Celestron Zhumell ZHUS001-1 Z100 Portable Altazimuth Reflector Telescope, Black

Product Information

There’s virtually nothing on a tripod that is as good a deal as the Zhumell Z130. Tripods and mounts in this price range are cheap and wobbly, and the telescopes put on them are typically cheaper. The real competitors of the Z130 are Dobsonians and other Table-Dobs. Normally, the SkyScanner 100 is used on a table or stand of some type. However, on the bottom of the base is a standard ¼ 20 attachment point, which will allow you to place the entire unit on a photo type tripod or any other kind of tripod or stand that accepts ¼ 20 devices and can support the scope’s 6-pound weight.

Due to the wave nature of light, all else being equal, the telescope with the largest aperture has the highest resolution, so you can reach higher magnifications.

Ask The Experts

The telescope is mounted in tube rings, which is a nice step up over most tabletop dobsonians, as it means you can adjust the angle of the eyepiece depending upon the position you’re observing from. This versatility is missing in a lot of table-dobs and has absolutely come in handy for me. The tube rings are attached to a standard Vixen Dovetail, which means they can be used on any vixen compatible mount, so an Equatorial Mount could be used instead, or a tripod-mounted alt-az mount like a Vixen Porta or Explore Twilight. These mounts would be more expensive than the telescope itself, however. What do you put it on? If you have a flexible budget, consider the Zhumell Z114, SkyWatcher Heritage 130P Tabletop Dobsonian (same as AWB OneSky 5”) or the StarBlast 4.5” TableTop Dobsonian. The StarMax 90mm is an option for higher magnification viewing.

Neither eyepiece has an eyeguard, so there’s the potential for light to intrude as you’re observing. However, if you’re prepared to cup your hands around the eyepiece as you look through it, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. You will be able to see the moons of Jupiter and the main cloud bands,as well as the rings and moons of Saturn. With a higher-power eyepiece or barlow, you should have no trouble seeing Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s cloud belts, and the Cassini Division in Saturn’s rings too. You might be able to see Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot with the Z100, but you’ll need to know when it’s visible and you’ll probably need a high magnification and – again – a filter to detect it.)

Love Astronomy and Saving Money?

If you started your journey into astronomy using binoculars and this would be your first telescope, you will enjoy having this wide field of view capability. If you were to add a 25 mm Plossl eyepiece to your eyepiece set, you would get a view as wide as 3 degrees, which is wide enough to take in almost all of the Andromeda Galaxy. Most telescopes cannot do this. If you cannot get ahold of a Zhumell Z114, the Orion StarBlast 4.5 Astro is almost identical, but is priced much higher and thus isn’t really a good deal. Whatever you put on, you need to be able to walk all the way around it, and you ideally want to be able to sit down anywhere around it. When using it on a regular-height table, the eyepiece is usually too high to look through. When standing, it’s the right height to use, though you’ll have to rotate the tube so the eyepiece is at a comfortable angle. A TV-tray, which would work for smaller tabledobs, is too small to accommodate the broad feet of the Z130. Yeah it sounded like getting a cheap second hand unit might not be best to start with, as you said potentially putting us both off. Likewise the plan is for it to be something we do together, and some good ideas as she loves hot chocolates, camping, the great outdoors and similar stuff.

Explore Scientific FirstLight 130: These are different optics, with a shorter focal length. Available as an OTA, or on their Twilight Altaz mount, or on their EXOS Nano Equatorial mount. The OTA is more affordable, but all the mounted options are more expensive. This OTA must be much lighter because it only uses a 2.2 lbs counterweight. (For the record, I tried my Z130 on my EXOS Nano EQ3--it needed more than 4.4 lbs counterweight. An additional 2.2lbs counterweight would do it, and it’d be more sturdy than the EQ2 mounts from Synta.)The question of where you put the telescope is absolutely solvable, but it is one that should not be glossed over when considering one of these scopes. The stool- or tub-based solutions are probably best. Z130 Accessories The telescope also did a fine job with open star clusters. Ptolemy’s Cluster (M7) in Scorpius showed about 20 bright blue-white stars and a multitude of fainter stars with the 17mm (24x) eyepiece. The 10mm eyepiece (40x) also provided a nice view, although it appears aesthetically more pleasing at the lower magnification. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a good quality, inexpensive, entry-level telescope the whole family can enjoy, then the Z100 will more than satisfy your needs – and with the Moon, planets, and hundreds of other celestial objects within your reach, you won’t be disappointed. Recommended Accessories The SkyScanner’s Newtonian optical tube contains a parabolic primary mirror 100mm (4 inches) in diameter with a focal length of 400mm, yielding a fast focal ratio of f/4. As a result, the telescope is good for wide-field views (showing a large part of the sky at low magnification) without the need for large wide-field eyepieces. While the parabolic mirror is the correct shape for a Newtonian telescope, it is not a diffraction-limited shape like the more expensive Newtonians. This is hard to notice, but it will result in a slightly fuzzier image at very high magnifications. But since the telescope doesn’t come with high- power eyepieces, it won’t be easy to notice this. The Orion StarBlast II 4.5 EQ uses the same larger and adjustable primary mirror as the Z114 with otherwise similar performance and features but it comes mounted atop a spindly full-sized EQ-1 equatorial mount and tripod.