Celestron Zhumell ZHUS003-1 Z130 Portable Altazimuth Reflector Telescope, Black

Product Information

I only know about the heritage, 150, I'd not be able to offer a sensible, informed opinion on a telescope I'd not actually used myself for a while, so as the Zhumell is a US brand, I'd suggest the US based Cloudy Nights forum might be a good place to ask your question. You probably already know of it, but this thread on there is huge, and is about a differently badged telescope which is exactly the same as the Heritage 130. Afters tons of helpful advice from the wonderful members of this forum I plan on purchasing the Astro Systems light pipe/sight tube combo tool for collimation. As a reminder, when we discuss telescopes, the important number is the aperture, or in this case, the diameter of the primary mirror. Correct that a wider view is nice. However, the f5 will have better field illumination or small CO. It’s specs are as follows, aperture is 203mm with a focal length of 1200mm resulting in a focal ratio of f/5.9. The larger means that the details you’ll be able to view through the Z8 will be exponentially better than all the other devices on this list.

To me, portability between a table-top dob and a full sized 6" is a toss-up when you consider what you need to bring with you to put the table-top dob on. The bearings of the GSO-Deluxe dobs are also a weird and unique design using roller bearings and tension adjustment knobs. The bearings can also be repositioned slightly to balance the Dobsonian when using heavy eyepieces. As it is a manual mount, you will have to aim it yourself. The best way to do this, for objects you can’t see with the unaided eye, is a “star hop” where you follow constellations, asterisms, and stars to find roughly where the object is, then narrow it down in the eyepiece. This is easy and fun when you get the hang of it, and the sturdiness of the mount really comes in handy–you wouldn’t be able to star hop nearly as effectively in the cheap EQ mounts that come with many beginner telescopes.The Heritage 150 is more compact but the twist to focus is not as appealing to me. I also understand that the tube cannot be rotated to adjust the location of the eyepiece. It seems that adjustment could be important for sitting at a comfortable eye level. Nevertheless, despite these lower specs you should be able to see the likes of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars among other celestial objects in space. with that being said fainter deep space objects may not be as visible as reflective devices would show. Some observers ditch these mounts to convert their tabledobs to grab-n-go. At one point, Vixen sold this telescope tube on their Vixen Porta mount, and that solution worked fine, and it had better, given the price tag. If a 2 inch focuser is desired, it's probably better just to buy a 6 inch F/5 or F/6 with a 2 inch focuser and buy the mount separately. I’ll also spare a thought for the Orion SkyLine 6”. It’s a GSO-sourced Dobsonian like the larger SkyLines, but it doesn’t have any of the deluxe features of the other SkyLines, really being more comparable to the DT6. But since it is much more expensive than the Apertura DT6, which is nearly identical aside from the inclusion of an additional 9mm Plossl, I wouldn’t be inclined to recommend it. Only go for it if you can somehow find one cheaper than the DT6. The Eight-Inch Dobsonian Telescope

The F/8 focal ratio will not show any coma in the field. So between this and point #2, you will have a nice clean FOV to work with. Planets will stay sharp throughout most of the field of view as they drift across it. Lots of double stars can be found and split, and the optics are good enough that even pretty close doubles can be resolved—there’s not much bleeding of light from one to the other unless the air is turbulent. The first thing I want to point out is that this telescope has two handles on the mount making it easy to carry. This is something many other telescopes don’t have. Due to the fairly small size of this telescope and the style of mount, you will need to use it on a raised surface like a table for comfortable viewing. Zhumell’s innovative Z Series Dobsonian telescopes have taken the world of amateur astronomy by storm. Now, you can get Zhumell’s unmatched quality and value in a portable tabletop Dobsonian with the Z130. It’s the perfect way to get started with astronomy or add a grab-and-go scope to your collection.But of course you can do everything I did on the other two models, except the motor focus on the heritage. If I were looking for a camping scope that wasn't a small Dob, it would be a 4 or 5 inch F/5 or F/6 refractor. f/4, though, is really unkind to eyepieces. At high powers, you'd better use a Plössl only with a barlow combination just to avoid too much spherical aberration generated by the eyepiece!

The exact utility of the FlexTube is subtler than you might expect–how often do you really need to collapse down just 13 inches of vertical height? I find that the collapsible tube does help when transporting the scope in my SUV. The FlexTube Dobs can be stored in less space than a solid tube Dob. However, those truss tubes actually weigh more than the solid optical tubes they replace, so it’s actually heavier than the Classic version of this telescope. Many open clusters are gorgeous at low and medium powers. Cassiopeia and Perseus have open clusters worth looking around for, such as the ET Cluster and the Double Cluster. Scanning the band of the Milky Way at low power can be quite rewarding. 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.)To fully take advantage of the widest field of view, get a 32mm Plossl. Images will be slightly brighter too, though most deep-sky objects will be really small at this power. It’s good for a few, especially large objects like the Andromeda Galaxy and the Pleiades, or for fitting in star clouds and OB-associations. It’s mostly useful as a 20x finder-eyepiece. Viewing distant objects will be great too provided you can find eyepieces and a barlow lens that can put to use the Z130’s useable magnification around 200 – 230x. It’s estimated that the magnification level IS around 225x although real world usage I imagine would be much lower if not barely half of what’s advertised. Nevertheless, even with this limitation you should still be able to capture views of Saturn and even glimpses of its moon along with a lot of the other nearer planets. Dobsonian mounts are generally used for cheaper devices and as a result allows for the price of a telescope to remain lower. Other than the use of particle which is common amongst the beginner or entry level telescopes, the mount included here is great and easy to set up. I've only been able to take it out twice so far due to the skies not cooperating, but so far it seems good to me. Ergonomically it's great, optics seem good to me so far. And starsense is really neat.

The Zhumell Z8 is by far the largest telescope on this list but considering how excellent a device it is for the specs it provides, if you have enough room to store it and are willing to stretch your budget a little, you cannot go wrong with investing in this exemplary dobsonian device. It’s more powerful than the 80EQ coming in with an aperture at 102mm, a focal length of 650mm resulting in a focal ratio of just under f/6.5. These are very average specs for the price however, refractor devices tend to produce great visuals with a good contrast even if in this case the numbers are lower than a reflective device. In fact at these lower aperture levels the performance difference is negligible to a slightly bigger reflector device. All of these commercial, imported Dobsonians have the same focal lengths (and thus heights) within a size class: all of them have a 1200mm focal length for the 6, 8, and 10 inches, and 1500mm for the 12 inches. So what size Dobsonian should you buy? Every Messier object is within reach, even from the light-polluted suburbs. You will have to use the scope for a while and train your eye and your brain to observe faint objects–observing experience is worth magnitudes. Keeping a sketchbook or log of the objects you see at the eyepiece will train your brain to see finer details.

Zhumell Telescopes

The Zhumell Z114 is an excellent entry level tabletop dobsonian telescope for beginners of all ages so, it should come as no surprise that it’ll be an excellent StarGazing companion for adult beginners getting into this hobby. As a result you’ll be able to view all of the planet uptill neptune near the peak of its usable magnification (which should be around 350x). F/6 is a fast focal ratio so some coma may still creep in on the edges of stars and planets but, as a whole the newtonian reflector optics will do a fine job for you. One of the main reasons why the starsense 102AZ would be worth getting is due to the befnefits its software provides which will guide you in finding any celestial object that can be found within the app. Essentially how it works is your phones camera takes multiple snapshots of the night sky and then aims to find any celestial object within the apps data and then simply guides you to it.