Tried photographing the moon through a cheap telescope that I bought on Facebook Marketplace last month

The mount gave out after three minutes and the whole thing collapsed onto my patio, so now I'm saving for a Celestron instead, anyone else have a budget setup fail on them like this?

4 comments

4 Comments

fiona_kim1mo ago

My first real telescope was a 70mm Meade from a pawn shop. Cost me 40 bucks. That plastic focuser stripped out after two nights of trying to get Jupiter. I glued it back together with super glue and duct tape. Worked for another month before the tripod leg bent in a light breeze. Honestly though that cheap setup taught me more than any expensive gear would have. You learn patience when every session is a fight against garbage equipment.

willowg889d ago

Yeah I glued a cheap tripod back together three times before I gave up and built a simple wooden pier for my scope.

amy_west1mo ago

Play devil's advocate for a second and say maybe that bargain telescope did you a favor. If the mount collapsed after three minutes, you dodged a bullet on wasting more time with a setup that would have frustrated you for months. Those Facebook Marketplace scopes are usually so wobbly you can't even get a sharp image of the moon, let alone track it for astro stuff. You're better off starting with something solid like a Celestron from the get-go.

michael_green441mo agoMost Upvoted

That mount collapsing sounds like a proper nightmare. My brother tried the same thing with a cheap refractor from a garage sale, and the tripod legs actually buckled inwards after twenty minutes of pointing at the Orion Nebula. The telescope itself landed on top of his cat, which was not happy about it. He gave up on astrophotography for a while after that, but I think he just bought a used Dobsonian instead.