Visionking 60/700 Refractor Telescope

The Visionking 60/700 is a 60 mm refractor with a 700 mm focal length, supplied on an aluminium alt-azimuth tripod that adjusts between 76 cm and 120 cm. The long tube and the full-height tripod make it a telescope you use standing up, rather than one you stand on a table.

At f/11.7 this is a slow, long-focus achromat, and that matters more than the number suggests. Long-focus refractors show much less false colour around bright objects than short ones do, and they suit the Moon and the planets rather than wide-field sweeping. If you want a wide field and something that packs into a bag, the Visionking 70/300 is the better choice. If you want the cleanest view of the Moon and Jupiter that 60 mm can give, this is the one.

Who it suits: a beginner buying a first telescope, a family observing from a rooftop or a lawn, a school that wants something a student can look through without standing on a stool. It is not the telescope for faint deep-sky objects, for astrophotography, or for a buyer whose priority is the most aperture for the money - for that, compare it with our Made in Pakistan reflectors.

What you can realistically expect to see through the eyepiece, not processed astrophotography. The Moon is the strongest target: craters, mountain ranges and long shadows along the terminator, sharp and high in contrast in a tube this slow. Jupiter shows as a small bright disc with its four Galilean moons as points of light, and its two main cloud belts on a steady night. Saturn's rings sit clearly separated from the planet at 70x - small, but unmistakable. Venus shows its phases and no surface detail. Mars is a small orange disc, and detail on it is difficult except near opposition. Brighter open clusters and double stars are worthwhile. The Orion Nebula appears as a faint grey glow around the Trapezium, and the Andromeda Galaxy as a soft patch under darker skies - no spiral arms, at any aperture of this size.

About magnification, plainly. Magnification depends on which eyepiece you fit, not on the telescope, and any telescope can be pushed to any number you like. What limits it is the aperture. With a 700 mm focal length the 25 mm eyepiece gives 28x and the 10 mm gives 70x, and the 3x Barlow raises those to 84x and 210x. Two hundred and ten is a number that gets printed on boxes; it is not a usable magnification on a 60 mm lens. The theoretical ceiling for 60 mm is about 120x, and in ordinary city air anything past 80x already looks dim and unsteady. Use the Barlow on the Moon on a still night and leave it in the case otherwise. Most of your observing will happen at 28x and 70x, which is where this telescope is at its best.

Setting up is straightforward: extend the tripod, mount the tube, fit the diagonal and the 25 mm eyepiece, and start on the Moon. Point roughly using the finder, then tighten the clamp and centre the object with the slow-motion rod. A refractor holds its optical alignment, so there is no collimation to learn - one of the real advantages of this design for a beginner over a reflector at the same price.

This is an imported Visionking telescope, not one of our Made in Pakistan models. We stock the imported range to fill gaps rather than to replace the locally built one, and the gap here is a long-focus beginner refractor on a proper standing tripod - which nothing in our own line covers.