can i see with my left eye

If you are left eye dominant you won’t be in a comfortable position to see using your left eye. The scope is too close to the main body of the telescope which prevents your left eye from getting a view straight down the spotter scope. Those who are being sarcastic most likely are not left eye dominant.

I'm a real beginner/plan to purchase this for my son so we can both explore the night sky, etc. Is it really easy to setup?/How long will it take?

The scope is really good for beginners and it is easy to set up. As others have said the the included tripod is small for portability and not very stable. If used fully "retracted" on the hood of a car for example, it's OK. I've used it with a Celestron 7.5MM eyepiece and a 2x barlow lens and it can still resolve the rings of Saturn on a clear night. It's not designed for that kind of magnification but for an inexpensive scope with simple lenses I was impressed. I wouldn't recommend trying that though until you have some practice on focus, finding objects in the sky, and purchasing a heavy duty camera tripod. You must remember even with the highest power eyepieces, which you only want to consider using for viewing planets, objects are really small which is due to it's 400mm focal length. Overall it's WAY better than spending 40-50 dollars on a cheap toy at the local discount store. Another good option comparable to this is the Orion 76mm Fun Scope. It's really only for table top use but it's easy to swivel up/down left/right. It is a reflector though and images don't appear as crisp in my opinion. You'll find out that half the quality of a telescope is how good the tripod or mounting set up is. For the price you can't go wrong with this scope. I own several telescopes from computer driven to large reflectors and still grab this for quick views of Orions belt, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and star clusters like the double cluster and the Pleiades. Just to add to an already long answer, I added an inexpensive laser object finder (similar to the Celestron Star Finder) instead of the mostly useless viewfinder. It makes it ten times easier to point the scope at objects you're trying to look at and it doesn't take much modifications to get it screwed to the scope tube or stuck on with foam tape. Your son will thank you!

can this scope be used as a spotting scope for bird watching

Excellent for bird-watching. At 20x, it's fine. At 40x (long distance) you may want a strudier tripod, and because it's daylight, you can look through the smaller 42mm hole (take off the little cap) in the dust cap and that will improve the sharpness at high power. If you want a better spotting scope, simply buy a fancy wide-angle/high-performance 1.25 eyepiece (super-plossl, etc), around 15 mm focal length.

ASIN	B001TI9Y2M
Best Sellers Rank	#93 in Camera & Photo Products ( See Top 100 in Camera & Photo Products ) #18 in Telescope Refractors
Customer Reviews	4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (16,042)
Date First Available	February 19, 2009
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer	No
Item Weight	4.2 pounds
Item model number	21035
Language	English
Manufacturer	Celestron
Product Dimensions	18 x 7 x 14 inches

Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Refractor Telescope – 70mm Aperture, Fully-Coated Glass Optics – Includes Tripod, Backpack & Software – Ideal for Beginners & Travel

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