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.
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!