Gskyer 70mm Kids Travel Telescope Set

I bought this knowing nothing about telescopes and not knowing what I could expect to see through this thing.

Now I know more, I think this is a decent value, but it comes with A LOT of cons.

In telescopes, the aperture size matters much more than magnification. The bigger the aperture, the better the image will be. This is a 70mm aperture (2.75 inches), which is about as small as you can get. It’s typical for an “entry-level” telescope, and a decent value for the money if you want to get into stargazing without dropping 500 bucks or more on a bigger scope.

However, if I could do it over again, I would’ve spent more and gone with a better one.

First, as with all beginner telescopes, it is actually much harder to use than a more intermediate level one. This is something well-known in the amateur astronomy group I’ve joined, and they never, EVER recommend buying a beginner telescope, ESPECIALLY for kids.

Because most kids like looking AT stuff more than looking FOR it. And with this telescope, far more time is spent hunting for objects than actually looking at them.

My kid doesn’t have the patience or attention span for that, but I rather enjoy the challenge, so I do it. Which brings me to the next problem.

This is made for kids. As such, the stand is very short. Which means that all the time you spend hunting for things, you’ll having to be hunched over, crouched down, or kneeling on the ground.

And if you live in a place with a lot of light pollution, you won’t be able to see much more than stars, the Moon, or the brightest planets. Even Mars is difficult to see through this telescope, and you can’t make out any detail whatsoever on the surface.

You can make out SOME faint detail on Jupiter, especially if you go away from light pollution on a clear, moonless night. And you can just make out Saturn’s rings.

Venus, on the other hand, is very easy to see. Especially now, near the end of April 2020, it is the brightest it’ll be all year, so we’ve been looking at it every night. It’s too bright, even at its dimmest, to make out any detail, but you can see what phase it’s in.

Galaxies, most nebulas, and many star clusters are beyond the ability of this telescope, but that being said, I was able to see a planetary nebula called The Ghost of Jupiter last night.

For perspective, I’ve had a few weeks of use and practice, and feel comfortable with the telescope, and have a number of apps, charts, and star maps to help me find things, and it STILL took over an hour for me to finally find it, put it close enough to the center of my field of view to use with max magnification, and put it in focus.

And even then, it looked like a hazy, bluish star. We couldn’t make out any detail or the distinctive eye-shape that can be seen with even slightly larger scopes.

Still, it was cool and the kid loved it. I consider it worth the effort, but my back is killing me today.

Don’t get me wrong, for an entry-level telescope, this is good. It’ll serve our needs while we save up for an upgrade. But, like all entry-level telescopes, this is harder to use and not powerful enough to see much.

All the time required to hunt for things, for what many may consider a disappointing result, could potentially end up killing a kid’s enthusiasm.

If you absolutely MUST get an entry-level telescope, this is a good choice. But if at all possible, save up and get a larger aperture.

This telescope is perfect for my 8 year old son. The ease of assembly, and use makes it a must have for those learning to explore the stars and moon. He also loves using our phones to easily take pictures of the images he was looking at.

A great idea but in reality, for novice astronomers, like us, this was not easy to put together and make work as intended.
The instructions were vague, not clear to understand.
Some of the language or lingo was very unfamiliar which caused further confusion.
After 4 different competent adults attempted to put the telescope together, using more common sense than anything else, none were ever able to get it to work properly. And boy did we all try for hours on end.
In particular, we never could figure out how to get the scope to focus and be able to view the moon properly.
Clarified, step-by-step instructions that explain to someone who is unfamiliar to the subject would have been more helpful.
We were not successful with either viewing “How-To” videos nor with a customer service to assist.
The quality and design were good but being able to use it was a failure.
Best of luck to anyone who masters this piece of equipment.

I bought this as a gift for my grandkids and the intent was to allow them to witness the “Christmas Star”, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21. The plan was to capture the event nightly from December 19 through December 22.

Receiving and unboxing the telescope was pretty straightforward. The instructions were somewhat trying, but given that there were only a few “moving parts” it was easy enough to figure out. The only problem we encountered was that the adapter for allowing the telescope to connect to a smartphone was missing half of the adapter and we could not connect a phone to the telescope. No idea why the part was missing. We unboxed the telescope on our dining room table and when we discovered the part was missing we had no less than 5 adults searching for it, to no avail. We didn’t lose the part, we just never had it. That was disappointing when you consider that being able to attach a phone was one of the primary reasons for selecting Gysker and we lost our opportunity for the grandkids to record their witness of the grand event.

Setting that bit aside, the telescope worked wonderfully. It was easy to set up, with all of the [available] parts fitting nicely into the supplied carrying case. We transported the telescope to our observation area and the telescope set up easily. The ‘spotter’ scope allowed us to get on target quickly and the aperture and zoom features allowed for a spectacular view, including many of the moons surrounding the planets. We even used the spotting scope and a smartphone app to align the telescope with other stars for equally breathtaking views and we spent about 2.5 hours searching out various objects in the night sky each time we went out. (From dark until bedtime).

The grandkids (10, 9 and 7) really took to the telescope, learning how to use the various parts and functions rather quickly, even to the point that they could select and observe a star on their own. The tripod was solid and held a stable image and everything, sans phone adapter, worked very well.

If I was rating just the telescope on cost to function-ability, I would rate the Gysker telescope 10 stars. It is a very good telescope for the money and since we wanted the kids to get excited about the night sky, this was a great purchase. The ONLY disappointment was because I specifically chose this telescope because we could attach a smartphone to record an event that only happens every 800 years and then was unable to do exactly that, well, it was a real letdown.

Even at that, I would tell anyone wanting to start amateur exploration of the sky that this is still a great telescope for the money.

Telescope works very well and we are happy with the purchase