Celestron Astro Fi 102 Wi-Fi Maksutov Wireless Reflecting Telescope, Black

Vision is great but the wifi and automatic alignment functionality are just impossible. The poor manual and online support don’t make things better.

Zufrieden

This is a fantastic beginner telescope. Easy to set up and easy to use once you’ve got some clear skies. It can be difficult to align the scope using the app, and I’ve had some disconnection issues, but I think that’s my phone’s fault (it keeps disconnecting from scope and switching to home network). The photos are views of the Moon from the 10mm and 25mm eyepiece. I literally put my iPhone on top of the eyepiece and snapped them. They are unedited. Blame the poor focus on my guerilla style photography. I was so focused on wanting to see the Moon I just took some quick snaps and went back to looking! Very happy beginner astronomer!

great telescope, easy to use, it has wifi access point, you can connect your tablet or mobile to​ it run via free planetarium app. Just click on a planet or start and telescope automatically point on it.

Did some research before purchasing, I read all the reviews indicating wifi dropping issues but have not experienced this when using an iPhone. I used this telescope for hours one night and there were no issues. The eyepieces would need to be upgraded to improve the image quality., which is the same for most telescopes on the market at this price. This is a great value for a beginner’s telescope package. Having the motorized mount is convenient in light polluted areas. Using star align method is easy to get the Goto system aligned. Followed the instructions and aligned the red dot sight with the scope during the day time, this helped alignment with 3 stars at night. It’s tricky using the app to know what star you’re physically looking at in the sky, but if using compass mode in the app and holding the phone up you can see that the app shows a brighter star than the surrounding star so that’s mostly likely the star you’re physically looking at. Update: Still working great. I enabled guided access on my iPhone when using the SkyPortal app. When guided access is enabled, your iPhone will remain at that screen and not turn off. This helps tremendously for when you’re having a long night of Stargazing. I also enable the iPhone color filter through the accessibility options. I use the red filter, which makes everything red on my phone and it helps cut out any blinding white lights that will affect your vision during stargazing sessions. It also helps save your phone battery. I used this scope for 4 hours, with my phone constantly being on during the entire time and only drop a small percentage of my phone battery. I also use a 12v battery rechargeable power bank instead of 8 AA batteries to power the mount.

The 102 Astro-Fi is a very good and attractive product but only on the paper!!! It would be the perfect product if the sky portal application was working, if the documentation was explaining how to align, if the motors on the motorized mount and/or the electronics were of better quality etc… Got it and spend nights trying to align and make it work without success. Documentation is crap and doesn’t tell anything for alignment. Just the “application will drive you”. In order to align you need really to go YouTube and request “Align an Astro-fi”. You will get some tips. Now talking about the application. It doesn’t work with the Apple Max phones and unfortunately, they don’t offer me a new phone just to run the 102. The 102 the fourth night trying to properly align started spinning around without any way to stop that until power-off the telescope. Since then, there is no way that the telescope responds to the commands from the application moving it. Seems to be broken. I am expecting a response from Celestron tech support, but with all problems I gave up, packed the telescope and will return it. Disappointed I don’t trust anymore that Celestron is making good products and I think I would never again buy this brand. Seriously, if you want to enjoy observing the sky don’t buy the 102 and any Astro-Fi. You will spend your time with all problems around than enjoying observing Saturn rings.