Telescopes

Gone birding!!!

Advantages: Clarity, choice of lens, colour, brightness and price
Disadvantages: Avoid the zoom eye piece...

Nikon Fieldscope 82mm ED Angled body Introduction For the uninitiated a Fieldscope is a telescope used for nature spotting and particularly bird watching. Generally sold with zoom type eyepieces and used with a tripod for stability, these will allow you to identify or observe birds at distances beyond the reach of your binoculars. Choices There are two basic body designs - straight and angled. With straight scopes, the barrel ...
... Onto the Nikon I was persuaded to purchase the Nikon by the various reviews I had seen in magazines and on the Internet. A key consideration for me was the price, I paid £669 for scope and £229 for the 25-75x zoom eyepiece and the Nikon stay on case for £69.99 from warehouseexpress.com The ED82 is a replacement for the ED78, as you would expect with a product from Nikon the build quality is very good the housing is made from a tough green ...

mcc28 28.10.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Nikon Fieldscope ED82

Great scope for the keen amateur

Advantages: Large aperture, reasonably portable, good optics, dual axis drive on motorised model
Disadvantages: Polar alignment scope difficult to use, heavy but necessary counter weights

The large aperture on this scope gives it good light gathering capacity enabling you to the see further fainter objects that smaller aperture scopes don't. It's well built and keeps its collimation if treated right. The optics are great giving sharp clear views although the focuser can be a little tricky for faint objects. The eyepieces are standard so it's easy to get more of different powers to enhance your viewing experience' with the right adaptors ...
...easily attached to this telescope. The tracking motors if you go for that option are smooth and reliable but don't give fast slewing action which is best done manually. The lattitude setting could be better and the polar alignment scope is difficult to use as it can move in it's housing which can mean your tracking isn't as good as you would like it to be. This also means that long exposure photography can be hit and miss and i've had poor results ...

orbiter 21.02.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Sky-Watcher Explorer 200 F/5

Skywatcher F5 102mm ST refractor telescope.

Advantages: Small, lightweight, low cost, ease of use.
Disadvantages: Build quality could be a little better (minor)

To understand this telescope, you will need to understand certain terms that astronomers use. I will try and expain things as we go along, but this is a fairly long review. Stay with me, OK ? *** Background : I have always been into astronomy, and have owned various telescopes over the years, since about the age of 11. A few years ago, I got back into photography as a major hobby, this time, combined with photography. I started off with the biggest ...
...by Helios on massive mount and tripod. Unfortunately, I am physically disabled, and this combination was just too much for me to handle, so I sold it and looked out for a much smaller lighter scope. After visitng several local astronomers, I was convinced I had found the right scope in the Skywatcher Startravel 102mm F5 Short Tube. I can use this for astronomy and also for "terrestrial" use, eg : bird watching & wildlife. OK, so what does all this ...

g8ina 05.05.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Sky-Watcher Star Travel 102

LX200 12" GPS

Advantages: GOTO makes faint fuzzies easy, more time for observing.
Disadvantages: Heavy, just carryable by one if you are strongish.

The Meade 12" LX200GPS with UHTC (£3999) is a big beast of a scope. It is a Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, which basically means it has a conveniently short tube, about 20" for the 12" (the 12" is the diameter of the tube) model. At the bottom end of the tube is a concave primary mirror with a hole, about 2" in its centre, this mirror recieves light through the top end and reflects it back to a secondary flat mirror which is held in place in the middle ...
...with one eyepiece, a 26mm Meade super plossl. It is a good quality eyepiece but more are needed to get the most from the scope. A range of eyepieces from about 6mm to 32mm is usefull. However, normal eyepieces give you quite a narrow field of view when you look through them, but it is still a good view. To get that WOW factor and increase the field of view requires wide angle eypieces, Meade do some as do the Naglar company. They are expensive though, ...

nikauuk 04.07.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Meade LX200

A beginner's scope

Advantages: Good price for a beginner telescope
Disadvantages: The mount can be frustrating at times

The main specification of this scope is: .130mm (5.1") f/650 Parabolic Newtonian Reflector .Magnifications (with optics supplied) x26 & x65 .Highest Practical Power (Potential) x260 .Diameter of Primary Mirror: 130mm .Telescope Focal Length: 650mm (f/5) .Eyepieces supplied (1.25") : 10mm & 25mm .Parabolic Primary Mirror .0.5mm Ultra-Thin Secondary Mirror Supports .Red Dot Finder .EQ2 Equatorial Mount .RA drive .Aluminium Tripod with Accessory ...
...an aperture of 5.1 inches, this is a very respectable size for a first scope. The general rule with aperture is that for every inch it delivers 50X magnification, hence the 260X. If you ever see a telescope advertised as having 600X do not buy it as these are generally poor quality scopes that cannot handle that kind of power. The scope is around 650mm in length to give it some kind of scale, it will seem much bigger if you buy it! The focal length ...

markye1 08.03.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Sky-Watcher Explorer 130PM