Celestron 22403 Inspire 100AZ Refractor Smartphone Adapter Built-In Refracting Telescope - Blue

Product Information

The Inspire 100AZ’s optical tube is a 100mm f/6.6 refractor with a focal length of 660mm-or so they say; in fact, they just stopped down a 102mm f/6.5 slightly due to the design of the front of the telescope being slightly different from the norm. We’d also recommend getting a different eyepiece than the 20mm Kellner that comes with the Inspire 100AZ. It has 33x magnification and a 1.5 degree field of view, which is about the size of 3 full moons. A good low power eyepiece is a top recommendation on our list, as it will make finding deep-sky objects a lot easier and, for the largest targets, a wider field of view frames them a lot better—the Andromeda Galaxy, the Double Cluster, and many of the objects in Sagittarius being prime examples.

During my tests I pointed the Celestron Inspire 100AZ at Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the moon moving through its many phases. It is possible to see a little chromatic aberration in the form of a purplish-yellowish line around bright objects, but it's nowhere near as distracting as on cheaper telescopes. Manually locating and then fixing on to much dimmer, harder to find objects is a challenge when using the Celestron Inspire 100AZ. StarSense Explorer uses patented technology and your smartphone to determine exactly where the telescope is pointed in the night sky. A Lost in Space Algorithm (LISA), like the ones satellites use in orbit to correctly orient themselves, helps the app match star patterns it detects overhead to its internal database.A straight-through 9×50 finder will provide magnified close-up views of the stars and reveal stars and deep-sky objects fainter than what you can see with your naked eye. However, it can be somewhat uncomfortable to look through. A right-angle finder is also an option, and easier to look through, albeit heavy and expensive.

While it could not be considered an essential accessory, the Celestron further provides a red LED flashlight that is stowed in the centre of the mount head when not in use and can be used to illuminate the contents of the accessory tray when required, or alternatively used as a spotlight. It is possible to access these images by selecting “Save Images & Logs” from the Menu icon at the bottom left of the main screen before using StarSense Explorer. The app will then save the images it captures and they can be accessed later. We have provided access to the images so that they can be used for troubleshooting purposes. If you are having problems finding astronomical objects in the night sky using StarSense Explorer, these image and log files can help the Celestron Tech Support Team diagnose the issue. We recommend turning on “Save Images & Logs” only if you are having problems with StarSense Explorer and need to troubleshoot. Otherwise, the images will fill up the memory storage on your smartphone. To retrieve the image and log files, follow the steps below.

There’s nothing groundbreaking about the night sky views with this telescope but you will be able to see detail on the Moon and see the rings of Saturn. It's a great 'grab and go' scope that doesn't require any complex setup. Something you can take to the park for birdwatching or leave on the windowsill for nature or plane spotting.

The Celestron Inspire 100AZ is part of the Inspire line of refractors, so named because they are meant to inspire children and so forth, as well as be extremely easy to use. Other than the poor-quality telescopes making up Celestron’s poor-quality bargain lines like the PowerSeeker and AstroMaster series of telescopes, the Inspire refractors are meant to be Celestron’s flagship line of all-manual instruments. They’re a bit unusual in that they neither try to offer purely an aperture-for-price value (as with most reflectors) nor a “professional” appearance like many cheap equatorial or fork-mounted refractors.As for the Inspire 100AZ’s specs, it has an aperture of 100mm, a focal length of 660mm resulting in a focal ratio of f/6.6. What this means is that the device will be pretty balanced in the sense the images won’t be too wide or two narrow due to the focal ratio and in turn will be able to provide a roughly a 200x magnification when used at its highest magnification. Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Mars should look pretty great through the scope and fairly easy to locate. The finder included with the Inspire 100AZ is Celestron’s “StarPointer Pro” red dot finder. Advertised as an improvement over Celestron’s standard “StarPointer” (itself a generic red dot finder like the kind sold with many beginner telescopes), the StarPointer Pro is basically a failed attempt to copy the Telrad. It has two circles instead of a dot in the middle, both of which are exceedingly wide. It is somewhat hard to actually centre anything in the finder, or align it precisely, or keep it aligned with the telescope particularly well. However, for a telescope with a fairly short focal length and a consequently wide field of view, like the Inspire 100AZ, it works well enough to get targets in the field of view most of the time. But if you’re hunting for faint fuzzies that you might not recognise at first glance, we might recommend replacing the StarPointer.