Bushnell Northstar 127MM Telescope
The Bushnell Northstar 127mm is a good first telescope for an individual or family. Many scopes at the low end of the price range, known as first time scopes, are poorly designed, cheaply manufactured and have poor optics. The Northstar 127 doesn’t suffer from any of these pitfalls.
The Maksutov-Cassegrain design uses a folded light path that reflects off two mirrors before being passed to the eyepiece. This reduces the length of the tube that’s needed, resulting in an easily portable scope. The mounting system that Bushnell uses, referred to as Kinematic, is actually a one-arm version of an alt/azimuth mount that is motor controlled to allow full star tracking and computerized go-to capabilities. One-arm mounts are known for having some shake, especially when the mount is being moved by motors for star tracking, but we didn’t notice any shaking with this scope, and its tracking was quite good.
One of the big attractions of this type of scope is its computerized control, which allows you to select an object from an included catalog and have the telescope automatically swing around to put the object in view and then track its movement. The Northstar 127 has a large catalog of stellar items, including planetary objects, stars, deep space objects, nebulas and galaxies. In order for the go-to functions to work, the telescope must be aligned each time it is taken out for use. The Northstar’s alignment procedure requires centering two stars within the scope’s eyepiece. Once the stars are centered, the computer system will rate the alignment, with five stars as the target rating. If your alignment racked up fewer than five stars, you can choose two different stars to align.
The optics are quite good for this price range, although we found that the 4mm eyepiece produces too much magnification, resulting in muddied views. The 25mm eyepiece is good for general use, but you may want to add a wider-view eyepiece later.
The Bushnell Northstar 127 Maksutov-Cassegrain offers a number of attractive features, as well as a budget-friendly price, making it a good choice for a first telescope.
Specifications:
4mm and 20mm eyepieces
Erect image diagonal mirror for land viewing
“Go To” computerized tracking technology
Red Dot LED finderscope
Remote Hand-held control module
Camera adaptable
Quick release tripod
Kinematic mount