Celestron Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope (Image: Celestron)
A few months back, I was walking around the USA Science & Engineering Festival here in the DC area and saw a number of people looking closely at microscopes at a Celestron display. Being a space and astronomy buff, I was familiar with Celestron’s telescopes but was unfamiliar with their microscope line. Celestron was kind enough to arrange for me to review one of their microscopes and I was really pleased with my findings.
The scope I had the pleasure of using was the Celestron Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope. It is a small but powerful scope providing magnification up to 150x and connects quickly and easily via USB. The Celestron software did not support the OS X environment I use but the Photo Booth software had no problem using the microscope as an input device and made image capture easy.
Working with my three and a half year old, we looked at a variety of items and at multiple magnifications. I really enjoyed how easy the microscope is to use and how crisp and clean the images it produced turned out. The kit comes with a stand that can be easily repositioned and has on-board LED lights to illuminate the object you are investigating.
A blade of grass.
A section of my skin.
A small wood-chip from my boys’ favorite playground.
Section of a TinkerForge circuit board.
While the microscope has some very nice features there isn’t much more to say about it beyond letting some of the images speak for themselves. At a price point of only $50 on Amazon, I don’t expect more featured and I am impressed with the image quality available. If you are a home hobbyist working on small electronics, a backyard biologist, or ready to teach geeklings about those seemingly small parts of our world, the Celestron Deluxe Handheld Digital Microscope is a great buy!
