This week I picked up a new Telescope. I made the mistake last time I purchased a scope of buying a 10" Newtonian on an equatorial mount. For those who don't understand just think big. And heavy. Too big and too heavy for me to use. So the scope sat in a packing box for five years.

I talked to Bill at the Inkley's Camera, 2150 South State Street, Salt Lake City. He is very knowledgeable and helpful. He first showed me the Meade LX200 GPS. It is a great scope with some incredible features. I laughed and told him that it still looked to big. My experience tells me that anything that is at all bulky and cumbersome won't get used. I asked if he had anything with similar features, only smaller.

Bill smiled, holding a finger in the air and saying, "I have just the thing." He showed me the Meade ETX family of telescopes. He had an ETX-105 and an ETX-125 in display models only. He did not even have an ETX-90 in any form in the store. He highly recommended the ETX-90 and a recent satisfied ETX-90 customer happened along while we talked. I was sold on the scope.

The only problem was that he didn't have one in stock and didn't know when one would be available. Well, I stopped by a few days ago to see if the ETX-90 had arrived. No. And worse, Meade has just announced a $100 increase in the price of all the ETX family of telescopes. That did it for me. I decided right then and there to get the ETX-105.

It is a great scope, very compact a full of features. The package includes a sturdy tripod, a manual hand controller and the autostar hand controller plus one eyepiece. More incredible the focal length of my ETX-105 is about 50% longer than my newtonian. That's amazing considering the ETX is about 1/6 the length. What's more amazing is that the ESP for all of this is about half of what I paid for my newtonian about eight years ago.

The only problem now is learning how to use all these cool features. That may take some time.......
8:32:24 PM    comment []