Skywatcher Telescopes

Reviews

This was easy to assemble and easy to use. The quality seems quite sturdy and professionally made. A real scientific instrument, at a reasonable price for the beginner astronomer in your home.

I haven't had a chance yet to get out and really enjoy this telescope. I have used it a little and think it will do what I was looking for. It is well build and for the money can't be beat.

My family love this telescope. The day we receive, we were able to explore moon. I saw just picture of it but now I can see how actually moon looks in detail. I hope my pleasant journey will continue for other planets... Good: - Price (around 150) - Easy setup (in 30 minutes) - Great view - practically zero learning curve - Stable tripod Bad:) - Cheap plastic material for few peaces

Based on its price, I wasn't expecting too much from this scope. I was pleasantly surprised how well it works. Assembly was a breeze, and took about 15 minutes. The telescope itself is mostly metal, and well built for a scope in this price range. The alt-azimuth mount is mediocre but acceptable in this price range. The tri-pod is very basic, lightweight aluminum, with an accessory tray. It does the job barring any high winds. On a good night, it's steady enough to use the 9mm 100x eyepiece without any shake, but it can be shaky when focusing at high magnification. The red-dot viewfinder works well once it's colliminated. The performance of the scope is excellent for a 90mm scope. My first test was viewing the moon with the 25mm, 36x eyepiece. The view was spectacular. I was surprised by the performance of the stock eyepiece. My next test was viewing Saturn with the 25mm eyepiece. Again, the image was very clear. Saturn and its rings easily came into focus. I then switched to the 9mm eyepiece. Saturn and its rings looked awesome. It was bright and clear. I was able to track it fairly easily and well. All in all, I'm very happy with this scope. With the money I saved, I plan on buying some different eyepieces, and a 2x Barlow lens. I highly recommend this scope for a beginner-intermediate astronomer, that doesn't want to spend a fortune on a scope. Update 07/09: Since purchasing the telescope, I've bought a Celestron 8mmm-24mm Zoom eyepiece, Celestron 2x Barlow Lens, moon filter, and a Zhumell Z Series 6mm eyepiece. I highly recommend the moon filter, Zoom, and 6mm eyepiece. 6mm provides 150x magnification, and is about as high as you can realistically go with this scope. I also had a problem with plastic diagonal mirror that came with the scope. Meade sent me a new metal one quickly, at no cost.

I took a chance on ordering this because it is actually a refractor telescope, (not what is pictured) which is what I was looking for. I was hoping they shipped by the part number 90AZ-ADR, which was the part number of the telescope I wanted. I did get the one I wanted and am very pleased. It is very heavy duty. A little bigger than I expected. Mostly all metal, very little plastic. It is well worth the price. We used it to look at the lunar eclipse and it worked well. We have also used it to watch the deer in the field near our house.

Reviews

If you buy this, also be prepared to buy Meade's t-mount adaptor to go with it. The threads on the camera adaptor are off-pitch just enough to make mating with third party t-mount adaptors hit or miss. These are supposed to be standard pitch threads but they just didn't get it quite right.

The ETX Camera Adapter #64 screws into the port at the back of tour ETX telescope. You can use it with the ETX90, ETX105, and ETX125 telescope or spotting scope to attach your 35mm film camera. There is one thing you still need, a T-ring for your specific camera's bayonet or screw mount. The adapter can be adjusted for a longer or shorter focal length by removing or replacing one of the two tubes that screw into each other. Due to the ETXs' long focal length and "slow" optics (f/14-f/15), exposures will need to be longer than with a normal lens, or faster telescope. This means your mount needs to be very sturdy. A cheap tripod may not be adequate. Also, since this adapter gives no provision for guiding, long exposure astrophotos (with the telescopes) will be impractical. One could mount a ETX90 piggyback on an ETX125... but a different arrangement would probably make more sense. But this adapter is great for birder, or to shoot the moon, or the brighter planets. Or tor those long distance shots, where you can't get close enough to your target. You can also shoot the sun with an appropriate solar filter (remove the finder before attempting this, or you could burn/blind yourself, as well as cook your finder).

Reviews

I got this adapter to connect my new E-510 to my telescope using a T-mount tube. The telescope manufacturer offers the T-mount, and then you adapt your camera to it. I later learned that I could have just used my OM to E-volt adapter with my old OM to T-mount, but this way I can still keep my film camera set up for astrophotography separately. Because of the very fine threads on the T-mount, though, changing adapters is not as easy as it sounds. Lining up the threads is difficult unless you make the T-mount connection first, without the camera weight to fight against.

One of those unexpected standards that makes life easier; attach your camera to a telescope. It just works.

If you have a telescope and want to use it as an extreme telephoto lens a T-mount adapter is a must. Recently I acquired an e-510 and wanted to use it with my ancient Celestron 5, f/10 (Schmidt-Cassegrain design). This adapter works fine with my Celestron T-mount and the e-510 with "Live View" allows easy control of exposure, composition and focus (using camera live LCD image magnification). See half-moon photo taken with the above combination. Look forward to trying on wildlife. Camera and adapter were purchased from 47th Street Photo and service and speed of delivery was excellent.

This device is a metallic adaptor that fits OK to my Olympus E500. I had no problems using it with my old celestron 80mm WA and an Orion T adapter. It fits very well.

Reviews

We purchased this telescope as a starter for our 10 year old son. It is easy to operate for him and us. He was so excited to see a close up view of the moon. It took only a few minutes to assemble, no difficulty there. I would highly recommend this telescope to anyone.

Reviews

The Meade 70-AZ A is a fine starter scope. Takes about fifteen minutes to put it in place as per the instructional DVD (PLEASE WATCH IT BEFORE SETTING UP THE TELESCOPE!!! ). The optics is very good for an amateur to just start and learn about the night sky. Its not fair to expect to get a close view of the deep space objects and stuff as the ads claim. The maximum you can view with this scope is Saturn's rings and Titan. Jupiter is also quite clear. I was pleasantly surprised that the moon was very very clear through this scope with the shadows around the craters seen clearly. The altazimuth arrangement was a bit loose at first but watching the bundled dvd was of great help to help in troubleshooting and adjusting.Overall, this is a good starter scope. I would recommend getting the Barlow lens for an extra 35-40$ and that actually helps in giving an amazing magnification.Also, the elevation on the refractor needs to be tightened so that even if people disturb the eyepiece, the object wont go very much out of focus and it becomes easy to get it back in place.

Nice telescope for the price. I had no clue it came with a USB camera. Even with no directions It was pretty easy to set up. At first i put the legs on backwards. Stupid me. Overall, a good scope for a beginner like myself.

My grandson is gettng the experince of his life with his new Meade 70AZ-A telescope. He sends me an email every day on his findings. Best Christmas gift I could have given him.

Very good telescope. The directions putting it together were confusing but once I figured it out everything was fine. This was a great gift for my 12 year old cousin

Horrible tripod. Not very secure on mount. Easily shifts or moves making it difficult to keep objects in focus or in view. Bought it for my daughter for Christmas and was extremely disappointed with its cheap plastic construction. I don't recommend you waste your money.

Reviews

Great price and outstanding performance of these eyepieces. I shopped around alot and this price was outstanding. Shipping was very fast and packaging was great. I will use this vendor again.

Set features great eyepieces that have good field of view. Lower power lenses reveal great details of the moon and are ideal for 'calibrating' your spotting scope. Set's increments are very useful for stepping up magnifications of Saturn, other planets or the moon. Very easy to go 40mm to 32mm to 15mm to 12.4mm to 9.7mm to 6.4mm with focus and center technique greatly alleviating frustration and taking minimal time. Definitely recommend the set based on the increments alone, quality is above average for a set in this price range. I guess the only hit I have is eyepieces could be identified more readily. Font on eyepieces is small and hard to see in the dark.

My husband gave me a really nice telescope for Christmas. I wanted some better lenses to view planets so I searched around online. I found this set on the manufacturer's website and found it to be a few dollars cheaper here on Amazon. I'm very pleased with this set. The lenses are nice and heavy, the case is terrific and keeps each lens sealed tightly so that they can't move around. Great variety of lenses, heavy and much better quality than the ones that came with my Meade telescope.

Reviews

I just purchased a "double-stacked" MaxScope 40 and was looking for tips on how to tune it and the interaction between the two filters, but I couldn't find that type of practical information in the book. The book does have a page on double-stacking, but says nothing about which filter to tune first and what to look for when tuning the filter. Also, since chapters are written by different people, it seems that the same information is repeated several times throughout the book, especially in the accessories section for each. Additionally, as was pointed out in another review, a new manufacturer named Lunt is directly competing with Coronado. Until this book may be revised to include that new line of scopes, it really isn't a complete guide to what you can get. So, I recommend this book as a reference, but was a bit disappointed by the lack of certain types practical information in using the scope.

If you are interested in observing the sun other than in white light, ie, hydrogen alpha or CaK, I would recommend this book as a reference. Hydrogen alpha observing allows you to see more of the sun than sunspots. Prominences, solar flares and much more. The hydrogen alpha telescopes and filters block out all the wavelengths of light except the one emitted by the alpha emission line from the hydrogen spectrum. In addition to the etalon (part that filters wavelength), there is also a blocking filter to block dangerous ultraviolet and infrared light. This book deals mostly with the Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope). However it also discusses other larger aperture Coronado solar telescopes plus filters that can be used with a regular "nighttime" telescope. There is a wealth of information about solar viewing and many nice photos. A few other brands of solar telescope and filters are also discussed. There is a lot of information about ways of observing the sun, how the sun "works", what you are seeing. The book also has a chapter on imaging the sun. The book was published before Lunt Solar Systems was founded so there is no information on their solar equipment. Recommended as a good reference for solar observing and imaging.

For those looking to get into, or already into, solar observing or imaging, this book is a must. The contributors are extremely knowledgeable and it's written in a way even a neophyte observer like myself was able to understand and gain valuable information. A great addition to any library! Stephen Ames

Since this it the only book of its type I know of, it's hard to make comparisons. I wish there had been more on the entry level Coronado solar scope, but the information and photographs were of interest nevertheless. Certainly worth reading (and viewing) for the information it contains. Since the sun is the only star we can view up close, it's an interesting area of observation. Being able to go beyond viewing sunspots through the usual sun filter is a definite plus. However, seeing flares and other solar details takes patience and practice and when the sun is relatively quiescent they're not always obvious! This book does encourage working at it.