This telescope exceeded our expectations! It’s perfect for beginners, while it takes some patience and time to find specific stars and planets, the clarity is great!!

My 5 year old loved this craft we had a blast ! He now knows how to say all the planets In the correct order ! Great learning craft !

I had no idea there was another book for a medium size telescope! That will be next! The book itself is great, we had just wished that there were pictures in color, everything is black and white. When you see a current book that speaks about " planets, stars, galaxies and nebulae", I guess you kind of assume there will be color pictures.

The first edition of this book was excellent other than one particular issue. The planets were spread over two pages (left and right) with the center of the planet buried in the binding. This made it difficult to see the detail or get an appreciation for the map of the planet since the book did not lay flat. It was disappointing. Note, many of the moons were relegated to a single page and thus looked great. The detail and the labelling was spot on. That meant that the maps for the moons of planets were better and easier to read than the planets themselves.This edition fixed that problem in two ways. The larger main planets that are still featured spread across two pages providing more detail but the book binding allows for the book to lay flater. Not entirely flat but much more relaxed so the book can be open to any page and it will stay open naturally. The previous edition would not and to make it flat would break the binding. A second way they fixed the problem was by not letting the map sink into the center of the book. So the image stops short and in the binding area it's black. That way the map doesn't have lost details in the binding. It really improves the quality of the experience.Having said that, everything else in this book is superb, especially since they also added more images from recent developments such as Pluto/Charon!!!Highly recommended.

I bought this for my daughter's school project. Great learning tool. My eight year old learned as she had fun painting the planets.

Received this as a gift for my son's birthday. He was very excited to open and assemble it. Assembly is quick and easy. On a clear sky night, this is a fun telescope to see the stars, planets and learn about the galaxy. Overall a great gift and my son loves it.

I purchased this for my 4-year-old granddaughter, but decided she was not quite ready for it. So I waited for her fifth birthday and then brought it out for her inspection. Yes, she had heard about the planets and wanted to put the kit together. So far we have worked on it for two sessions. We assembled it together, and then she painted the sun and the planets in their basic colors. Next, she will paint the details and apply the glow-in-the-dark paint. She has very much enjoyed construction and painting, and comments on the relative smallness of the earth compared to the other planets and the sun. She understands that, so far as we know, only the earth has animal and plant life. Next we will talk about how the planets revolve around the sun and how the earth rotates on its axis, creating day and night. The kit is perfect for illustrating the two movements.The components are sturdy enough. Sure, larger would be better, but this was more than good enough.

I'm a total novice but I've been able to align it and see many of the planets. Not too adept yet at using the stronger eyepiece but I've only tried once. The weaker one is far more forgiving.