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Astrophotos

It all started when last November I passed by a display in Sam's Club of a 600 power (600x) Jason telescope for $250.  This got me thinking again that maybe a telescope would be a fun family present.  It just so happened that my manager at work was an astronomy buff (as evidenced by the Messier poster on the back of his office door) so I asked him about inexpensive telescopes.  He told me what anybody who has bothered to ask an amateur astronomer would hear: "department store" telescopes (as they are frequently called) are junk; you can't buy a useful telescope for less than $300 and it will be small (about 120x) and will just include the bare minimum accessories like a tripod and 1 eyepiece.  A telescope's useful power is about 50x per inch, e.g. a 4" telescope can only magnify images about 200x.  The 600x power claims made by the Jason are "snake oil" - while the image will be magnified 600x, it will be so jumpy and blurry that you won't see anything.  A real telescope of moderate power (150x-300x) costs about $500 or $600.

So, after consulting further with my father and searching the web (including the Sky & Telescope reviews) I learned of the Meade ETX.  This telescope is a low buck ($600) copy of the Questar ($3300) that my Dad has and he felt, based on his experience with the Questar, that it would be a good value.  Most of the popular press and online comment agree so in December of 1998, we bought one (from Astronomics whom I would recommend).

While I loved that telescope, it killed me 3 months later when Meade came out with the computer controlled "goto" version called the ETX 90 EC for the same price ($600).   A "goto" scope includes 2 motors that can point the scope anywhere in the sky and a computer that allows you to select a celestial object (star, planet, galaxy, etc.) and then will point the scope at it.  The computer is a $150 accessory ($750 total).  I quickly decided that this would have two benefits: first, I would be able to find things more quickly meaning less freezing my butt off; second, when I found something, I would be able to observe it longer without constantly adjusting the telescope (causing it to jiggle) to keep it in the field of view.  I realize that freezing your butt off learning the sky is part of the romance of astronomy but I wanted to flatten the learning curve just a bit. 

So, I decided (sliiip) to upgrade by trading my "old" ETX in for a $300 credit towards ETX 90 EC.   However I waited long enough that Meade announced their ETX 125 EC - a 5" version of the little ETX 90 - for only $1050.  A 5" scope gathers more than twice as much light as a 3.5" meaning that everything is much brighter.  So I decided (sliiiiiiiiippp) to upgrade to that.  Then, while I was waiting (#97 on the list) for mine to get shipped, the first reports started coming in.   While the ETX 90 had been a gem, and the ETX 90 EC was a great upgrade (even if the motors were a bit noisy), the ETX 125 just didn't seem to cut it.  Sky & Telescope was pretty brutal and the amateur reports on the internet were down right nasty (see the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur).  My guess is that a fundamental problem with the ETX 125 is that the light weight design that works well for the smaller ETX 90 just can't scale up to the weight of the ETX 125.

Nice things were being said about the Celestron NexStar 5 though, which was announced a couple of months after the ETX 125.   One problem with the ETX 125 was that its compact fork design means that the telescope tube (the Optical Tube Assembly or OTA) can't swing through the forks (e.g. point straight down).  With a camera on the back, it can't point anywhere near straight up either.  The NexStar has neither of these constraints and while Meade explicitly says that neither the ETX 90 nor the 125 are any good for taking pictures beyond the planets (bright enough for fast exposures), the NexStar can take "deep space" (e.g. long exposure) photos.  Since I planned to try astrophotography, this appeared to be a big advantage.  Otherwise, the two scopes have very similar specifications: both are GOTOs, both are compact, both weigh about 18lbs (compared with 8lbs for the little ETX90).  The NexStar was just a wee bit more expensive at $1200 vs. $1050.

So, gosh, it was just one more little sliiippppp and now, from $250 at Sam's Club to $1200, I am the proud owner of a Celestron NexStar 5!

February 16, 2002