TEMU astronomy gear to avoid

AstroPunk recently did something he said he would never do. He bought astronomy gear from TEMU. He was curious to see if any of it was actually useful or if it was all just cheap junk with misleading advertisements. He picked out a few products, including a monocular telescope, a clip-on lens for a phone, and an AZ MZ 0300 astronomical telescope, and put them to the test. Right from the start, it was obvious that things were not looking good. The packaging alone was a red flag. Some of the items arrived in damaged boxes, some weren’t even in the cases they were supposed to come in, and the whole thing just didn’t inspire confidence. But instead of judging them too soon, he decided to give them a fair shot.

TEMU astronomy gear to avoid

The first thing he tested was the monocular telescope. At first glance, it looked okay. It even had a built-in level, though that turned out to be completely useless since it didn’t work. He didn’t expect much, considering the product’s claims about how much it could magnify. When he actually looked through it, though, it wasn’t the worst thing he had ever used. It wasn’t good for detailed planetary views, but it worked for looking at bright objects in the sky. He used it to check out the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula, and some globular clusters. It wasn’t great, but for around eight bucks, it was at least functional. It did what a simple monocular should do. He wouldn’t recommend it to someone who actually wanted to get into astronomy seriously, but for someone just looking to casually glance at some bright objects, it was at least better than nothing.

Then he moved on to the 45x clip-on lens for a smartphone. Right away, it was clear that this was going to be useless. The packaging was cheap, and it didn’t even come in the case it was supposed to have. He attached it to his phone and tried it out, and it completely distorted the image. It turned everything into a weird fishbowl effect that had no real use for astrophotography. He pointed out that for normal photography, it could be used to create a unique effect, but that wasn’t the point of the product. The product claimed to improve a phone’s ability to capture the night sky, and it did nothing of the sort. It was just another useless accessory that TEMU was selling with exaggerated claims.

The real disaster of the video was the AZ MZ 0300 astronomical telescope. TEMU’s product images made it look like it could capture incredible details of Saturn, nebulae, and galaxies, which AstroPunk immediately called out as nonsense. Even high-end telescopes don’t show those kinds of details the way the product images suggested. When he unboxed it, he realized just how bad it actually was. The entire thing was plastic, including the lenses. The included eyepieces were some of the worst he had ever seen. The Barlow lens was a complete joke, and the telescope’s design was so cheap that even trying to move it was frustrating. It came with a tripod, but the tripod was unstable and made it almost impossible to keep anything in view. The phone adapter was included, which technically meant you could try astrophotography with it, but the moment he attached his phone, it was clear that wasn’t going to work either. The slightest movement made everything shake, so taking any kind of clear image was impossible.

He still gave it a fair shot and set it up under the night sky to see if it could at least do something. He aimed it at Jupiter and was able to see the planet, but the image quality was so bad that it barely seemed worth the effort. Someone in his group joked that it might have been better than what Galileo saw, but that didn’t mean much because it was still terrible. The telescope was hard to use because it didn’t have a proper finder scope. Finding anything in the sky was frustrating, and once he managed to locate an object, keeping it in view was just as difficult. He tried deep-sky observing with it, but it was useless for that. Bright planets and the Moon were the only things he could see, and even those didn’t look good.

Since the telescope came with a phone adapter, he attempted astrophotography with it, even though he knew it wasn’t going to go well. As expected, it was a complete failure. The mount was so unstable that taking a long-exposure image was out of the question. The plastic optics didn’t help either, since the image was already blurry before even trying to take a picture. He made it clear that this telescope wasn’t worth the money. For the seventy dollars it cost, someone could get a decent pair of binoculars that would be far more useful.

The worst TEMU astronomy gear

After all the testing, he summed up his thoughts on TEMU’s astronomy gear. The monocular telescope was the only thing that wasn’t a complete waste of money. It wasn’t great, but for eight dollars, it at least worked as a basic tool for looking at the sky. The phone clip-on lens was useless. It didn’t do anything for astrophotography, and its only use was for creating a weird distortion effect. The AZ MZ 0300 telescope was the worst product by far. It was cheaply made, hard to use, and didn’t deliver on any of the claims that TEMU made about it. The entire thing was a scam, designed to trick people into thinking they were getting a real telescope when they were actually just getting a piece of plastic with fake magnification numbers attached to it.

His final advice was simple. Don’t buy astronomy gear from TEMU. The telescopes are cheap junk, and no one should waste their money on them. If someone is interested in astronomy, they should go to a proper telescope store, talk to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, and get real recommendations based on their budget and what they want to see. Even a pair of binoculars from a real astronomy shop would be better than any of the products he tested from TEMU. He made it clear that spending money on these cheap telescopes wasn’t just a waste, but a mistake that could turn someone off from astronomy altogether. If a beginner’s first experience with stargazing is through a telescope that barely works, they might assume astronomy isn’t worth it, when in reality, they just got scammed by a bad product.

AstroPunk ended the video by reminding people to be careful about what they buy. TEMU and other similar sites are full of products that claim to be good but are really just repackaged junk with fake marketing. He warned that these companies take advantage of beginners who don’t know better and that the best way to avoid getting scammed is to do proper research before buying any astronomy gear. He said that if people really want to see space in detail, they should invest in real equipment instead of falling for misleading ads. He had done this test so others wouldn’t have to, and his conclusion was simple: TEMU’s astronomy gear isn’t worth it, and no one should waste their money on it.

The WORST TEMU Astronomy Gear

Is a $12 TEMU UHC Filter any good?

AstroPunk decided to test out two $12 UHC filters from TEMU to see if they were actually useful or just another waste of money. He had two versions, one with a brand name on it and one without, but they looked identical. Since they were so cheap, he wasn’t expecting much, but he set up two telescopes to properly test them. He used a Meade telescope with a ZWO 183 camera and an ED80 telescope with a ZWO 120 camera. He started by taking images without the filters, capturing 20 frames of 30-second exposures. Then he repeated the process using the UHC filters to compare the difference. His plan was to stack the images, process them, and see if the filters actually improved the visibility of nebulae and deep-sky objects.

It took two nights to gather all the data, but once he had everything, he used PixInsight to stack and process the images. When he first looked at the results, he was surprised. Even before doing any enhancements, he could see that the images taken with the UHC filters showed more contrast and detail, especially in the Keyhole Nebula. The filtered images had better nebulosity, the stars had less glare, and the overall image looked clearer. He applied some basic noise reduction and blur correction to both filtered and unfiltered images, and the difference became even more obvious. The UHC filters helped reduce unwanted light and brought out more details in the nebulae.

Comparing the images from the ED80 telescope

When he compared the images from the ED80 telescope, the improvement was even more noticeable. The unfiltered images had more glare and less detail, while the filtered ones showed deeper contrast and finer structures in the nebula. He repeated the same process with the Meade telescope and saw a similar improvement. The filter didn’t completely change the image quality, but it made a clear enough difference that he was impressed. He expected these filters to be completely useless, but instead, they actually worked.

He admitted that he went into the test assuming he would be able to tell people not to waste their money, but he couldn’t say that this time. The $12 UHC filters from TEMU did their job. They weren’t perfect, but they made a noticeable improvement in deep-sky imaging. He was so surprised by the results that he decided he needed to do a follow-up test against a more expensive, high-end UHC filter. In that test, he plans to use the same telescope on the same night to directly compare how much better, or worse, the TEMU filter performs against a professional-grade filter. For now, he said that if someone wants to try a UHC filter but doesn’t want to spend a lot of money, the $12 TEMU filters are actually worth considering. He wrapped up the video by saying he didn’t expect to be impressed, but he was, and if someone wants to spend a few bucks on one of these filters, he wouldn’t tell them not to.

Is a $12 TEMU UHC Filter any good?!?