#Meade autostar 494 tv#
I found it much easier to insert my TV 2.5X Powermate, which maintains focus with the same eyepiece with just one to two turns of the focus knob.
It’s obviously an attractive marketing gimmick, but very awkward to use in practice because, with the same eyepiece in place, you have to turn the focusing knob about 50 to 60 times in a counterclockwise direction before the image snaps back into focus, and vice versa when you flip it back. There is a built-in 2X Barlow that you can access simply by flipping a switch. (Other observers with different tolerance levels will undoubtedly have different opinions and, if the fringing bothers you, try a violet reduction filter.) The usual violet fringing with such achromats, hardly noticeable at low powers, becomes more obvious at increasingly higher powers, again not too bad until over 50X.
#Meade autostar 494 plus#
Plus the TV eyepiece has a little longer eye relief, which I appreciate since I wear glasses.īut the nice, sharp, contrasty image at the lowest practical powers has nowhere to go but down at higher magnifications, and it does, but not too much until over 50X. I expect that the Meade 32mm Super Plossl will provide a view similar to the TV 32mm Plossl, although substituting the 32mm for the 26mm would probably edge the street price up a bit. I'm pretty sure I would have been almost as enthusiastic with the 26mm, unless I had the 32mm for comparison. But the image was clearly preferable in the TV 32mm Plossl. Now I can't say the difference between the TV 32mm eyepiece and the supplied Meade 26mm eyepiece is the difference between night and day. The view with the TV 32mm Plossl in this telescope is something you simply have to see to believe. It delivers virtually everything you could ask for from an RFT in this price range. Fortunately I also have the Televue (“TV”) 32mm Plossl: 12.5X with a very bright, very crisp image in a four degree field-of-view. The ETX 80 comes with two eyepieces: 26mm and 9.7mm Super Plossls. Looking at previous reviews of the predecessors and current stablemates in the series, I agree with the general consensus that (1) the tracking system is pretty good, (2) the battery life is overstated, and (3) the focusing knob is awkward in some situations.
In the current ETX series, the 80mm with a 400mm focal length is the only one that can be considered a rich field telescope (RFT) the others (90mm, 105mm, and 125mm) have three to five times the focal length of the 80mm.
#Meade autostar 494 upgrade#
Since everybody talks about the views of the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., I’ll let others discuss the usual agenda later on and concentrate instead on how some of the data is arranged in AutoStar #494 (the data base/tracking system) because I haven’t come across an extensive and reasonable critique of this part of the package.Īs the ETX 80AT seems to be an upgrade of the ETX 70AT which was, in turn, an upgrade of the ETX 60AT (I think!), you will find important information by reading those reviews. It’s the first telescope I bought in over twenty years, although I’ve pecked away at eyepieces from time to time. After considerable research, I thought this telescope would expand any natural curiosity that might be there, while the just purchased, poorly constructed department store telescope would probably kill it. I didn’t get this telescope for myself, but for my 8 year old grandnephew who foolishly spent $50 – the total of cash gifts for his birthday – on the typical junky department store telescope.
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