Meade ETX Information

Transportation and Weight

With its nearly 6 kg weight the ETX-90EC is still transportable. However if you have to carry it for several kilometers when going to an observation place, you will surely feel its weight on your shoulder.

I bought the ETX because it can be fast assembled and is transportable - these reasons are still valid for me.

Assembly

When I am in a hurry, I simply put the ETX on a table (or even a small table). The view is shakey, but this method is fast...

I owned a small tripod with three single legs to be screwed into the telescope. This tripod is needed if you use the Autostar computer; however, I rarely used this tripod. With the Autostar computer it's even worse: I never used it for real observations.

Viewfinder

As I had problems with the viewfinder, I bought the right-angle viewfinder (it replaces the standard viewfinder). This was more convenient for me.

Find Objects and Spot Them

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find and track objects on the nightly sky with a telescope. Therefore it is important to orient the telescope at least roughly towards the object(s) to be observed (the Autostar computer would do this for you if you did a correct alignment procedure). Then I use the viewfinder, which has a magnification factor of five and makes it easier to search larger areas, to spot and center the object. Be sure to align the viewfinder correctly - I did not care to do that at first...

How do Objecte Look Like in the Telescope?

Many beginners do not know that, depending on the telescope type, objects are seen upside down and mirrored. This, too, makes it harder for find and track objects on the sky. You have to get used to the "correct" movements. The ETX shows objects right-side-up, but rfeversed left-for-right. You can correct this with an optional 45 degree erecting prism.

Speed

Beginners also do not expect that objects are moving so fast through the vision field. The larger the magnification, the faster they move. If you want to show someone an object, he or she has to hurry...

Automatic Tracking

Automatic motor-driven tracking of objects is only possible if the ETX is polar-aligned using the table tripod or any other tripod. As I never aligned the ETX correctly, objects moved quickly out of sight.

Quick Orientation, Motor Control

First, I aligned the telescop by hand and then did the fine alignment with the handbox.

The motor control of my ETX was very imprecise and had slack.

Eye Pieces

The ETX is sold together with a 26 mm Ploessl eyepiece, which is a good general purpose eyepiece. However, if you want to see the complete moon or sum (with sun filter or projection screen) you need an eyepiece with a larger field of view, for example a 40 mm or a wide-angle eyepiece.

When using a 40 mm eyepiece, there is the problem of vignetting that increases with a person's age. I do not know, whether this is also true for wide-angle eyepieces.

If you need higher magnifications, you have to use eyepieces with shorter focal lenght (9-12 mm). However, image quality decreases with magnifiation so that the outcome may not be worth the cost for an additional eyepiece.

Hight quality eyepieces may cost several hundred dollars, so do not underestimate the additional cost.

The ETX-90 is Well Suited to...

You can observe well: the moon (up to about half moon), the sun (with sun filter or projection screen), Jupiter, and Saturn.

Mars and Venus can be recognized as disks, Venus phases are barely recognizable.

The ETX-90 is not Suited to...

Because of its high focal ratio, the ETX-90 (and its siblings) is not suited to observing deep sky objects, such as galaxies, star clusters, and nebelae (a.o. Messier objects). Use Newton telescopes with focal ratios between 1:5 and 1:6 for this purpose. Therfore, I sold my ETX-90 in 2009 and bought a large (Meade 10" Dobson Lightbridge) and a small (Sky-Watcher Heritage P130) Dobson telescope.

Competition

The Celestron NexStar 5 telescope is comparable to the ETX-125, more expensive, but seems to be more powerful.

If you want to observe deep sky objects, consider buying a Dobson telescope (see the models from Astrocom). That's what I did in 2009 and in 2010!

Note: The links do not lead directly to the respective telescopes - go to the Astrocom shop and look for deep sky and the mentioned models.

More and In-depth Information

Company website, USA: www.meade.com

The info source for my telescope Meade ETX 90/EC: www.weasner.com

See also my page with astronomy links.