

Tasco’s customer service ranges from extremely poor to nonexistent, another thing to consider if you’re even thinking about buying one of their telescopes. The yellow-gold color on the tubes isn’t particularly appealing, and it clashes with the black crinkle finish on the rest of the parts. It may just be my personal preference, and the aesthetic appeal should of course not be a top priority when shopping for telescopes, but I think the color choice on the Luminova scopes is awful. Their Amazon descriptions of their telescopes aren’t much better – the 114mm bills itself as a Bushnell for some reason in part of the description! Thus, getting correct information proved to be a little difficult at first when I was researching this telescope – everything I’ve read is garbled. The descriptions aren’t even consistent, there are constant grammatical and spelling issues, and all in all it seems like it was designed by middle schoolers. Tasco’s website is laughably bad in quality. That being said, it is not an unusable telescope it’s just not a great one either and you can do far, far better for the price. The Luminova 114 is billed as capable of “675x” and other impossible feats. I was hard-pressed to find any other reviews of the Luminova 114. They no longer occupy the department store or Walmart shelves they once did due to the general decline of the American retail industry and telescope sales as a whole. Today, Tasco is a shell of what it once was, owned by Bushnell. Tasco also sold some of their best telescopes since the Space Race era during that period, such as “StarGuide” GoTo telescopes that were more or less just rebranded Celestron NexStars. So much so, in fact, that when Celestron wasn’t doing so well financially in the early 2000s, Tasco actually bought out the California-based company and revitalized them with flashy marketing and the NexStar line. eBay is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tasco.Tasco’s name has been widely synonymous with “junk” to amateur astronomers since it came on the scene in the 1960s – though they did produce some surprisingly good equatorially mounted refractors back in the 1960s and 1970s, most of what they’ve ever sold has been unsatisfactory, to say the least.ĭespite this, Tasco actually used to be a titan of the amateur/beginner telescope manufacturing industry.

Manufacturers use three types of materials in tripods. Calculations can be made that help to determine what the lowest and highest useful magnifications may be for a 60mm aperture or what magnification can be used to see the finest detail of an object in a 60mm scope.įrom what types of materials are tripods made? These numbers can be used as a general guide for observers to determine what they might expect to see when using the device. It is also called aperture, and it indicates the size of a telescope's objective lens or primary mirror.

This number refers to the optical diameter of the instrument. It then reflects that light toward a hole on the side of the instrument where the image can be viewed. The primary mirror collects light and reflects it towards a secondary mirror. Refractive models use two glass lenses: an objective lens to gather light and an eyepiece lens to magnify the image.Ī reflective telescope employs two concave mirrors instead of glass lenses. Each category describes how the telescope collects an image that the observer views in the eyepiece. These labels are used to distinguish the two major categories into which these optical tools are separated.

What is the difference between a reflective and refractive telescope? There are a few companies, including Tasco Worldwide, that manufacture these devices for use by casual observers and backyard astronomers alike. Telescopes provide viewers with a more detailed look at celestial objects. If you enjoy gazing at the night sky, you may want to find an instrument that can bring things more clearly into focus. Learn About Tasco 60mm Telescopes and Their Accessories
