Soligor MT-800

This is a large and heavy telescope . It is very steady with good mounts. Mine came with a 40 - 120 magnification zoom lens which is of good quality . In theory , this scope should be capable of giving 400 magnifiction but viewing of the planets becomes blurred after about 120x.Saturn is viewable as a white ball with its attendant rings being visible from 90x upwards . This view is distorted at 160 x .
The scope is good for star cluster viewing and gives good and clear views of Orion at 80 mag . It is also excellent for overviewings the moons spherical form but not for close up work over 180 mag .

Overall a bulky scope . Your money would be better invested on a 150 dia celestron or meade for half the price .

I had the opportunity to use this telescope because my grandad bought it in Portugal. My first impression was its sheer size, being used to my Meade ETX 70 it's 200mm aperture seems enormous.

It has a very hefty equatorial mount which is good, and fine-adjustment controls which can move it quite smoothly when correctly balanced. As I say I am used to a 70mm aperture telescope, so looking through it I was amazed at the brightness and sharpness of objects such as the Orion Nebula, which showed much more detail than I am used to. And a proper equatorial mount meant that piggyback astrophotography was much easier and yielded much better results.

However, on higher magnifications some double images became apparent, and it became extremely difficult to focus properly. Other negatives: its size and weight made it extremely difficult to move around, a two-man job.

I must say though for the price (£400), apart from the issue of portability, its a very good telescope