Meade ETX-60 AT Telescope

The Meade ETX-60 AT Telsecope is the probably the best beginner scope anyone start with. It is affordable, usually less than $200.00 and more often less than $150.00 new. It is light-weight, easy to set-up, reliable, and has tremendous optical power capable of providing a great view of the universe. The magnification is good at 200 power, and the optics are clear without distortion. All near planets from Mercury to Jupiter can be easily seen in this scope as can many nebula - provided an additonal small investment in colored filters is made to remove the white or silver look of reflected light planets have which makes them appear as stars. The 60mm lense allows sufficient light in to give good clear images of space objects.

The moon is shown in great contrast; however when viewing it the user never wants to look at it head on. To do so, causes a lot of detail to be lost. Imagine looking at the point of a sharpened pencile straight on. What you see is a dark spot in a circle. The same thing happens when looking at the moon or even some planets. The craters and mountian become nothing more than a dark spot in a circle. Not very exciting...However, if you look at the same pencile across one of its sides or across the surface it becomes 3 dimentional. You see it is tapered, has shadowed areas, and edges that look similar to a mountain. By looking slightly across the face of the moon, the mountians are suddenly realized, the craters have edges, and many of the features have depth and contrast.

The AT-60 has a computer controlled memory which can take you to thousands of space objects not seen with the naked eye -- in fact, it is fair to say the dark night sky is not all black and white -- it is alive with a pelethra of color! The hand-held controller is easy to use and provides the scope with the tracking speed needed to keep the planets in view. This is a great bounus as the earth is rotating over a thousand-miles-an-hour and the planets constantally appear to rising in the sky then beginning to set much like the sun and moon appear to us through the course of the day or night. It is equipped with a tri-pod which is quite stable; yet, light-weight and provides a great mount for the telescope. A bubble level on the tripod gurantees the mount is level regradless of terrain, and its legs are fully adjustable to easily compensate for different heights found in field conditions. The scope comes often with a back-pack in which all componets can fit into it to protect it while carrying it off road to dark locations. The scope preforms well even in light polluted cities; although like any telescope light pollution does limit what can be seen and how clearly so the darker your set up area is the better the viewing will be.

The telescope comes with lots of techno-geek information that means nothing to novice, but sounds pretty - like air-spaced lenses which means there is a space between them filled with air -- -huh - duh! But none of it is important. What is important is this TELESCOPE WORKS! My 3 year old son can look through this telescope and see things without fear of it being accidentally knocked over and the amazement on those little faces are worth more than the cost of a thousand of these telescopes when they suddenly realize there are mountains on the moon, and colorful swirling bands on Jupiter - a world they didn't even know was there...but now he can point to this star on any night and say Juipter is right there!

Love ease of use! I had an older model of the same scope, but seldom used it beacuase I didnt have a suitable tripod. This all in one package from Meade is great!