AC580 AlignMate (Astro Engineering)

This accessory review was originally published in 2004 on LX200-Classic – We’re grateful to Mike for allowing us to reprint it here.

There are certain things that every astronomer should have when they go out for a night of viewing.  One such thing is a compass.  Very clearly, every astronomer needs one to properly set up their telescopes.  I, personally, have several compasses in eyepiece cases.  I thought I had all the compasses I needed.  I was wrong.  Another item you can never have enough of is bubble levels.  However, when I received The Astro Engineering AlignMate, I set it aside to look at the other cool things that I received in the package.  Little did I know how cool this little AlignMate is.

AlignMate AC580

When I started setting up my scopes recently, I grabbed the little AlignMate and set it in my Scopesaver tray to align my tripod for my LX200 Classic telescope.  It was definitely handy for aligning my scope due north, and the bubble level worked well with the other two levels on my Scopesaver tray to quickly level the tripod. 

The reverse face of the Alignmate showing magnetic compass

Once I mounted my 10 inch LX200 Classic in Alt/Az mode, I installed an inch and a quarter visual back, and a 90 degree diagonal, and placed the AlignMate into the diagonal.  As a set up my scope for two star alignment, I noticed that while I had my scope leveled according to the dec dial on the fork, according to the little AlignMate, the scope was not actually level.  Using the AlignMate, I leveled the OTA with the AlignMate and then continued with my two star alignment.  This definitely improved the alignment that I achieved with my LX200 Classic. After setting up using the AlignMate, I had a faster and far more accurate 2 star alignment. Suddenly, I realized that the AlignMate was one of the most important items I had in my eyepiece case.

Folks, this is one item that I think everyone should have.  It is handy.  It is sturdy.  It is handsome.  It is accurate.  And this one is mine.  You should definitely buy your own.

 Mike Overacker (USA)

Sky Watcher Heritage 76

The International Year of Astronomy is being marked by several new telescopes from different manufacturers.  Sky Watcher has two, the Heritage 76 and Heritage 130, both Newtonian reflectors, with tubes decorated with graphics celebrating notable contributors to the science of astronomy, including Sir Isaac Newton, the originator of the Newtonian design.

I have looked through a replica of Sir Isaac Newton’s telescope that used a metal mirror and I can categorically state the Heritage 76 is at least a hundred times better!  If Sir Isaac had a Heritage 76 he would undoubtedly have seen much, much more.

So how good is this small but powerful scope? The fine polished optical surfaces of the 3” primary and secondary mirrors form an optical system that is apochromatic, which means all the colours in the light spectrum focus in the same place, hence the optical system has no false colour. The telescope comes supplied with two eyepieces: 25mm giving 12x magnification and a 10mm delivering 30x – not high magnifications it’s true, but telescopes are not all about magnification collecting light and putting it in the right place is more important.

There are an enormous number of astronomical objects that this telescope can reveal, some with great ease, some more difficult, so, for under fifty quid, what can you see in the night sky?

Sky Watcher Heritage 76 telescope

Over two million light years for our first object, M31 the Great Andromeda Galaxy, a small oval-shaped patch of light, picked out first go with great ease.

The next target, a bit more difficult because of its size, M57 the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  Situated between two of Lyra’s brighter stars at 12x magnification the nebula looks like a star that will not focus, but using the 10mm at 30x, the small doughnut shape was revealed. The Ring Nebula for under £50, a bargain!  Surrounded by lots of tiny diamond stars some yellow some blue, large and small, a beautiful sight!

Close by M57, M13 the globular cluster in Hercules again located between two bright stars so finding it with a small atlas is quite easy. At just 30x magnification, using the 10mm eyepiece, this small shimmering snowball of stars is a glorious sight.  Many other globular clusters are within reach of this scope. Someone  should do the Heritage 76 scope challenge, see if you can get at least 10 globular clusters!

I watched Jupiter’s moons slowly drift round the planet over a four-hour period, amazing how much they move.  The pale yellow disc of the planet is very bright with a hint of bands on the surface (very good seeing conditions are required to see much in the way of detail on any planet).

One of the most spectacular sights for me in the autumn sky is the double cluster in Perseus – for the owner of a small scope this object will not fail to please.  Both clusters fit inside the field of view of the 10mm eyepiece at 30x. The view is simply stunning with many old red stars that look like rubies in the sky.  Until you look at these two clusters for yourself you will not believe how red stars can be.

When you’re having this much fun in the dark you soon realise what a nuisance the day job is! As the Moon rose higher I turned the Heritage 76 to it and popped in the 10mm eyepiece and started to count craters, by this time I was ready for bed.  Some people count sheep, I prefer craters, some have mountains in the middle, long and short shadows and walls of all shapes and sizes, sheep just look the same and smell!

A final point that commends the versatility of this instrument, I left the telescope on the dining room table overnight and when I came down in the morning, almost immediately,  I noticed a  Sparrow on the tree outside that appeared to be struggling with something. I quickly lined up the telescope using the little finder scope and had a great close-up view  of  a very determined sparrow grappling with, and pulling at a red berry (whilst a shower of seemingly identical red berries fell off around him -  as a result of his strenuous efforts). It was a comical view – he really was determined to have that particular berry regardless of how many fell off around him. He got it in the end, only he promptly dropped it with all the others – whether he was able to identify his special one amongst the hundreds on the ground I can’t say. But I did have a great view of his antics thanks to the Heritage 76 telescope.

Ralph Bell

2009

The Sky Watcher Heritage 130 FlexTube Dobsonian telescope

Once in a while something comes along that is so good I just have to have one myself.

I’m convinced that the Sky Watcher Heritage 130 is one of the best value for money scopes available today.  Housed in an extendable tube are two pieces of aluminised glass in a Newtonian arrangement. The optical system is supported by a Dobsonian mount, a simple but yet so effective method of holding an optical tube steady yet with ease of movement up and down, left and right. All in all, a perfectly conceived and executed piece of astronomical engineering.

However the tube decoration may not be to everyone’s taste, but this telescope has been produced to commemorate 400 years of astronomy and has the names of notable contributors along the tube.

The telescope comes fully assembled right out of the box – the two eyepieces and a finder are the only things you have to be fitted to the scope, it should not take more than 5 minutes from opening the box to be observing – it’s that ready to go!

 

Sky Watcher Heritage 130 Newtonian Telescope

This is table top scope so apart from what’s in the box, a recommended accessory would be a table, a very handy device for star maps, red lights, mug of coffee, red wine etc.  (I can feel a star party coming on!)  So invite friends and family round they’ll be amazed at what you can show them.

So what can you see with this 130mm telescope, a very high quality view is the short answer. The 130mm primary mirror is just wonderful, it’s the right size to give low-magnification/wide field of view most short focal ratio APO’s would be proud of, and remember this is an apochromatic 5” telescope for less than £140 (even less if you shop around).

The review model was supplied with two eyepieces (though I note that at least one large supplier is giving away a useful 2x Barlow lens with the scope). The two eyepieces, a 25mm giving 26x magnification and a 10mm delivering 65x, are both of good build quality and a simple but beefy helical focuser is provided to get things nice and sharp. I’ve always liked this type of focuser because you can focus very quickly with a small accurate turn.

My first target of the night was the planet Jupiter, straight from the box to outside about five minutes and observing our solar system’s largest planet, a bright sharp disc with 3 moons in close attendance, shimmering in that all to familiar way.  This is a hot scope and its cold out here, cool down time, be patient and let it cool!

I made myself a cup of tea and went back outside twenty minutes later. Now with a nice cold scope back to Jupiter, the reward for letting the scope cool was a view of Jupiter that was not only sharp but full of detail. At only 65x well-defined cloud bands with irregular edges could be seen on the planet in moments of good steady air.  I didn’t expect to see this level of detail at this magnification with such a low-cost telescope. My 80mm William Optics fluorite refractor (£625) split the double-double E Lyra at 80x, here we only have 65x and I was getting first class views.  Ever thought you have spent too much on a telescope?  At 65x a clear gap separated both stars 4 tiny points of light 2+2 with a fifth star visible between the pairs.

So this telescope is sharp and does high-resolution well (alas no Moon tonight) but what about extended deep-sky objects.  My first deep-sky target is M57 the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and the eyepiece view reveals a well-defined donut sharp in a field of very sharp stars.  Big tick here, the view was very good.

Next up M13, simply hundreds of specks of light in a tight ball becoming more diffused at the edges – just stunning. M15 was similar – another big tick for globular clusters.

I wasn’t prepared for what came next. M81 and M82 two galaxies close together in Ursa Major. The low power view (26x) of this pair was just gob-smackingly beautiful.  At this point I have to say that some telescopes magnify too much, not this one, this has to be the best view I have ever had of these two galaxies, believe it or not, my 12” Dobsonian does not do them justice!

I swung the telescope to M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, the view was superb.  I would like to point out the observing conditions at my home are not good for deep sky targets (Bar Hill, Cambridge has enough sky glow to almost read by!). Back to the eyepiece. M31, M32, M110 all three galaxies in the same 26x view with room round them so you could see a clear distinction between galaxy and background sky. M31 definitely oval in shape M32 small and compact and M110 very diffused a text-book view.

As if this is not enough the double cluster in Perseus was a real cracker, sharp stars to the edge of the field and my favourite little red ruby shimmering proudly in between with other stars glittering throughout the clusters.

So far this telescope passed every test object with flying colours but could it see the holy grail of deep-sky targets, the Veil Nebula? I searched around in the right place for about 5 minutes with no luck; I decided to use a Celestron Deep Sky Filter.  Within thirty seconds there it was – a ghostly curve of faint light. I know people have struggled with an 8” and bigger scopes to see this large faint object (the nebula is actually the debris left over from an ancient exploding star). Again, over magnification with the larger scope is the problem.  An eyepiece view of 26x magnification with a 50 degree field of view and this scope bagged it.

Having found the Veil I removed the filter and could still see its faint glow, and remember this target was being viewed from the suburbs!

No matter if you are 6 or 60 – if you’re just starting out on an astronomy journey, I recommend this scope to you. If you buy this one you’ll never stop using it, it works so wonderfully well.

I wish this one didn’t have to go back to the shop, I wonder how many scopes you can bolt to an EQ6?

Ralph Bell

c. 2009

The Meade 6” ETX-LS ACF Lightswitch telescope

A brief review

Editors note: this review was first published on Robert Dalby’s personal website (www.robertjdalby.com) and we are grateful for his permission to publish it here. As Robert is clear to note in his text – this review should be considered biased as he owns a business that sells these telescopes.

Whilst Meade’s fortunes may appear to have declined a little in recent years, the company is now on top of their financial difficulties, and the new Lightswitch technology ETX-LS is the first sign of  them roaring back to full strength.

The Meade 6″ ETX-LS Lightswitch robotic telescope

Meade telescopes have been one of the worlds biggest selling and most successful brands and are especially favoured among users who take the hobby of astronomy seriously. I remember the introduction of the Meade LX200 seventeen years ago (now affectionately called the LX200 Classic). People like me who discovered astronomy in the 1970s were bewildered by the almost magical capabilities of this new instrument – it had so many fantastic features you had little choice but to go out and buy one! Steadily, and sometimes grudgingly, almost everyone with a serious interest in astronomy did just that.

A point about objectivity: this review has absolutely none. I’m closely involved with the sale of these and other Meade telescopes by businesses that I either own or am financially involved with – anything that I say can only be regarded as wholly biased (wouldn’t it be great if UK government ministers could adopt this standard of honesty!).  The only observation I can offer in mitigation is that I don’t normally do “telescope reviews” either when asked or for the promotion of my business interests. And I’ve only done this one in a sense of fun because for my own personal purposes I took one of these telescopes home one night to try it out. So here, more or less, is what happened.

First impressions

The telescope was well packaged in a stout inner and outer box, and safely cocooned between two shells of die-cut foam.

The assembled telescope is in two parts – three if you count the removable handset but I recommend leaving this attached and plugged in at all times – the main telescope tube and drive base assembly and the tripod. The drive base and tube assembly has a handle cast into the very top of the fork arm – this makes the telescope easy to carry one-handed.

The build quality of the Lightswitch impresses immediately. The whole telescope construction feels solid – nothing moves, wobbles or creaks as you handle it. Much of the construction is cast aluminium – what plastics there are feel solid and dense to the touch. The aluminium casting that secures the main tube to the altitude shaft is an inspired piece of design – and functions as well as it looks.  The red dot finder is of a type not seen on other Meade models and is robustly fitted. To anyone who admires Meade older products there are some little reminders of the past.

The build quality of the ETX-LS  impresses immediately. The whole telescope construction feels solid – nothing moves, wobbles or creaks as you handle it.

The solid aluminium focus knob looks identical to the one used on the LX200 Classic – actually it’s whisker smaller (I know because I measured it and compared it with the specs of the original – I’m a sad little man, I know). The design of the front corrector cell and the eyepiece holder also suggest a link with the LX200.  Unique features of the Lightswitch so far seen on no other Meade product include USB in and output ports, an RCA video output socket, audio output socket and a miniSD memory card slot as well as a moisture-proof loudspeaker.

Anything to worry about?

After clearing the boxes, my first concern was to find no book of instructions. Instead, a large glossy fold-out card with nice diagrams and hardly any text declared itself to be a ‘Quick Set-up Guide’. I should have been reassured by this simplification as this is just the kind of minimal guidance you get with today’s best plug-an-play computers and mobile phones. But my experience with Meade products made me cautious. Meade are known in the trade, and by experienced users, for great products accompanied by less than adequate instruction manuals. Finding no manual at all and just a disc and a quick start guide set my “Uh-oh” instinct in play.

It’s fair to say that I brought a few preconceptions to my test of this new Meade telescope – and not all of them positive. I’m very familiar with Meade telescopes and have, as part of my commercial life as a telescope accessory designer, made something of a study of their foibles.

At the back of my mind too is the fact that although Meade as a company has hit the highs of design and innovation excellence, with products like the LX200, LX90 and the previous ETX telescopes, not long after these triumphs they squandered their hard won reputation pushing poor products like the early Pictor CCD cameras and the ill conceived LXD55. Design genius, it seems, is often uneven in its workings.

I’ll also admit to being something of a practising Luddite, especially when it comes to electronic technology, and rarely change equipment just to keep up-to-date and, if proof was needed, I still own two Meade LX200 Classic telescopes the newest of which is at least twelve years old. I had started to wonder whether this fully automated self-aligning telescope might just be another step too far.

Not the ideal set of attitudes to bring to a review of the world’s most sophisticated electronic telescope you may think!

Setting up the ETX Lightswitch

A scan through the quick start guide took me a minute and I set the telescope up as directed. I extended the tripod to full height and positioned it in front garden without any orientation or special levelling and only about 30 feet from the front of the house.

I had to scout about for some local shade as there is a street light not far away. It was dark and although the first quarter Moon was visible it was quite low in the sky and quite unobtrusive. I plonked the telescope on the tripod and found that there is a neat system to allow the base to click into exactly the right position so that the holes in the telescope base line up perfectly with the three hand-screws that secure the telescope to the tripod. This has been very well designed and needs no explanation or guidance in use.

The ON and OFF switch.

The telescope has a robust looking integral battery drawer that takes 8x C type dry cells. I elected to use a separate 12V power supply. I used a Black & Decker 4Ah battery pack and a Astro Engineering AC367 power lead to make the connection (a little product placement there – the only one in this review, honest!). Because of the name Lightswitch and the ‘you-only-have-to-switch-it-on’ marketing concept, the marketeer/design team at Meade have made a bit of a fuss of the on and off switch. It’s big and illuminated with a red LED and protected from accidental contact by raised shoulders. I like it. It’s the kind of moment of genious Kurt Vonnegut would have approved of (anyone who has read the Sirens of Titan will remember the automated flying saucers on Mars that only had one control – an on and off switch).  I was already starting to get a warm cuddly feeling for this telescope.

I installed the star diagonal in the eyepiece holder and inserted the included 26mm 4000 Series eyepiece. I then uncapped the main telescope and also removed the cap from the integrated Eclips camera and, without a drum roll, switched the telescope on.

This is the Captain speaking…

Within seconds a calm professional voice was telling me what an all round good idea it was to have bought this telescope or some such. For the record the sound quality is rather good, not at all tinny or harsh, in fact the voice (male) has a nice soft bass tone that can be adjusted to a intimate whisper simply by lowering the volume, by dabbing the down arrow on the handset, so that only the telescope user can hear it. The handset gives you the option of switching the AV announcements off very easily by pressing a single button labelled Media – but I elected to leave this option switched on to see how well it worked.

After a brief self-check involving the telescope tube moving around briefly, the voice announced (along with the handset display) that the telescope was checking GPS satellites for time and location information – it also asked me to remove the dust cap from the Eclips camera.  The handset display began to show the GPS search routine was in operation.

In the past GPS systems on telescopes can be troublesome if the telescope is placed such that the GPS module antenna is in radio shadow and not getting a good view of the whole sky. After about ten minutes of the GPS scan routine I decided that the telescope’s position could be improved greatly if I moved it further away from the house to give the GPS system a better chance at collecting enough satellite data to get a good fix. To do this I simply switched the telescope off before waiting for it to finish the search and picked up the whole shebang  (with tripod the 6” Lightswitch weighs a little over 40 or so pounds) and moved it another twenty foot from the house. I switched the telescope back on and within a minute it had settled into the GPS scan routine again.

This time, after about a minute of scanning, the voice announced that the telescope was finding level and north. The telescope whirred sweetly and went through a series of preset moves to check the mount tip and tilt. There is no mechanical adjustment as such in the so-called self-levelling procedure – the telescope just measures the levelling error in the tripod and then uses this information to form a datum of the correction necessary when the telescope is tracking or making a GOTO move. Next the telescope finds north using its inbuilt electronic compass – and I noted that the main tube’s last position correlated pretty well with north as indicated by the direction of Polaris the north star. The electronic compass can be calibrated to reduce the error between magnetic and true north – but I put this off to another night, hoping that the magnetic bearing would be good enough.

Self-alignment

The announcer then confirmed that the telescope would now attempt self-guided star alignment .

The telescope moves and the voice announces that the telescope is now imaging the first alignment star.

This process is carried out in silence but the handset displays the sequence of what the telescope is doing from moment to moment – and I must say I found it entertaining in a geeky sort of way. It takes three images one after the other and calibrates them and moves to processing. The voice announces that the telescope is trying to centre the alignment star Vega. Being careful not to touch the telescope, I peeped into the eyepiece as the telescope was moving and saw the bright blue star Vega swing in to the field of view of the 26mm eyepiece. The imaging procedure was repeated and another small move placed Vega bang in the centre of the eyepiece view.

The voice announced that the telescope was now moving to find the second alignment star. After the move the imaging sequence began. After two attempts the telescope announced that it had failed to locate the second star (I could see that it was hidden by a small patch of cloud) and would try a broad search. The telescope moved eastwards about 10 degrees and repeated the imaging sequence. When this failed the telescope moved about 20 degrees west and tried the imaging sequence again – when this was finished, the telescope announced that it had failed to find the second alignment star and was selecting a third option – this time Mizar in Ursa Major.

After just two imaging and centering episodes Mizar moved smoothly to the centre of the eyepiece field. The telescope is successfully aligned said the voice. In all, counting from the moment I put the tripod up, the alignment took about thirteen minutes – excluding the initial false start of course - enough time to get your coat on and select a few eyepieces (in fact the next night I used the scope it took less than ten minutes to reach this same point).

I was very impressed at the straightforward way the telescope had got on with the job without any input from me at all – especially when the search for the second alignment star failed. This suggested to me that the technology was solid and reliable and that it was tolerant enough to cope with the real world difficulties of stars hidden behind trees and buildings etc. From switching on the ETX LS the whole alignment procedure was 100% automatic – had I chosen not to watch the telescope work and simply set it on its tripod and switched it on the result would have been the same – a remarkable and impressive feat of technology.

Astronomy with the ETX Lightswitch

The telescope was now tracking Mizar (the last alignment star) and as the Moon was too low for useful observation and the house was blocking the view of Jupiter – the only planet on view – I decided to try the telescope out on a few deep-sky targets. I pressed the button on the handset for the Messier target list and selected M57. The Lightswitch swung quickly to the target and as it slowed I moved to the eyepiece in time to see the tiny grey smoke ring of the Ring nebula swing into view. I tried a few different eyepieces and was impressed with the nice tight stars produced by the 6” ACF optical system.

Next up, the nearby Dumbbell, M27 another planetary nebula –  perfectly centred and a good view in a 15mm eyepiece showing a dappled hourglass shape (I guess I need to spend a lot more time in the gym and less in the kitchen if I’m ever to see M27 as a dumbbell!). To test the pointing accuracy with a larger move I selected M81 – and it swung nicely in to the centre of the 26mm eyepiece. Every target was accompanied with a voiceover delivering details of the target in terms of, type, distance etc. I didn’t connect a screen to the video output and I can imagine this being less than useful when observing deep-sky targets that need dark-adapted vision. First a tiny hop to M82 and then a long slew to the giant M31 Andromeda spiral showing a prominent dark dust lane in the 26mm eyepiece,  Followed by another short hop to the nearby galaxy NGC891. I found this edge on galaxy hard to see as the sky was not totally dark and there was quite a bit of nearby light around the telescope. I observed for another hour viewing about twenty targets each one appearing almost perfectly centred in the 26mm eyepiece.

I didn’t have the time to test the on board camera (other than during self-alignment) and I didn’t use any of the other special features, like the ability to connect a Meade DS camera or view any of the multi-media content on a screen via the video output socket. I was content just to use this telescope for its basic purpose of viewing the night sky – and I was very impressed with the quality of the views. But the real crowd-pleaser is the convenience and precision of the self-alignment system. Other than a few curmudgeons who don’t really like anything new on principle – I can’t easily see how there can be anyone – newbie or veteran astronomer – who won’t like this telescope for this ability. The ETX-LS Lightswitch discharges, completely automatically, those essential telescope set-up chores at the beginning of an observing session that normally take effort and time to do.

Observing our nearest star using the ETX-LS and an AE SolVu safe solar filter at the Astronomy and Nature Centre

The inveterate grumblers out there are going say that this is not a telescope for experts. They don’t need the soothing “American Airlines” captains voice telling them what the telescope is doing and why and what it’s going to do next. The expert doesn’t need the voiceover giving vital facts and figures about each object the telescope moves to. And, of course, the expert doesn’t need all this clever help setting up the telescope, finding alignment stars, setting the date and time etc.  Well, I’ve been an amateur astronomer since I was 14, and I liked all these features and I can easily imagine folk with much less experience liking these even more than I did.

The folk who think you must suffer for your astronomy, that somehow it’s not ‘real astronomy’ unless your fingers and nose have gone black and brittle with the cold, and unless you’ve spent 30 minutes fumbling about in the dark setting up the telescope, fiddling with compasses, spirit levels and polar alignment scopes – are not going to like this telescope.  If you really enjoy spending all night to see five objects and honestly enjoy the challenge of finding targets rather than actually viewing them, then the Meade Lightswitch is not the telescope for you. But if you want to view 50 of the best targets in the night sky in two hours, one after another,  and learn something about them along the way, with next to no effort from yourself then this stunning telescope might be the one for you.

By way of balance I need to find something I don’t like about this instrument. It’s not easy – I like almost everything about it. I think the tripod is the one area where the critical eye can see signs of economy of manufacture. The tripod is actually quite good and does the job of holding the telescope “good enough for government work” – as we like to say in the Astro Engineering machine shop. There was some extended wobble at the telescope eyepiece that a heavier gauge tripod would have seen off. So the tripod could be better – a more substantial head casting with fewer tendencies to buckle and heavier gauge legs would be good but you can’t have everything. And besides, it gives Astro Engineering something to do – we have a small range of special ETX-LS  Lightswitch accessories planned for launch spring 2010 (when we think the telescope will be around in commercially significant numbers as regards accessory sales).

Concluding remarks

As a very good astronomy telescope the ETX-LS Lightswitch gets full marks – ten out of ten, no question. As an example of a state-of-the-art multi-discipline modern design – that offers a performance close to magic – it is without doubt the most sophisticated GOTO telescope on the market. There is quite simply nothing to touch it.

We celebrate 400 years of the telescope in 2009 and Hans Lippershey has the distinction of inventing the first telescope and Galileo that of being the first person to use a telescope systematically on the night sky. But there is no doubt, that currently the distinction for creating the most sophisticated and easy to use astronomy telescope goes to the designers and engineers at Meade Instruments for their beautifully conceived and executed ETX-LS.

© Robert J Dalby 2009

Meade DS-2080AT LNT GOTO computerised refractor telescope

Opening remarks

This telescope is part of the Meade DS2000 family of GOTO  telescopes and comes as a complete kit including two eyepieces – for our test we received just a single box and received no other accessories other than the standard kit supplied by the manufacturer. The items we were required to obtain to complete the review were a set of 8 AA batteries as these were not included. The instrument is well packaged and after the plain cardboard outer is removed the telescope is packaged in a smart looking presentation picture box (making it suitable for gift use).

The Meade DS2080AT LNT GOTO 80mm Telescope

As I handled the parts I noticed that the build quality of the telescope, especially of the main mount, was very good. I expected more plastic to have been used on this economy GOTO telescope and was pleasantly surprised by the solid aluminum construction of the fork arm and the smart high-tech look of the mount and tripod impresses too. The large altitude lock knob is solid and chunky in the hand and feels very positive in use. The tripod looks a tad light and could be a bit heavier but this is a judgement that more properly belongs at the end of this review not at the beginning.

The chunky altitude lock knob

Assembly was simple as the main telescope is pre-assembled and comes in just three main parts. The instruction manual is written in clear English (American English anyway) and we felt that if given to a child under 12 adult supervision would be recommended, as least for assembly and initial set-up.

I set the telescope up outside in the garden on a clear night – there was no Moon but Jupiter was already well up in the south east and the sky conditions were clear and dark and promised a good night’s observing. I had already assembled the telescope indoors and it was an easy matter to fold the tripod legs and maneuver the complete telescope outside. It is not heavy and I was able to move the telescope around easily even with the main tube attached.

Setting up the DS2080 LNT telescope

The supplied 25mm eyepiece was placed in the eyepiece holder and I switched the telescope on. The Autostar handset screen lights up and scrolls through some basic manufacturer and version number information and settles on a message warning of the dangers of observing the sun. I cleared this message in the manner required (I’m not saying how I did this as this will ensure you read the message for yourself). I needed to make sure the red dot finder was adjusted so that whatever is centered in the finder is also centered in the eyepiece – this means the red dot finder needs to be powered up. I skimmed through the instruction manual and found the information on page thirteen.  This was a bit disconcerting as one would expect that this info would be part of a quick-start guide on page one or two.  I pointed the telescope at a road sign that was about a mile away and adjusted the red dot in the  finder to coresponded with the view in the eyepiece. This chore completed, I switched the telescope off, waited thirty seconds and switched it back on again.

The handset then asked me to select yes or no to daylight saving – I toggled to yes for British summer time. The handset then asked questions about my location and gave me the option to select ZIP code (the US equivalent of our post code system) or Location. It’s an American telescope and UK postcodes don’t work so I selected the “location” option. England was selected and Cambridge as nearest city. Many other cities were offered: London, Birmingham, Manchester etc – but great accuracy here is not required – just pick the city that is nearest – even if it’s 150 miles away it doesn’t matter, the star calibration will correct any errors in the location of your observing site. The handset then went straight to automatic alignment. I selected Setup: Align by pressing the enter key. And the first option displayed was “Automatic” and again I pressed enter. There are other options, typically useful for the more experienced user but – most folk, including me, are going to love that word ‘Automatic’.

Automatic alignment

As soon as you press enter the telescope begins to calculate the level and north position – don’t worry if it doesn’t actually end up pointing north or mechanically adjusting itself level – the telescope is discovering exactly were these point are so that it can use the information to control the on-board motors for tracking and slewing accurately to target purposes. After a few minutes, when it’s finished this procedure, the telescope slews immediately to the first alignment star – in my case a bright overhead star named Vega. If you didn’t know before which star was named Vega – then even before you’ve started using the scope you’ve learnt something. The clever thing is the telescope automatically pointed at Vega without me knowing which star Vega is – and named it on the handset display screen.

The screen told me to centre Vega and press enter. The star did not actually appear in the eyepiece field of view and I checked its position in the red dot finder. I could see that it was a whisker off centre and made the adjustment by dabbing the down and the left arrows on the handset. I checked that the star was centred  in the eyepiece view (again by a couple of presses on the appropriate arrow keys) and pressed enter.

The telescope then whizzed off to the second alignment star – Alkiad, and this time the star appeared on the edge of the eyepiece field and I only had to make a small adjustment to centre it and pressed enter.

Alignment Successful, declared the handset – so now the telescope knows the location of 1400 celestial targets. I selected the solar system menu and scrolled down to Jupiter and pressed enter. The display changed to show the details of Jupiter’s position and offered information on its size, distance and even current brightness. But where is it? I pressed the GOTO button and the telescope began slewing to the south east - it slowed and centered a bright star in the finder and I looked into the eyepiece – and there it was, in the centre of the eyepiece view, the giant planet Jupiter. The disk of the planet was small and bright in the 25mm eyepiece and I could readily see a few of the distinctive dark bands in the planet’s atmosphere. The lighter equatorial band was distinctly narrower towards the eastern limb of the planet.

Three of Jupiter’s moons were easily visible (normally four would be visible, but one was actually behind the planet at the time I made my observation). I tried the higher powered eyepiece and was pleased with the views I was getting. The optics were good and gave sharp bright views. As I watched, in the course of about ten minutes I noticed the gap between two of the moons shrink noticeably – they must have been on opposite sides of the planet and approaching one another relative to my line of sight for the gap to be closing this quickly. I watched the gap close and the two moons fuse in to one blob before slowly starting to move apart again.

Touring the deep-sky

I think more detail in the cloud belts would be visible if I waited a few hours as the planet claimed higher in the sky. I decided to leave Jupiter for now and try the scope on a few deep-sky targets and to that end escaped from the solar system menu by hitting the Mode key. The mode key is equivalent to the escape key on a computer. The enter key gets you deeper into a menu and mode takes you back out. I selected Deep Sky from the main menu and selected Messier from the list offered. If you don’t really know what to look at there’s a Tonight’s best on the tours menu. But any good guide book on astronomy will give you loads of ideas for targets to look at – and it’s more fun to look at things you actually want to see (just my opinion). The Messier list covers around a hundred deep sky targets and they are all on the Autostar handset. What’s great about the Messier list is that all of the objects are relatively bright and were discovered with a two inch (50mm) telescope so will be easy to see in our 3.1 inch (80mm) scope. I selected M27 and pressed enter and then GOTO, after a long slew up the sky the Dumbbell nebula moved to the centre of the eyepiece. This planet shaped nebula is the outer remnants of a dying star and is quite faint but I found it easy to see in this scope. The fuzzy shape was probably more distinct in the higher powered eyepiece. I moved on to near by M57 the Ring Nebula. It was easy to see in the high powered eyepiece and looked like a tiny little smoke ring. I tried a few galaxies – M31, although above the horizon, was not well positioned for viewing so I tried M101. I couldn’t actually see this target with either eyepiece and began to wonder whether the pointing accuracy had slipped. But when I tried M81, also in the constellation of the Great Bear, I got a nice view of this spiral galaxy as a faint fuzzy blob.

An unimpressive description you may say – but then I paused to reflect for a moment that this particular ‘fuzzy blob’ was in fact a remote complex of billions of stars and planets and I was seeing it in my back garden across an expanse of space that takes light over 38 million years to cross. So I was in fact seeing M81 as it was 38 million years ago – somehow that put the days vexations spent in the traffic on the M25 into perspective somewhat.

I skipped across to M82 – another galaxy close to M81 – and was pleased to see its distinctive shape albeit faintly. I tried a few other deep sky targets and began to notice, after viewing about ten objects or about twenty minutes observing, the targets were starting to appear increasingly off centre. A skimmed the manual for advice and found on page 9 that there is a simple method to boot-strap the pointing accuracy at any point whilst observing.

Simply make sure the target name, Jupiter, M27 or whatever, is displayed on the handset and press and hold the enter key for two seconds. On release the screen will say press enter to synchronise, make sure the named target in centered in the eyepiece and press enter again. Bingo, the scope is now synchronised with the sky again. I found this feature very handy and allowed me to make sure the pointing accuracy was bang on throughout the observing session and was especially useful when going after tougher (fainter) targets. If I ever had any doubt about the pointing efficiency I simply selected a bright star off the star menu that was near the target I wanted to view  – slewed to it, centred the star and synchronised on it using the above procedure. The telescope was now accurately aligned ready for a move to the more challenging target.

My one big grumble

I spent about three hours observing and was very pleased with this well designed 80mm GOTO telescope. The scope performed extremely well and I have few negative comments. The tripod could be better – but it does the job and it would be a bit small-minded to expect anything above purely functional on a fully computerised 80mm telescope costing under £300 (300 GBP). But hope springs eternal.  My only serious gripe is the instruction manual. It’s not the usual complaint about bad Chinglish either – it’s the lack of  logical order I find irritating.

This is a great starter and intermediate scope and the instruction manual deserves to be better. For example, initializing the Autostar handset deserves to be on page 2 or 3 if operational logic and user need were the guides – but Meade find it useful to place this vital information on page seventeen! So too the automatic alignment section. It’s near enough guaranteed that 99% of users will be newbies to this type of technology (the telescope was designed for them after all) – and yet this vital information appears on page 18!

In Meade’s defense I’d say that the information, when you find it, is clear and concise – it’s only the maddeningly illogical placement of the information I object too. Sorry to harp on about this but I suppose it’s really the frustration of seeing that the manufacturer got the hard bit right – they’ve designed a great easy to use astronomy telescope – it must have been a much easier job to design an easy to use instruction manual.

Conclusion

All in all I have no hesitation giving this telescope 95 out of 100 for overall performance – the 80mm optics are bright and sharp and I was actually surprised at how well they worked on deep-sky targets. On the down side, the manual could be better and so too could the tripod – I’m over six foot tall and I’d favour a bit more height as well.  Another odd but minor oversight is the handset holder built into the accessory shelf. The cable is too short to allow the handset to be usefully stored there. But this is nit picking,  the sheer number of plus points more than make up for a couple of niggles like this. I really like the Autostar handset, it’s easy to use and works well – you quickly get used to its way of working and come to rely on its efficiency. The mechanics of the telescope are well designed and the whole package is easy and fun to use. It’s a great introduction to astronomy and will draw a lot of users young and old in to the hobby of astronomy. Others, not looking to plunge too deeply into  astronomy, will appreciate the ease of use the Meade 2080 LNT offers and they will enjoy the simple fun of astro tourism that this clever modern telescope delivers so effortlessly.

© 2009 Graham Ellis

Launching Telescope Reviews UK

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