Really decent price. AZ which is a bonus (eq pointless and fiddly on just an observational scope). Much better than crap you get in places like B&M with plastic optics.

Long focal length so will give decent views of moon, possibly jupiter too, and maybe smaller brighter clusters. Don't go expecting hubble style colour, any amateur telescope through the eyepiece will show grey smudges, the £2000+ scopes just show brighter grey smudges :wink:

Wonder what eyepieces it comes with


OPTICAL FEATURES
Eyepiece 1 4 mm
Eyepiece 2 12.5 mm
And further down

- 9 mm & 22 mm eyepieces

22mm will be useful, 9mm less so unless you get a crystal night with moon in full bloom. 4mm will be rubbish.
I'm guessing 9 and 22mm, seems to be standard with most scopes (its what came with my maksutov).

Thats the other benefit with long focal length scopes, you can get away with crap eye pieces or cheap plossls.

Purchased thanks, looking forward to seeing lots of birds, particularly Tits, and Uranus.

I'll show you Myanus personally for £25 mate. £4 saving. It's what HUKD is all about.

Only problem is you first start off looking at planets and the moon (and only Jupiter, Saturn and occasionally Mars offer anything to the naked eye). Then you'll be wanting to take photos of DSO, which means a tracking mount, a scope that doesn't give CA, and then all the filters, auto focuser, dew heaters, cooled cameras, reducers. And then you're broke.

Hopefully this is decent. Just impulse purchased in the hope it'll do for my husband who asked for a telescope last night!

The Meade range has got some good reviews on Amazon.com. Probably cannot go wrong for the price.

Would this be ok for a bit of window spotting :wink:

Really decent price. AZ which is a bonus (eq pointless and fiddly on just an observational scope). Much better than crap you get in places like B&M with plastic optics.

Long focal length so will give decent views of moon, possibly jupiter too, and maybe smaller brighter clusters. Don't go expecting hubble style colour, any amateur telescope through the eyepiece will show grey smudges, the £2000+ scopes just show brighter grey smudges :wink:

Wonder what eyepieces it comes with


OPTICAL FEATURES
Eyepiece 1 4 mm
Eyepiece 2 12.5 mm
And further down

- 9 mm & 22 mm eyepieces

22mm will be useful, 9mm less so unless you get a crystal night with moon in full bloom. 4mm will be rubbish.
I'm guessing 9 and 22mm, seems to be standard with most scopes (its what came with my maksutov).

Thats the other benefit with long focal length scopes, you can get away with crap eye pieces or cheap plossls.

Purchased thanks, looking forward to seeing lots of birds, particularly Tits, and Uranus.

Ordered, fancy giving it a go at this price

ordered for my boys birthday cheers

Unfortunately I bought a telescope on eBay two days before I saw this but I'm glad I've found a half decent deal to post finally!

Cheers , Ordered for the Sprogs.

Good price, OK product.
I'm not going to go into the depths of why this is and isn't a good deal.
Instead share a tip to keep the kids happy.
Once setup, ensure you hang some kind of weight from the middle of the tray\tripod.
This will minimise vibration on the tripod, which gets very distracting.

Good price. Would never use it.

Thanks ordered will give it a try at that price you can't go wrong

buy yourself pair of 10x50 binos. you'll see more..cold

Thanks op, just reserved one

Out of stock everywhere near me

It's a great hobby to get into, but think about what equipment would be best. I would suggest three stages:

First look with your eyes to identify constellations and planets, using the help of a book or an app such as the superb Stellarium to see what is in your night sky at a particular time. Currently Venus and Mars are visible just after sunset, and Jupiter in the mornings before sunrise.

Second, use binoculars as these are portable and easy to point at objects, although may wobble if not rested on something such as a tripod.

Third, telescope. Don't rush into a telescope I would say. These take time to set up and it is not always easy to find objects you want.

I own a small telescope (Celestron 102SLT) but I use my bins far more. You will find this telescope will become a great coathanger. I have a passion for astronomy but my scope has coats over it. Just a warning for all you budding astro nuts.

Saying that, this is a great price and slightly better than your average bins and if it whets your appetite then that's great. Meade are a good brand btw even though this is probably made in China.

I've gave heat for the price, if anything you will gain an extra coathook in your house.

It is best to learn you way round the sky just a bit with the naked eye first though, so to know where to point binoculars or a camera or a telescope. Orion is a good place to start, easy to find and the orion nebula looks good through binoculars.

feature creep

Would I be able to see Uranus with this?

Bend over a mirror and you'll see Uranus

Gutted out of stock

This will simply not do, you need to spend at least £4.5 million on an observatory for basic entry level astronomy.

Reserved in Crawley, Surrey. Thanks OP! I've been binge watching documentaries about space recently, and figured I should probaly have a look in real life... Nice impulse purchase. Heat from me.
Does anyone know a good place to use one? I figured as far away as lights/london as possible.. :smile:

back in stock for delivery

The manual on the MEADE website says it's supplied with 9mm and 25mm eyepieces.

I got one of these from Currys a few weeks ago at the same price - the eye pieces are 4mm, 12.5mm with a 2x Barlow. Great for looking at the moon. Haven't had a chance to do much else so far.

I ordered yesterday morning when the OP posted and went for free 5 day delivery - it's being delivered today. I'm amazed, decent service from CURRY'S!

Ideal for spying on the neighbours

Let's be honest. That was over 5 hours ago.

Apologies for the probably stupid question, would a camera lens on a tripod (800mm) be inferior to this for viewing the night sky?

Not sure about the scope but the Currys redhead (obviously a model, because no real Currys staff look like that) looks rather tasty :wink:

Ordered yesterday lunchtime, arrived this morning.
Thanks OP. Son will be happy.

I'm no expert either but I don't think you can equate the focal length of a telescope with the focal length of a camera lens.
Remember, with a telescope the actual enlargement is done by the eyepiece.
To get the effective magnification you divide the focal length of the telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece.
So this telescope is 800mm and if you use the 12mm eyepiece you get a magnification of 65. And with the 4mm its 200 times (though the image will deteriorate at this magnification).

Whereas with a camera the magnification depends on sensor size - so with a 35mm camera 800mm would be about 20 times.

Out of stock

Head over to stargazers lounge.

Short end if it, it's possible to do wide field shots with a kit lens on a static tripod, take a photo of a few seconds before you get star trailing.

With an alt az mount like the SLT I have, it's possible to do around 30s-60s with 150mm or so focal length, stack a few hundred images and get something pretty damn good. For best results you'll need a more expensive eq mount along with all the faff.

You can even mod most cameras to remove the IR filter (I've gone full spectrum on my 1100d) and capture more photons.

I've also modified webcams, removed filter and took images of planets, they're pretty good for that.

I was talking to your missus:)

Ordered monday afternoon when it was showing in stock.
Just had my order cancelled due to lack of stock.

Not happy :-(

No - that's not fair at all!!
I did get suspicious when I still hadn't get a dispatch email by this afternoon when other people had already had there's delivered.

There's one store in London that supposedly has stock so I've reserved there and hopefully will be able to pick it up tomorrow. But not impressed with their service.

Quick question for someone who's got one:
how big is the box it comes in? Trying to work out if I can carry it on my bike!

thanks.

Thanks.
Quite long then!

Feature creep, creeping featurism or featuritis is the ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, such as in computer software. These extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and can result in software bloat and over-complication rather than simple design.
Feature creep - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep