 15mm eyepiece at 33x). After laser colliminating the two, I first focused both scopes on to Jupiter. As expected, both scopes showed signs of coma. Some cloud belts could be distinguished, but the coma glare hid most of the detail. However, the Baytronix was noticeably brighter than the 4.5 scope, proving that the corrector lens did not totally incapacitate the scopes abilities. I moved on to the globular star cluser in Hercules. Even though the light pollution that night was more than moderate (aparent seeing was about 4.5-5), I was still able to find the cluster in both scopes. As before, the Baytronix image was brighter and showed more detail than the smaller scope. Hard to say for sure if individual stars within the cluster would have been viewable had the sky been darker. To wrap up this review let me mention a few other positives. There was, of course, the tripod, but beyond that the scope has a very cool moon filter cover that I wish more telescope manufactures would consider. Also, the eyepieces, while generic, are a good deal better than some of the plastic I see accompanied with other scopes. Finally, there is also an adapter for those out there desperate to make use of your old .965 eyepieces. But all that aside, this scope never lives up to its promise. Unless you receive it as a gift or for a song, it isn’t really worth investing your time and money, especially when there are some really great bargains out there available from other brand name companies.

Posted in Astronomy