Lastly, and most controversially, is the lens cap/smartphone adapter. Celestron’s design here is straight up bizarre. By removing a small plug from the cap and removing the eyecup from the eyepiece you want to use, then screwing the whole thing together with a small plastic screw, you can slide your smartphone between the elastic straps on the lens cap and use it as a crude “digiscoping” adapter for your smartphone. However, this has a few caveats. For one, it won’t fit any aftermarket eyepieces that don’t have a flush barrel and removable eyecup. Second, it covers part of your phone’s screen, which can make it hard to set the focus and other features of your phone camera. Last but not least, you are relying on some cheap elastic straps and a single nylon thumb screw to keep your phone safe. So keep that in mind. The Inspire 100 is a short refractor telescope perfect for terrestrial and celestial viewing on the go. T he Inspire 100AZ features the largest aperture in the Inspire family line and its short tube offers a wider field of view perfectly suited for viewing the planets, moon, star clusters and brighter deep sky objects like the Orion Nebula and Andromeda Galaxy at night and with the erect image star diagonal makes the optical tube ideal for using as a spotting scope during the day. When the bullseye does not change from color red, the smartphone camera is not successfully “sensing” the sky and is not able to determine its pointing position. There are several possible reasons for this:

It's not perfect and it excels and like most refractors, it does its best work with the moon and planets, but the Celestron Inspire 100AZ has more to get excited about than many of its cut-price rivals. The build quality — particularly its tripod — is a step up while its aperture is just enough to allow beginners to explore objects beyond the solar system. The icing on the cake is its clever lens cap, which turns into a smartphone holder for astrophotography, which instantly gives it another dimension. If you want to avoid the bottom of the market but don't want to spend big, the 100AZ is an appealing solution. If the Celestron Inspire 100AZ telescope isn't for you The Smartphone Adapter is another highly impressive feature of the 100az. It enables you to connect your smartphone to your telescope (as long as it is wielding a an eyepiece with an outside diameter of 45mm or smaller – like those included). 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. The Zhumell Z100 and Sky-Watcher Heritage 100P technically have slightly less light-gathering ability than the Inspire 100AZ, but don’t suffer from chromatic aberration and are much easier to aim. The shorter focal length and resultingly wider field of view helps, too.The Inspire, by Celestron, is a refractor telescope that bills itself as the perfect fit for the beginner stargazer. It has some nice upgrades; also, it looks sharp and comes with some accessories in the box to keep you busy for a while. It is quite a bit more expensive than those junky box store endcap telescopes but also a lot nicer. After an initial alignment with the main telescope, the red dot finder proved useful and, again, is an ideal addition for beginners taking their first steps into stargazing – especially if they’re learning how to find objects by star hopping with a star chart and the supplied red flashlight. There may be something in the camera’s field of view that is affecting the phone’s ability to “sense” stars, such as power lines, trees, or the edge of a building. Try moving to an area with a clearer view of the night sky, without interference from anything on land.

The relative size and weight of all the components affect its overall portability. The mount will of course add to this. If a telescope has a shorter Focal Length it is typically more portable, but will require better quality eyepieces to ensure great views. Pros and Cons of a Refractor: The Celestron Inspire 100az combines premium components, quality material and great fully multi-coated optics for a reasonable price. It comes with 100mm Aperture (3.94″), a 660mm Focal Length and a f/6.5 Focal Ratio. This is great specification for a beginner or even an intermediate who is looking for a portable and easy to use telescope. When focused, the 100az will deliver high quality images of the Moon, the Planets of the Solar system and some DSO’s (Deep sky Objects) including the Andromeda Galaxy.The mount features an integrated red LED flashlight that when turned on will highlight your accessory tray with a soft red glow. Furthermore, the flashlight can easily be taken from the mount if you desire red light elsewhere. The 10mm and 20mm 1.25-inch Kellner eyepieces supplied are suitable for a wide range of observations, providing magnifications of 66x and 33x respectively. They have basic fold-down rubber eyecups, but there isn’t quite enough eye relief for observing the whole field of view with spectacles. Easy-to-Assemble tripod

Bold new design - The main telescope lens cap comes with a fully integrated smartphone adapter built-in, perfect for the budding astrophotographer. The asymmetrical mount design offers light weight and incredible stability. Erect image optics enables a fully correct image for easy viewing day or night, terrestrial or astronomical. The tripod has an accessory tray that also acts as a stabilizer, upon which you can store a couple of eyepieces in custom-made slots, which is handy. However, something it also has here is a red light. It points downwards and can light up the accessory tray on-demand, though you can just as easily remove it since it's actually just a red flashlight. You may be wondering what actually is a Refractor? In short, it is all to do with how the telescope works. Basically, its a type of telescope that uses various components and mechanisms to refract light, compared to reflecting it in (like Reflecting Telescopes do)The Inspire 100AZ has an achromatic doublet objective lens with a generous aperture of 4 inches, the largest in the Inspire range. Larger apertures increase the light grasp of a telescope making it easier to observe dimmer objects. The fully coated lens surfaces increase light transmission by decreasing reflections. 10mm & 20mm Eyepieces A Rigel Quikfinder is essentially just a superior version of the StarPointer Pro and attaches to the tube with adhesive tape, so you could use it in conjunction with a 9×50 finder if you wish. A Telrad is unfortunately too large to really fit on the Inspire 100AZ. What can you see with Celestron Inspire 100AZ? Unleash the power of your smartphone to take you on a guided tour of the night sky—no telescope experience required.