Incredible telescope for under £100 

you’re doing a great job of making amateur astronomy less gatekeepy. i appreciate your work

I still remember the day, RU-vid suggested me your one video and i ended up watching them all..haha.. you are awesome Astrobiscuit

Thank you so much for having me in the video Rory! It was so much fun 🤣

Love the crocodile Dundee quote. "that's a shaving mirror. That's a telescope mirror. Fantastic 🍪

We're the real winners - a new Astrobiscuit video!

BBC quality as usual... I kept hoping that some day we will see you on the TV... Great work 👏

Less than two minutes in and I can't pull myself away from the screen! There's an earthquake happening outside, but it will have to wait until I've finished watching.... Best content on the planet!

You're enthusiasm is infectious. I was tired just watching you go up and down the ladder to your roof observatory. Brilliant video, thanks.

Found a junk store 60mm vixen era refractor for $9 Canadian. Popped in decent eyepiece, put on old tripod. Best Jupiter views ever, sharp belts, shadows, colours, more. Once on a solid mount they’re little wonder scopes.

I love how you're able to make the viewer care about a topic they might not've ever thought about! Love the vids!

Love your videos. It's interesting to see the differences between your videos and the ones done by other astrophotographers. There are others that I also follow but you really have your own style. Apart from being incredibly knowledgeable, you are often on the move, going to meet someone face to face or online and your videos are both educational and hilarious. I'm hooked!

My first scope was a Celestron 80 mm and it was cheap, but it gave me the most amazing views of the moon and planets. It is a wonderful scope.

I’m thinking the Orion SkyScanner 100mm reflector. $139 in USA. About £100 pounds.

Your videos are the all-time BEST when it comes to being a nerdy astronomer. And your musical repertoire just takes that onto a whole NEW LEVEL. I find your cinematography/editing the most creative out there I've seen so far. Thank you for being.

I love your videos! They're always full of information and recommendations. Thank you.

I bought my first telescope used and under 100$ and it gives me so many emotions looking in the night sky! I share with friends and feel so thankful... It is so incredible!

Finally a new Video it's been too long to enjoy a biscuit, an Astrobiscuit :)

Another great video, thank you! As someone who started observing too long ago when all I could afford was a pair of tripod-mounted binos, I think it is fantastic to get a decent scope for ~£100.

Thank you for this. I've been looking for a starter telescope for my kids and I so this was a great help. Top job.

Just the type of helpful content needed... More like this. Glad you're back

What I like about you Rory is that you help make astrophotography affordable for those of us who aren't ;made of money. Thank you!

My first official telescope was the Celestron 70MM travel scope. I thought I had to make the focus as big as possible to see things. I knew so little about astronomy at the time. Now, I know how to work it perfectly and found out that the mount I used to use was the primary issue with the telescope's capabilities. Exactly one year ago (because today is my birthday) I got a Gysker 90mm telescope. It's an amazing scope and I highly recommend it, because the EQ mounted 90mms are cheap and aren't worth your time.

This is probably the single most entertaining review videos Ive watched! Subscribed

Amazing Video, thx for sharing. Unbelieveable what you get out of that starter package. Impressive👍

There is not a better feeling than enjoying one of Astrobiscuit videos with a cup of coffee. Also, getting the notification of a new video never fails to lift a smile. Definitely the best (and most underrated) RU-vid channel out there.

I also recommend the 70mm Astromaster refractor , it does very well on the planets. Some people wouldn't believe it can do planetary with a good mount of course, but pop a barlow 2X with a planetary camera and try your best with focusing and you can get some decent shots of the planets and the moon! I also 3d printed telescope clamps for it and screwed it on a vixen shoe mount , the original on it was contributing to the shaking and moving. I also got an older Meade 50mm narrow tube refractor - for free , someone wanted to throw it away - which was made in Japan in the 80s or 70s, the optics are fantastic on it. Just can't beat those Japanese stuff!

Thanks so much for all you do for this amazing community bro

Fantastic video as always Glad to see you back on RU-vid

That was brilliant!! Turn up the volume and dance to the tunes of Riktenstein's D'n'B, as the celestron 60mm refractor did very well for a budget scope! Biscuit man didn't put up with any of Bunny's attitude in this one lol! Great video! 😃👍

Dude! You made me buy my first telescope! Thanks for the awesome and helpfull videos.

Truly a good one! Very informative and entertaining to watch. Thank you!

So glad I found your channel! Thanks for making great content! :)

The celestron FirstScope telescope was the first telescope I ever got back when I was 8 years old. Its the main reason I got so invested in space. Those cheap telescopes really are a gateway drug lol.

Watching this reminds me of the Prinz Astral 500 Dixons scope my bruv bought me many moons ago, Amazingly I still have one with its well made EQ mount, counter weight and slow motion drives, but now have an adapter for better eyepieces !! The 60mm objective lens was pretty good for late 70s, my mates and I used to hang with some beer in my mums back garden just to get a glimpse of Jupiter, the moon etc, I was indeed a nerd, even now near 60 I'm still a nerd and love to get my rig out to image, the fascination never goes away, in fact I've just bought a pole master cos my knees are giving up 😂😂.. You go careful on that blasted roof of yours, nice vid👍..

Love you Astro! Ordering the celestron you recommended as my first scope!!❤

thank you very much I've been looking to buy a telescope for so long but looking at the reviews they didn't inspire much but seeing all of them tested that's really nice

Yes! Very excited for this one!

Lessgooo!! The biscuit has blessed us with a new video! :D

Yessssss love a new astrobiscuit video. 👌🏻 Always happy!

Thank you for all your time, effort and truth telling. You've got a watchable and likable disposition.

I can't help but grin with joy when watching an Astrobiscuit video, although I will say I think this was more of a best planetary scope for under £100 test, and I think the results would vary depending on the object viewed. One of the big problems with the Firstscope et al 76mm Dobs is that they're an f/4 scope supplied with Huygen's eyepieces designed in the 17th century for f15+ scopes. Pop a simple Plossl in front of the shaving mirror and things do improve a little. The Heritage 100p is much better but it's no planetary scope at 400mm focal length f/4. A long achromat will always win on Jupiter over a table top tiny Dob, but the mount is super important and the Dob's have the stability and ease of use for general astronomy. This is coming from someone who is historically mad about classic refractors so I'm not unduly biased towards the above.

Two minutes in, where did you get that cap? Great video, really enjoy what you do for the rest of us! I get up every morning at 5am and take my dog for a walk. I see the night and morning sky as it appears through the year, and the phases of the moon as it rises earlier every day. And to watch the planets do their laps around the sun over the course of years is amazing. Your vids add to those experiences. Great work!

Love ur videos man . Missed ur videos welcome back

Nice video. Love your sincerity and enthusiasm!

Looking Forward to this Rory.

I'm really excited to see something new from you

I always evaded those long and thin scopes but seeing this amazes me

Excellent. Great fun watching your videos. And good advice too. keep going!

Your videos seem to pop up when I’m having a shit week, and, hence, manage to boost my mood. Thanks!

I'm already a nerd, but gonna be buying that Celestron just to see if I can improve my nerdiness even further! 👍

Your videos are the best! Subscribed :) Can't wait for the next one!

Always high quality and super interesting! Thanks again

I think The Heritage 100/400 is the best scope from all the bunch, the 100 aperture makes the difference, and i think it can beat the smaller 60 mm refactors on Lunar and Planetary captures using a decent Barlow lens, and having the same seeing conditions. and not having chromatic aberrations, is suitable also for deep sky astrophotography. Also If you do not test the telescopes in the same time on planetary captures is hard to get a reliable result, especially if the seeing conditions changes rapidly

As always, a great video. But the real winner for me was this really great cheap telescope. For the price, you can't beat it.

Man, I just discovered your channel and I can only say I am completely enthralled by your way of presenting things

Love it! For Premieres you ought to set it to count down for ~3 days, perhaps with an embedded teaser. Seems it premiered with no wait time, could boost initial viewer numbers :)

For my first scope I actually got an XT8I Intelliscape. Beautiful equipment. Definitely not less than $100 however lol

i get scared when u climb the ladder to the roof with a telescope in your hand, im afraid your gonna fall

Your channel is thee best find on RU-vid I have come across in a long time. Thank you thank you thank you

My hubby got me a 40 quid scope for xmas this year. It's still thrilling to see the little speck of Jupiter with Ganymede and Callisto even if they are faint dots. Your videos have me so so so excited to upgrade sometime next year! But for now loving my very very basic setup.

Holy effing crap!!! He’s back!!!

Here in the Philippines, I got a Svbony 70mm scope that's probably exactly like the Celestron travelscope. Available only online though for the equivalent of 45 quid. Of the known brands, only Celestron sells on the shelves through a specialty store. The Firstscope is available, while the next would probably be the Powerseeker 60 AZ for 79 quid and the 70 AZ for 107 quid. Not that many choices in a not-so-nerdy country.

Amazing video's, looking to start out but at a budget and this has been very informative. Thanks

yes! Another astrobiscuit! Love every one of these videos, though I feel like I haven't seen Ricktenstein in a while!

Can't wait! I reckon the Heritage 100p will win this, or maybe the vintage Towa/topic refractor looking thing top left?

I’m surprised there were no clouds having all of those scopes out

Would just like to say thankyou. Found your channel when running a search for Telescopes and Astronomy. I've always loved taking pictures of the moon, and wanted to expand a little. Your videos on budget buys have stopped me from jumping in feet first, and making a mistake with the first purchase. Once I get used to everything, I will hopefully have even better moon shots, and then move out further from there.

Another top video ! Keep me coming Rory 👍🏻

I have one of these long thinny Japanese-made 60/600 refractor from the Eighties. I dusted it off during last year's lockdown, added a modern USB camera and boom I became a astro-nerd. Now I have this huge Skywatcher Newtonian reflector and spend all my nights out in the freezing cold making nerdy images. 😀

Cheap scopes I've found in real life: Original Celestron NexStar 4GT - $29.99 at a thrift shop Orion Skywatcher 90EQ (they call it the AstroView now) - $29.99 at the same thrift shop a few months later Orion XT4.5 - $50.00 off Facebook Marketplace 11/9/2021. Celestron Star Hopper 8" Dobsonian - $100 in 2017 after the Eclipse off Craigslist. Mirrors were dirty, turned out fantastic. Stupidly sold it but bought an identical one for $200 last month, came with nicer finders, the difference in those accessories alone nearly made up the price difference. Celestron branded 80mm f/5 achromat... I've bought two of these on EQ1 equatorial tripods, they averaged to $50 each. One I passed along to a friend, the other now has a vixen dovetail and gets used for terrestrial spotting and solar mostly. Orion XT6 Dobsonian - $100 off Craigslist. Someone was using it for outreach, had written "free" as the price of looking through the scope all over it, people were offended thinking he was trying to make $100 off a freebie telescope. Joke's on them, I resold it for $250 after a thorough cleaning... I'm an 8" f/6 kind of guy for midsize scopes. Orion Starblast 4.5, a 114mm version of the tiny Dobs from this video. $100 off Facebook Marketplace. This one will use an eyepiece as short as 4mm in focal length to pull in Cassini Division and surface details on Jupiter. This unseated the 80mm f/5 in my inventory. Skywatcher 250p flextube Dobsonian - $100 and included a Meade 5000 82 degree 8.8mm eyepiece, which is worth more than the asking straight off the top. Honorable mentions: I paid $150 (which is just slightly over the 100 pounds in conversion) for a vintage Celestron 90mm f/11 Maksutov, on an equatorial tripod mount. I really like this telescope but don't use it much since putting the Starblast on rings. I've bought SEVERAL other 6-8" Dobsonians for $200 and less. My Skywatcher 300p flextube Dobsonian was sub $500 used. My Meade LX200GPS was essentially $500 out of pocket, and that cost is mostly on the battery pack, carry bag and a replacement handset. Bought it as an estate clean out and sold off everything else to basicaly break even. The list goes on. I cruise used listings all the time and buy scopes that need a little refurbishment to be perfect, and then sell them if I already have something that fills that role, or keep if I don't. I don't generally sell anything that I wouldn't personally use, and to back that up every used scope I sell gets at least one session under the stars so I can give direct information to that buyer to know what they are to expect. If there's an eyepiece of higher quality beyond a stock Kellner or Plossl, I generally keep it or resell separately... this practice eventually left me with a complete 82* field of view eyepiece set from 4.7 to 30mm in focal length, mostly Explore Scientific with a Meade or two tossed in. Oh, and the most used astronomy item in my inventory is the adjustable height chair (Starbound brand I believe) that was $75 used. About $100 less than retail. The 60mm AstroMaster is a scope that I'd never pay anything close to $134 for (the current exchange to 100 pounds).

You are absolutely amazing, all your videos are wonderfully, playfully, and professionally edited and it clearly shows. Thanks for all the great information, looking forward to all the future videos! Much love from the US!

Drum and bass and telescopes.. Never thought I would hear the two in the same sentence haha! Love it! Love the content also! Thank you.

I’ve never seen a Celestron FirstScope that I have liked. The main problem is the spherical f/4 mirror, which is a non-starter. I have also inspected some in stores that obviously have the secondary improperly installed. I’m wondering if you checked the collimation of the other mini-newtonians before testing them, or if you used them right out of the box.

I got my first scope in ‘86. It was good enough for me to see moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. It was truly a religious experience.

Astrobiscuit needs to have a spot on Sky at night on BBC with this sort of information. Brilliant and informative.

Love ya! Great content!

What was the first telescope you recommended that sold really well but is now about £125? Id also be interested in that one too

Excellent information. Although as a drum n bass loving nerd, one feels like a Venn diagram outlying placement opportunity. Be well and stay safe.

I like your videos…because they are practical and applicable for everyone no matter what their budget….well done.❤️😊🔭

It makes my weekends when these little pearls drop, always a pleasure , always appreciated!!!!!

Great video! Cheers from Brazil! 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

Great video! So, you used a 6mm eyepiece. That's basically the max magnification for that scope I think. But did you use a filter to avoid the bright ball I see with my scope? Also, did you need to remove the 90 degree reflector, or was it a straight throught view to avoid the distortion from that component? Would love the tips as I desperately want to improve my viewing.

Great video as always. I'm surprised you don't have more subs

You should know that my five-year-old thinks this is the best telescope video period. We’ve watched it several times and he asks for it by the name he calls it: “The Dancing Mover” for the little bit of dancing you do in the beginning. He’s memorized things the way only a 5 year old can, including not only words but Riktenstein’s music. And he helped me open a present to myself today: an 80mm acro just like the one you mention in the video! All the best!

I'm very surprised the astromaster outperformed the 10cm dob. It is known that reflectors are worse than same-aperture refractors because of the middle obstruction and it is also known that longer scopes create less errors but that's a huge aparture difference we are talking about here. Was the dob acclimated and collimated perfectly? Consider me shocked lol.

The comparison is fair: Which entry level scope will show what _unmodified_? A traditional slow FH design is pretty forgiving in terms of adjustment, although it is possible to screw up even that, but chances are it will be great on planets out of the box. Fast FH designs are great widefield scopes, but suck on planets. A super fast newton is a hell to adjust and fails as expected without very precise collimation, independent of the mirror, plus it really needs an open mirror cell. Now if you become a nerd and revise these scopes, most will show more (the spherical mirror being the exception), but first need to get infected by the astro virus.

What a great video and advice! Thanks

Another great video thanks for the information

Not another telescope I'll need to buy!

noob question for the alpha nerds: were those newtonians collimated and does that have any effect on image quality? Asking because i'm researching for my own first scope =)

Great video as always. Thanks!

what an epic video ! Looking for my first telescope, and i was focusing on a 6 or 8 inch dobson, i know it's a different price bracket, but i'm really liking your actual footage what you get !

Great video very helpful and love the intro too

Great video, I was looking for a telescope for under £100, and all of the scopes you reviewed I have looked at but was not sure what the best of the lot was. Now I know!!...

Thanks. this made my weekend. I hope the next video comes soon.

Great video as always!

I had to watch this twice. I was hungry for another Astrobiscuit video. Bravo!!

Love ur narration u really make them with love of astrophotography

I have an 80mm long tube Celestron that I bought 20 years ago which never saw much use - this video has motivated me to pull it out of my closet. Subscribed!

Oh my god IM HOOOOME! Where have you been my whole life Biscuit? Im a huge nerd that suffers surrounded by lower life forms (working in the drilling industry is depressing). Loved the vid and ill be looking into you more thoroughly cheers!