GeoSafari Vega 600 Telescope Review

 

As a child some of my fondest memories are the hours I spent at night staring up at the stars or watching the moon eclipse. One day I found an OLD cheapy telescope in the bottom of my moms closet and although the thing barely worked I spent hours trying to use the crazy thing. I had always wanted a “real” telescope and was thrilled when I had the opportunity to try out Educational Insights GeoSafari Vega 600 Telescope. As you can see above it comes nicely packed in thick styrofoam. Each piece has a specific spot which easily stores everything in a snug location. It comes with the tripod, two interchangeable eye pieces, optical finder scope, image erector and the telescope itself which ranges from 30x to 150x depending on the eyepiece you attach.

The telescope comes with easy to read direction and we quickly put the telescope pieces together and mounted it on the tripod. I was immediately impressed with the quality of the telescope itself, however I noticed that the telescope is a little wobbly on the tripod. It doesn’t get a really tight grip causing it to move around a little bit if you touch it.

The kids were thrilled to have a telescope and just couldn’t wait until nighttime to check it out! They spent the morning spying on our neighbors chimney and looking for trees and birds! Since they are so small they had to stand on chairs to see!

My oldest son has particularly been interested in learning about the planets, moon/stars and space so we also used EI’s Far Out! Solar System Mapping Tool to go along with our celestial exploration. (which was absolutely fabulous by the way!) Oddly enough we have not gotten the opportunity to observe the moon yet as our house is surrounded by trees and we’ve also been out of town for the past 3+ weeks. The telescope is a bit wobbly and difficult to focus on the smaller stars but works well with larger objects (like chimneys!) and of course the moon.

 Overall this is a nice beginner telescope. Great for observing larger objects, comes with a great storage system and is seemingly very sturdy. It’s also very easy to set up which I appreciate when I have younger kids tugging at me to hurry up! It is pretty touchy if you’re looking through it and touching it at the same time so may not be the best for younger children (around toddler age) who like to touch everything! 🙂 But my 5 year old does pretty well with it and the GeoSafari Vega 600 Telescope has been a great learning tool for him. If you are looking for a expert use telescope you’ll certainly want to look elsewhere but if you have kids who want to learn about telescopes and searching the skies as beginners this will work great!

Our giveaway has ended but you can still PURCHASE the GEOSAFARI VEGA 600 TELESCOPE HERE.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure:  I was not compensated for this review. I received the above product in order to use and form my own opinions. All opinions are 100% my own. Giveaway is open to US only and will end at 12:01 am est on July 15, 2012. Winner will be chosen randomly and have 48 hours to reply to winner’s email before a new winner is chosen.

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