Bushnell Voyager 100mm x 4.5" Family Reflector Telescope
by Bushnell

List Price: $289.99
Category: Digital Camera
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Digital Photo Product Details

• Ideal for novice and experienced astronomers
• Comes pre-assembled
• Unique design in cradle mount
• Magnification: 100x
• Objective lens: 4.5 inches

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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Bushnell Voyager 100mm x 4.5" Family Reflector Telescope

Customer Review: Not Nearly As Bad As Its Reputation
Summary: 3 Stars

1) It's made by Bushnell;
2) It has a spherical mirror; and
3) It's a copy of a scope (The AstroScan) that many folks cut their teeth on.

When the scope is out of collimation, stars present as gull wings, and this effect is automatically attributed to the spherical mirror, because Bushnell is the big bad guy among astrosnobs. Here's the good news: You can adjust the thing when this happens, and the gull wings go away. If you get an out-of-collimation AstroScan, the darling of the astrosnobs, there ain't nothin' you can do about it. (Heh! I gotta expect a lot of 'unhelpful' votes because of comments like this.)

This is a wide-field, low power scope. Period. Outfit it with eyepieces from the AstroScan, and you have yourself a nice casual picnic table telescope. Collimate it and crank it up to ~60X, and you get a very nice view of the sky - somewhere between a binocular and a telescope. (Search at about 15 X) In the Northern Hemisphere you can use it to see (among other things):

1) The Moon
2) The rings of Saturn
3) The moons of Jupiter. You'll even see a couple of belts on Jupiter
4) The phases of venus
5) Open clusters galore
6) The Dumbbell Nebula
7) The Andromeda Galaxy
8) The Lagoon Nebula
9) A bunch of globular clusters - though only as blurry balls
10) Comets, as they come around
11) The Great Nebula In Orion

Is it pro quality? No. If what you have is $... it's not a bad way to spend that. IMHO, the Orion StarBlast (a similar instrument) beats it squarely for ~$...dollars more. I've compared the Bushnell side by side with the new AstroScan, though, and the Bushnell comes out well ahead. The difference isn't subtle.

It's biggest disadvantage is decidedly negative snob appeal.

Description of Bushnell Voyager 100mm x 4.5" Family Reflector Telescope