Meade ETX-60 AT 60mm Telescope

The discontinued Meade ETX-60 AT BB telescope is a very compact refractor (lens) telescope designed for easy setup and portability. It's good for beginners, and also a great pick-up and go scope for vacations, hiking, and taking to remote locations where taking a larger instrument would become impractical. The BB model I got includes a tripod and nice fitted backpack, which are both highly recommended if you are lucky enough to find one at a good price. The well designed Meade tripod is surprisingly sturdy and lightweight for its size, and does an excellent job of supporting the telescope at higher magnifications without much vibration. The Meade backpack zips smoothly and facilitates good, protective compact storage, and even has provision to strap the tripod to it.

The quality of the optics of the telescope itself was a pleasant surprise to me, being that much of the construction is of plastic. It has a decent objective lens capable of producing clean, sharp images of Jupiter and lunar craters at low to medium powers, both with and without the flip-in Barlow lens, using the economy 25mm and 10mm eyepieces that come with it. Focusing is tedious because the knob is small and in a tight location, but once you get close, it allows a very fine tuning, which is nice. You just have to keep turning it until it becomes sharp. (Best to prefocus at a distant object in the daytime first.) At higher powers, though, even with better eyepieces not included with this telescope, the objective is not capable of producing a clean, circular diffraction pattern; but this was not unexpected of an instrument at this price level (most of the cost is in the electronics), but it's fine up to about 100x. Most relieving is that it doesn't produce smeared or elongated stars at low to medium powers, which makes viewing brighter star clusters and nebula like M57 (Ring Nebula) or M42 (Orion Nebula) a pleasing experience.

But besides the ETX-60's low price and compactness, the best feature it's got going for it has to be the intuitive computerized GOTO, which can make all the difference in giving you a rewarding night of observing, especially for beginners. The motor is a bit loud if you are trying not to disturb a quiet neighborhood in a small backyard, but it's not half as loud as a garage door opener. It does help to know the brightest stars in a few constellations, along with the exact direction to north, because the easiest way to do the setup is by lining it up with north and letting the computer do the rest. The computer will automatically point to two bright stars, one at a time, and after you fine tune and center each one using the hand control, setup is done! After that, just type into the hand control what you want to see, and the telescope will bring it into the view and continue to track it even as the earth rotates and the stars continually move slowly across the sky. As long as you are careful in lining up the initial stars, the GOTO is impressively accurate for a telescope of this price range.

The Meade ETX-60 AT Telsecope is the probably the best beginner scope anyone start with. It is affordable, usually less than $200.00 and more often less than $150.00 new. It is light-weight, easy to set-up, reliable, and has tremendous optical power capable of providing a great view of the universe. The magnification is good at 200 power, and the optics are clear without distortion. All near planets from Mercury to Jupiter can be easily seen in this scope as can many nebula - provided an additonal small investment in colored filters is made to remove the white or silver look of reflected light planets have which makes them appear as stars. The 60mm lense allows sufficient light in to give good clear images of space objects.

The moon is shown in great contrast; however when viewing it the user never wants to look at it head on. To do so, causes a lot of detail to be lost. Imagine looking at the point of a sharpened pencile straight on. What you see is a dark spot in a circle. The same thing happens when looking at the moon or even some planets. The craters and mountian become nothing more than a dark spot in a circle. Not very exciting...However, if you look at the same pencile across one of its sides or across the surface it becomes 3 dimentional. You see it is tapered, has shadowed areas, and edges that look similar to a mountain. By looking slightly across the face of the moon, the mountians are suddenly realized, the craters have edges, and many of the features have depth and contrast.

The AT-60 has a computer controlled memory which can take you to thousands of space objects not seen with the naked eye -- in fact, it is fair to say the dark night sky is not all black and white -- it is alive with a pelethra of color! The hand-held controller is easy to use and provides the scope with the tracking speed needed to keep the planets in view. This is a great bounus as the earth is rotating over a thousand-miles-an-hour and the planets constantally appear to rising in the sky then beginning to set much like the sun and moon appear to us through the course of the day or night. It is equipped with a tri-pod which is quite stable; yet, light-weight and provides a great mount for the telescope. A bubble level on the tripod gurantees the mount is level regradless of terrain, and its legs are fully adjustable to easily compensate for different heights found in field conditions. The scope comes often with a back-pack in which all componets can fit into it to protect it while carrying it off road to dark locations. The scope preforms well even in light polluted cities; although like any telescope light pollution does limit what can be seen and how clearly so the darker your set up area is the better the viewing will be.

The telescope comes with lots of techno-geek information that means nothing to novice, but sounds pretty - like air-spaced lenses which means there is a space between them filled with air -- -huh - duh! But none of it is important. What is important is this TELESCOPE WORKS! My 3 year old son can look through this telescope and see things without fear of it being accidentally knocked over and the amazement on those little faces are worth more than the cost of a thousand of these telescopes when they suddenly realize there are mountains on the moon, and colorful swirling bands on Jupiter - a world they didn't even know was there...but now he can point to this star on any night and say Juipter is right there!

I am giving the Meade ETX-60AT Telescope 3 bars as far as I have gotten from it so far. Now I got mine for one heck of a sweet buy on Ebay, but it was missing some parts. Namely the Go-too, eye pieces, and tripod. To me that was no big deal. I had eye pieces, and a tripod, so I had that covered, I just need to get the Go-too hand held and it will be complete. Ok then why only 3 bars?
Well, no matter where you place this Telescope, it is almost impossible to not get it to shake while looking through the eye piece. Now, let me point out this Telescope does not even need a Tripod. Just flat, solid,stable base is all it needs to hold it in position. I will say it is a good tale teller of tremors in Michigan, because it was planted on a concrete base on a windless night and would not stop shaking as I was looking at Jupiter. Then again, Maybe it was just in awe of seeing Jupiter as much as I was.
Now don't get me wrong, this is still a good Telescope. and with the Go-too hand held, well one can only imagine just how amazing this thing is going to be with that. . No one can say that just typing the word Saturn on the keypad and this thing will automatically aim itself to it isn't cool. That would make it 4 bars easy. But if you wanted to take photos, you have to loose that shake. And until that You will not see 5 bars

I would like to write a useful review of this telescope but I cannot. When I received it from the buyer the focus control was broken. Looks like it may have been dropped and that pushed the outer main lens all the way in and broke the main focus rod. The Auto Star feature would have been a good way to quickly locate celestial bodies for viewing. I have purchased an ETX-80 now and I will let you know how that one is doing

The ETX 60 telescope is a very portable, unlike the others, and that is the most important part of a telescope to the quality of lenses and lens that has high quality and this is something that many people are not fixed When buying one. After buying a store, I found information on which I liked and did not expect much from the telescope, but when I received it and use I liked offers high-quality images and that is the most important thing besides the control that gives you autostar When the search space.