Features:

  • Aperture: 130mm(5.1"). Focal Length: 650mm. Focal Ratio: f/5.0. Rack-and-Pinion Focuser, Setting Circles, Latitude Control w/ Scale
  • Large, stable German Equatorial mount with slow motion controls makes tracking celestial objects smooth and simple
  • Low (26mm), medium (9mm), and high (6.3mm) magnification eyepieces give you variety for any viewing situation & 2x barlow lens doubles the magnifying power of each eyepiece
  • Red dot viewfinder helps you point your scope at objects you want to observe & accessory tray stores accessories while observing
  • Includes Astronomical Software and Instructional DVD
A great scope for beginners!

I bought this scope with low expectations, despite the decent reviews it was getting. I've been a binocular astronomer for the last year, so anything had to be an upgrade from that, right? Not true, but that's for another time. Setup takes about half an hour. There are a few parts to assemble, but the instructions are clear and easy to follow. The tripod and mount combo is pretty heavy while the tube assembly weighs next to nothing. If you move this thing more than a couple feet, I'd take the tube off and move the tripod first. The tube is about four feet long, so it's going to bang into your face and knees while you move it anyway. Gotta keep 'em separated. I spent the rest of that first day aligning the optics. Well, I spent about an hour, and most of that was aligning the red dot sight. Following the instructions for aligning the mirror, I had it collimated in about two minutes. This was my first time collimating anything. So you can imagine how excited I was when I aimed it at the neighbor's car several block away and could clearly read the embossing on the hubcap. Then I just turned on the red dot finder and aligned it with the center of that hubcap. I was ready to go for nighttime use. First off, the included eyepieces are kind of crap. The outer edge is very blurry, and it extends far into the center of the image. I also noticed more starburst color around stars with the included pieces. I already had a set of Celestron pieces I'd found online for cheap, so I used those instead. Maybe it was just the set I got. Right off hand, I can tell you this is great for star clusters. I spent a good twenty minutes looking at the Beehive Cluster through varying eyepieces. Then I aimed for the brightest thing I could see, the planet Jupiter. Through binoculars I can see a bright ball with three smaller balls nearby. Using this scope and a higher magnification eyepiece, I could see bands on Jupiter. Only about four or five, but I was looking at the face of another planet with my own eyes. Not in a picture or a documentary. I tried out one of my planetary filters and could see slightly more contrast between the bands. I highly recommend you get planetary filters and better eyepieces! My next target was the moon a few nights later. You can see small craters clearly. Large craters have nice detail. I couldn't see a ton of surface area, as the moon was just starting to show in the sky. But what I could see was amazing. I recommend you use a moon filter, as that sucker is bright. REALLY bright. My latest endeavor was to see Mars while in opposition in May of 2016. Mars is usually pretty far away, and it's smaller than Earth, so seeing it this close doesn't happen often. It was fuzzy, as I expected, but I still got a nice large round Mars in my view. I couldn't spot the caps, but I could make out darker areas if I looked at it out of my peripheral. I can't recommend this scope enough for beginners, and I look forward to passing it down to my son when he gets older. Pros: Easy to put together, collimate, set up, and use after checking out a few YouTube videos on equatorials. I can see planets with it, which is exciting, and star clusters are amazing under a wide field eyepiece. Cons: The included eyepieces are okay. They'll work until you get better ones. I don't see them being a bad enough problem to take away a star though.

First telescope I ever used - (lot of fun at a good price)

I am a novice and this is the first real telescope I have owned (or even used). At first I was disappointing. I could see things clearer with my wife's Celestron binoculars. Even she was giving me the "You got sucker'ed look". However after reading through some astronomy forums, I found that if I use less magnification (weaker eyepiece) I tended to get better (clearer) results. We have looked at Jupiter and Saturn with this scope and it is pretty awe inspiring to see the rings around Saturn and the storm clouds of Jupiter. I must add that I am 49 and my eyes are not that great anymore. The details take some concentration to see but on a clear moonless night, we have easily seen up to 7 of Jupiter's moons. Mars is boring...just a red light basically. As I mentioned before, my experience level with telescopes before I bought this was zero. I was expecting to see huge crystal clear images. I am still a novice for sure. The images are small and get more grainy as you use higher magnification (according to what I read this is normal), but having said all that... This is still a very good scope for beginners. It is very stable and has a nice pinpoint red dot eyepiece that, if set up according to the manual, works perfectly (just don't forget to turn it off or you will be stealing the battery out of your laser pointer on the next clear night). If you want to look at the moon, leave the lens cover on and take off the small cover (on the lens cover). That will let in more than enough light to give you awesome images of the moon (or other bright objects - sometimes it is better to look at Saturn and Jupiter like this). You can't see the moon rover from earth (with ANY telescope from what I read) but the craters look amazing. I will also note that this scope is heavy. That is apparently also normal and adds to the stable images that we are able to get from it. As a result we only really take it out when we have a good clear night or when we want to show someone Saturn or Jupiter. I plan on using this to look for some other sky stuff this summer (first summer with it) so I will try to update my review after I have a chance to see if it will capture a nebula or galaxy. Good luck and have fun!

This is absolutely great as a beginner telescope

This is absolutely great as a beginner telescope. I wouldn't get it for a child (for many reasons), but for at least a teenager or older it's great. You can get a very good view of bodies in our solar system, and even looking at distant stars is a pleasure with this scope. Is it the best or most powerful? No. Can you see into forever? Not without drugs, I suppose. But as an absolute amateur who just loves stargazing and learning about space, this scope has brought me a lot of joy when using it.

Great beginner telescope for adults.

I'm new to astronomy. I have found this telescope very easy to use and a lot of fun. If you are interested in learning astronomy but don't want to spend a ton of money this is a great place to start.

How?

I'm an old fart and have had telescopes for a main portion of my life. I love the sky and stars. Astronomy has always been my major hobby. I just wanted something decent to look at the Moon, major planets and, since I live in a one bedroom apartment surrounded by severe light pollution, at least something to resolve the brighter binary stars without spending too much. I'd had Meade telescopes before and because of the name, I went with the Polaris 130. Wow!!! Way WAY better than I expected. Excellent manufacturing and machining. The optics are superb. When I took it out on my first night, I figured it would take a while to collimate the glass. Surprise!!! Everything was dead on. Impressive since the telescope was made in China, shipped across the Pacific to California, then to me in Massachusetts. The only drawback for telescopes such as this is the fact that they are bundled with cheap eyepieces. Uuugghhh! I knew that when I ordered this telescope and bought a decent set of Meade Plossles to go with it. What I can't figure out is the price. Excellent materials, excellent manufacturing and machining, exemplary optics. Then all the shipping involved. How can you do it for the price?

Surprisingly good package for such a low price.

I'm taking a college Astronomy class and bought this as a last minute tool while on a VERY restricted budget. I have a little bit of previous experience with home telescopes but am a definite amateur. Telescopes can be very expensive and serve rather specialized purposes, but most people who want to buy their first telescope really don't know what they want, need something that's a good compromise in many areas so they can dabble and see what they like most in astronomy, and need something that wont break the bank in case they really don't get into observing much. The Meade Polaris 130 fits all those requirements and delivers a solid tool that (with a couple small upgrades) could serve well for a lifetime. I was surprised to find that most parts are metal and fairly sturdy. The scope's tube is steel. The EQ mount is heavy cast steel. The tripod legs are fairly thick steel tubing. The mirror is parabolic (which is a good thing, and somewhat surprising considering how cheap this package is). The aperture size of 130mm (5") is big enough to actually capture light to see many things in the night sky. The focuser is OK, it's built well with smooth action though it's a tad coarse, so at higher powers it can get a little tricky. The red dot finder that comes with this feels very cheap, yet it works very well and is easy to align with the scope and does a good job pointing the scope at objects. The EQ mount combined with the tripod is pretty sturdy for such a cheap package and is an important consideration as some cheap scopes really suffer in this area. The tripod comes pre-assembled so you just spread the legs, screw on the EQ mount, and then mount the scope. You certainly need to watch some videos to understand how to use an EQ mount if you haven't used one in the past, but it really boils down to pointing the scope at Polaris, locking down the main mounts solid, and then allowing the RA and Dec pivots to move freely so you can point the scope at other objects, and at that point you can track the object through its arcing path with a simple turn of a knob. It's well worth learning. In use, it does take some practice but after a couple hours of use it becomes pretty intuitive. The scope comes with 3 eyepieces and a barlow (2x multiplier) that are the weakest components in this package. The 26mm and 9mm are OK for starting out, but the 6mm is just about useless. These eyepieces will get you up and running but suffer from significant distortion from center to edge and are just not terribly clear. The very first upgrade you'll want for this scope would be some decent Plossl eyepieces. The scopes end cap dust cover can serve as a moon filter by popping out a small plug to restrict most incoming light when viewing a large bright moon. As for viewing with the included eyepieces you can certainly see a lot of great lunar details. You can see Jupiter and her moons and should be able to make out the colored bands, though with limited clarity. You can easily pick up many clusters and nebulae with the lower powered eyepieces if you learn where to look (get a star chart and/or download Stellarium for PC and StarChart for your mobile device). Try working through a list like the Messier program to give you an idea of what you should target. The scope will vibrate a small bit during focusing so you have to make small estimated focusing changes and wait just a short moment for it to settle but this is not unusual in a small cheap scope and mount. Overall, I think this scope is a great value that is well-built for the sub-200 price tag. Its weak eyepieces are typical of a cheap scope and you can't blame the manufacturer as very nice eyepieces can cost more than this entire package... they gave you something to get started with (some expensive scopes do not even come with an eyepiece as people prefer to chose their own) and you'll be doing the right thing when you buy one or more nicer eyepieces (Plossl's will start as low as $30/each) to upgrade this and enhance your observing experience for many years to come.

Awesome telescope!

I am the type of person to get really excited about something, jump in, get a bunch of equipment for it and then wander on to something else, occasionally returning to the previous things in passing. As such a person, although I really wanted a 12" telescope with computer controls; I also didn't want to drop several thousand dollars just to wander off a few weeks later and have something too big to deal with and too hard to set up to bother with when I had a few days desire to play with it. After weeks of browsing the Internet over several years of occasional looking; I bought this as I wanted a Parabolic rather than Spherical mirror available on the 127 series telescopes. I have not regretted my decision at all. The Meade Poaris 130 is well built, has a great equipment kit for the money and looks really beautiful! It's also open enough that it quickly adjusts to temperature changes, going from indoors to out is a decently rapid process. I am in a large, light polluting city in the Midwest, so the regularly viewable stars are not nearly as numerous as I would normally want. Just using this to view stars was worth it for me. I've used it to see satellites, stars, planets and the moon and have had a lot of fun doing so. Granted, planets aren't much more than a tiny dot; but it's still fun to see them. The tripod is decent enough, I use it in my mostly wind sheltered back yard on an old wooden deck, and don't get too much wobble out of it. It is easy enough to set up now after I made a few changes, and sets up fast enough that I can usually go from decision to take it out to set up and looking within five to ten minutes. The Meade Polaris 130 went together easily; I was able to set it up easily after glancing through the instructions. I had issues with the scope tube counterweight constantly tilting the axis forward in the tripod no matter how tight I tightened the adjustment bolts. The manual had no fix for this, so I checked the Internet for answers and found that The issue was not well finished bolts and nuts which caused too much friction between the threads. I disassembled all the nuts and bolts on the tripod, cleaned and deburred them, and then reassembled them with light camera oil I had. My first time setting the tripod up and getting it properly adjusted took several hours. I drilled holes in my deck to put dowel pins in so that the next time I could just place it quickly in exactly the right spot. The second time I took it out and adjusted it, I marked register marks with a scribe on everything that moved so I could quickly set it to point at Polaris no matter where it had moved to. I also added a stop to the tube so I could quickly attach the tube and keep perfect balance on the tripod, and marked the counterweight rod in case the weight shifted. Now it takes me longer to take the telescope out of the closet and run it outside than it does to set it up. I do take it to work when I am somewhere overnight, and it still takes me a bit to adjust it for the new location, but getting it set up at home afterwards is extremely fast. I intend to do more modifications to it later, but out of the box there was surprisingly little that needed to be done for the price of the telescope. The tracking adjustment knobs are excellent and intuitive to use, searching with the Equatorial mount loose is easy once you play with it a bit and the red dot finder is really easy to search with. On the downside, the red dot viewfinder can be bumped out of alignment easily and I've burned through a few batteries by leaving it on accidentally. I'm intending to make some registering pieces to make taking it off and putting it on easily, and getting a remote momentary use switch for it so I don't keep burning through the batteries. Also on what I find to be the downside, the aperture cover does not stick into the telescope tube, but rather just sits on top of it. I sometimes forget this and it falls off when I forget to hold the tube upright. The stock lenses are good. The addition of the 2x Barlow prevented me from wanting to buy one of those kits you see, and the lenses are all good. Sometimes I see little rainbows around stars and some doubling of the lines on the moon under much higher power. When I bought the telescope, I picked up an Orion 25% neutral density moon filter to go with it, and it's fine when the moon is fairly dim but it is not enough of a filter for me when we have a mostly full or full moon. I will be buying the 12% to go along with it along with a solar filter for daytime looking at the sun use... Because who doesn't love staring at the sun? Overall, I could not be happier with this telescope at the price I paid ($179) and would remain a value for even more. The photo attached was taken by hand with an iPhone hovering over the eyepiece. It was vastly more clear than that.

Excellent optics

Great telescope with sharp optics and stable tripod. Slight learning curve using the equatorial mount but got the hang of it in no time. When I eventually upgrade it'll definitely be a Meade.

easy to use but dont expect miracles

u will need to upgrade eyepiece for better views. You cant get everything for under 200 usd. but a good scope for the price. heavy and tripod adjusts high enough to prevent back problems and handles light wind. im able to sit in a chair with a back, adjust controls and keep planets in view. im 6 foot so i wouldnt think be a big problem either for folks up to 6'6" or so, (depending on chair of course). standing for hours would get old.

On the whole I have been impressed and I am very happy with my purchase

After playing around with inexpensive, smaller telescopes for a year (two years ago) this is the one I settled on as my upgrade scope. On the whole I have been impressed and I am very happy with my purchase, but I was surprised by a few things. Now that I've used the Polaris 130 for a year I finally decided I was ready to share my impressions. First a quick summary since some people don't like to read all of my ramblings. Pros: -Good balance between portability and capability (my most important criteria) -Doesn't come with useless accessories -Solid tripod and mount -I like the versatile tripod tray -Quick to set up and tear down -Convenient carrying case is available (but not included) -Impressive low and medium power views, especially with eyepiece upgrades Cons: -Not capable of quite as high a magnification as I expected -Doesn't include collimation tools (this is common) -Eyepieces and Barlow are okay, but the scope really benefits from upgrades (easily remedied) -I don't like red dot finders (again, easily remedied) -Mine required some adjustments to secondary mirror position (easy to fix) -Slow motion control for RA axis gets in the way sometimes (not a big deal) I'll start with some backstory: Two years ago my wife got me a couple telescopes for Christmas (a Rokinon 76mm reflector and a Coleman 50mm refractor). The reflector was good, the refractor... not so much. However, it sparked my interest in astronomy and I fell I love with the hobby. I also quickly outgrew the 76mm scope and wanted something with more horsepower. I didn't want my wife to feel like I was rejecting her thoughtful gift by immediately replacing it with something else, so I decided to live with the scope I had for a year before upgrading. I think that ended up being a good decision. I learned how to push the limits of what small scopes are capable of, and by using my small scope on as many targets as possible I learned what kind of things I enjoyed observing. Mostly I liked nebulae and star clusters and I didn't particularly care for splitting double stars, which helped direct my shopping for the next telescope: a fairly fast telescope with more aperture that was still portable since I have to carry my telescope down a fight of stairs outside in the dark, then down the block and across the street to a vacant lot in order to use it without being blocked by trees. I liked the Rokinon scope a lot, so I first looked at other Rokinon offerings. There was a long tube 130 that was appealing, but when looking at reviews everyone seemed to recommend Orion scopes, so I then looked there. Orion sold two 130s: the long tube "EQ" and the shorter "ST". Again, reviewers seemed to steer people toward the ST for its parabolic mirror. The shorter focal length sounded like it would be ideal for my needs. Then I noticed Celestron and Meade also made short tube 130s with parabolic mirrors. Which to get? What was the difference? Not a lot other than price it turns out, at least not that I can tell. The Orion scope came with more expensive accessories, but I didn't want all that junk. I already had decent eyepieces and star charts and a flashlight, etc. and while the Orion's mirror came center-marked that wasn't hard to do myself on the Rokinon. The Orion came with a collimation cap but I already had a Cheshire and had gotten good at collimating my mirrors. The Meade was the cheapest of the three, seemed to come with the best tripod legs and didn't come with anything I didn't want. I was sold. I think the first thing I looked at was the Orion nebula, and I was not disappointed. There was a noticeable difference between the 130mm and the 76mm I'd been used to. Nice. I then noticed some other things: the phrase "gnat's rear end" comes to mind when it comes to focusing and high power views (anything over 100x) seemed to be not as sharp as I expected. Getting a good focus required a lot of effort since the "sweet spot" was very small and easy to miss at higher powers. A two-speed focuser would have been wonderful, and I'm still looking for a way to upgrade the focuser that won't break the bank. Somewhere along the way I'd picked up a broken cheap junk Bushnell 114mm f/7.8 reflector from a thrift store to fix up and use as a loaner, so I set them up side-by-side to compare using Series 4000 Super Ploessls and a #140 apochromatic 2x Barlow and #128 3x Barlow (not at the same time) in the Meade and generic Chinese Ploessls and 2x Barlow in the Bushnell. To my surprise, while the Meade had the edge in low and medium power views, the 130 fell off bigtime at higher power. At 180x the Bushnell was considerably sharper on the moon than the Meade was at 160x. I then discovered that the phrase "gnat's rear end" also applied to the Meade's collimation tolerances. Tweaking collimation improved things a bit but for whatever reason (slower optics? smaller secondary obstruction?) the beat up Bushnell I bought for $25 remained the better high power scope. The Meade is better in every other way, though. The general rule says scopes should be capable of 2x their objective diameter in magnification, or 260x in this case, but this doesn't seem to be so for the Polaris 130. That's okay, high power viewing of the moon and planets was not why I bought the scope. Okay, down to business. The scope comes in several pieces but isn't hard to assemble. Some reviewers complain about the assembly but it's really not that complicated even without directions if you look at the picture on the box and take your time. The manual does a good job of explaining how everything works and how to use the scope. Equatorial mounts take some getting used to if you haven't used on before but once you get the hang of it you won't want to use anything else. Adjust the tripod for your latitude (easy to do with the adjustment screw), point it vaguely North, and voila, you're good to go for visual observing. I had some pleasant surprises when I opened the box. Some of the things that look plastic in the online pictures are actually metal, specifically the "spider" (secondary mirror holder on the open end of the tube) and the tube rings. My biggest challenge was balancing aperture and portability. Since I have to go down a flight of stairs with my telescope and carry all my gear (book, eyepieces, camp chair) in one trip to my observing site 75 yards away size and weight mattered a lot to me. Many, many seasoned astronomers recommend nothing smaller than an 8" Dob for beginners, then go on to say that you should really consider a 10" or 12" Dob instead. Yeah? I'd love to see them manhandle something the size and weight of a hot water heater down a flight of stairs in the dark. I'll wait at the bottom with my finger ready to press "call" to 911 for an ambulance. At 26 pounds, the Polaris 130 is the biggest thing I felt like I could carry one handed since my other hand needs to carry the camp chair and star chart book. One thing I really liked was that you can actually use everything in the box. Too many other telescopes come with 3x Barlows and SR 4mm eyepieces so they can claim "675x power!" on the box when the SR 4mm eyepiece alone has too much magnification to be useful with the scope. Not so here. The eyepieces are decent quality and work fine and the Barlow works pretty well, too. With that said, they could use some improvement, though. Better quality Ploessl eyepieces are sharper and give a bigger image with wider field of view. Makes the views much more pleasing. The medium and higher power views seem to benefit the most, although a nice wide angle makes the low power field more enjoyable, and low power is where this scope really shines. I use the more "expendable" Cassini 26mm Erfle most of the time (to keep my older Series 400 eyepieces in tiptop shape) as well as a 10mm Ploessl and the 2x Barlow the scope came with for medium (65x) and high (130x) powers. I also use a Celestron 7-21 zoom eyepiece to help find faint things since I can use it to quickly vary the background darkness. a UHC nebula filter works well with this telescope, too. I have found that several objects (like M1, the Crab Nebula) that were completely invisible in the 76mm scope may also be invisible at low power in the 130mm, but if I gradually increase the power the background darkens enough that I can finally see the object. There's a balance: too much magnification and the target object dims too much. I don't like the red dot finder because I live in a light polluted area and I like to star hop, so I need some sort of magnifying finder to help me see stars I can't see with the naked eye. It's also much easier to follow the directions in my beat up copy of Turn Left At Orion with a traditional finderscope. Fortunately, it was an easy fix since most 5x24 and some 6x30 finders will attach to the mounting bolts with minimum fuss. The Orion 6x30 finders are nice, but because of their dovetail connection you'll need to modify the Polaris 130 a bit to put a dovetail receiver on it. I bought an older Meade 6x30 finder to use that matched up to the existing mounting bolts without modification. They've gotten harder to come by, though. The tripod and mount are pretty robust. They hold the scope solidly, it's less likely to tip over than the more precarious Bushnell 114, and with the legs shortened almost all the way the eyepiece is at a perfect height to use while seated in my little folding camp chair and the shorter legs keep vibration to a minimum. It's a comfortable telescope to use, and the controls are easy to find by feel in the dark. The dovetail connection makes set up and tear down amazingly quick, and the optional carrying case fits well. I can take the scope from zipped up in the bag to set up ready to observe in less than 2 minutes. Grab and go anyone? In general I prefer the flat triangular trays with raised sides (like my Rokinon and the Infinity 60 and 70 scopes come with) over the more traditional thin tray with holes in it for eyepieces (Tasco and entry level Celestron scopes come with these) because they're more versatile at storing things. This one manages to be the best of both worlds. There are holes for three eyepieces and lots of flat space for everything else. I ended up liking it way more than I expected. It attaches securely and makes the tripod very rigid. My only complaint about the mount controls is that in certain orientations the scope tube pushes against the RA axis control cable. Not a big deal, I usually just remove the cable and use the big gear for the optional motor drive to control the RA axis. On my EQ1 refractor mounts you can move the RA adjustment cable from one side to the other but that's not the case here. I mentioned before that collimation required "gnat's rear end" precision but that shouldn't scare you off from the telescope. Any reflector scope is gong to need collimation now and then so you'll have to get used to the idea eventually. Fortunately, it's not hard to do with the right tools. I personally find a Cheshire to be more useful than a laser but either one works. The nice thing with the Polaris 130 is that the tube is short enough you can make adjustments while looking through the Cheshire which speeds the process up and makes learning to collimate the mirrors easier. The secondary mirror adjusting screws were extremely tight the first time I adjusted them (I was afraid the Allen wrench would strip out the heads) but after removing them and giving them a small dose of lubricant they work better. The primary mirror has a sort of soft rubber o-ring between it and the tube meaning you only have to use the three "pulling" screws to adjust the primary and once you get it in the right spot the three "pushing" screws can be tightened down to secure the mirror in position. As easy as it gets. The only problem I had with the scope was that the secondary mirror was not positioned correctly when I got it. Basically, the secondary mirror was too far away from the primary mirror and thus wasn't centered with the focuser. It wasn't very hard to fix: loosen the center bolt and then tighten the three adjustment bolts, then repeat as necessary until the mirror was further away from the spider. Having a Cheshire made it easy to center the secondary mirror. That might be trickier with a laser. I usually spend a lot of time modifying, improving, and tinkering with my telescopes but the only additional modification I've done to this one was to install some flock paper to the inside of the tube. This was something of a pain since there's not a lot of room to work with inside the tube but it does seem to have helped with contrast and helped battle stray light in my neighborhood. Really the only weakness is with high power views, so if your interest lies only with the moon and planets then a different scope might be a better choice. In my case, I just supplemented the Polaris 130 with another scope for lunar/planetary observing. I'd intended to get a Polaris 90 refractor for that purpose but ended up getting an unbelievable deal on an older ETX 90 RA that is now my moon and planets scope. The Polaris 130 is my "everything else" scope. One thing I wondered about for a long time but only recently found the answer to is whether the Polaris series telescopes would work on the Infinity 80, 90, and 102 tripods and vice versa. The answer is yes and no. I bought my dad an Infinity 102 for Christmas and while the 102 happily sits on the EQ2 mount from the 130, the 130 is simply too heavy for the Infinity Alt-Az mount. I think the Polaris 70, 80, and 90 refractors would probably work fine on the Infinity mount, but the114, 127, and 130 reflectors are simply too big. Bummer. I don't mean for any of my criticisms above to imply there is anything inherently wrong with the scope or that potential buyers should be concerned. On the contrary, I've been extremely pleased with the telescope and it and I have spent many hours out in the dark together. A year later and I still smile every time I bring it out. Occasionally I think a little more aperture might be nice but then I look at the stairs and decide, "Nope." For me, at least, the Polaris 130 has been the perfect balance between aperture and portability. Because the scope's performance is better suited for low and medium power I'm not sure it makes the best first telescope for someone but if you want to make a leap of faith it's not hard to learn with and will take much longer to outgrow than a smaller scope would as long as you keep I mind the scope's limitations. As a second scope it has been phenomenal at meeting my needs and there's no way I would trade it for anything else.

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