Reach Deep Space In Minutes
Until now, the stargazer's two biggest challenges to enjoying the night sky have been aligning their telescope and finding objects. Meade's new ETX Premier Edition eliminates these two challenges and makes astronomy as easy as pushing a button--right out of the box. Want to see a hard-to-find deep space galaxy? Simply push a button. The same goes for planets, stars, nebulae, and more. Meade's new ETX Premier Edition automatically levels your telescope, points it to North and sets the time. You just enter your location, or even your zip code. After your ETX completes its patented Level North automatic alignment procedure it will point to the first alignment star. Use the new wide-field SmartFinder to center the red dot over the alignment stars for ultra-precise pointing accuracy. It's that easy.
Ultra-High Transmission Coating--A Clear Advantage
In Meade mirror-lens telescopes, before incoming light is brought to a focus, it passes through, or is reflected by, four optical surfaces: the front surface of the correcting lens, the rear surface of the correcting lens, the primary mirror, and the secondary mirror. Each of these four surfaces results in some loss of light, with the level of loss being dependent on the chemistry of each surface's optical coatings and on the wavelength of light. Technologies developed at the Meade Irvine coatings facility, including installation of some of the largest and most advanced vacuum coating instrumentation currently available, have permitted the vacuum-deposition of a series of exotic optical coatings precisely tuned to optimize the visual, photographic, and CCD imaging performance of Meade telescopes. These specialized, and extremely advantageous, coatings are offered as the Meade Ultra-High Transmission Coatings (UHTC) group, and are included on this ETX-105PE UHTC telescope. Averaged over the entire visible spectrum (450nm to 700nm), total light transmission to the telescope focus increases by about 20 percent, which makes a significant difference, especially when viewing objects that are light years away.
The ETX Revolution
This is next-generation technology built on Meade's original ETX concept to create the most advanced electronically-controlled telescopes that include automatic GO TO object-location with the Autostar Computer Controller. The 105mm diameter offers 225 percent of the light grasp of the ETX-70AT and 136 percent that of the ETX-90EC, which means bright, crisp images presented to your eye. The compact and portable design will have you out observing the inexhaustible quantity of visible phenomena in no time, whether it's the incandescent filamentary structure of the Orion Nebula, or the elliptical luminosity of the Andromeda Galaxy with its brilliant nucleus. There are "billions and billions"--to quote Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan--of stars out there, and many thousands of other impressive celestial objects within easy reach of this telescope.
Maksutov-Cassegrain Optical System
In this 105mm Maksutov-Cassegrain optical design, light travels through a multicoated meniscus lens, advances to an primary mirror, and then to a convex secondary mirror that multiplies effective focal length. The secondary mirror light baffle, in combination with the antireflection threads inside the primary mirror baffle, produces extremely high contrast astronomical images at the focal plane. The oversize 116mm-diameter primary mirror results in a fully-illuminated (unvignetted) field of view significantly wider than can be obtained with Maksutov optics incorporating primary mirrors of the same aperture as their correcting lenses. The internal flip-mirror system adds convenience by allowing for either straight through or 90-degree observing positions. The superior optical system is another reason you can see more, and see more clearly, with a Meade ETX series telescope.
Dual-Axis Drive System And Electronic Controller
The ETX-105PE UHTC fork mountings include high-torque DC motors on both telescope axes, permitting electronic operation from the included plug-in Autostar hand controller. Use the pushbutton electronic controller at any of four dual-axis speeds: 8x sidereal for image centering in the main telescope at high power, 32x for image centering at lower powers or for pushbutton object-tracking in the altazimuth mode, 0.75 degrees/second for image centering in the viewfinder or for terrestrial tracking, or 5 degrees/second for fast slewing across the sky. You can instantly select any of these speeds simply by pressing the SPEED button on the Autostar controller.
Autostar Computer Controller Included
One of the most important advances in telescope design in the past 25 years is the Autostar Computer Controller (included) that provides with location and tracking features previously available only on much more expensive telescopes. Star catalogs list innumerable double and multiple star systems, variable stars, open star clusters, globular clusters, diffuse nebulosities, planetary nebulae, and spiral galaxies within grasp of the instrument. The Autostar controller can locate all of these objects automatically, in seconds. Just plug the Autostar into the telescope's HBX port, do a quick telescope alignment (less than one minute), and you're ready to observe any object in the Autostar's 14,000-object database. If you wish to view an object that doesn't happen to be in the Autostar's massive data base, all you need are the object's celestial coordinates and Autostar will find it for you.
Deluxe Field Tripod Included
As an added bonus your new telescope comes with Meade's ultra-sturdy, easy-to-use, deluxe field tripod (#884) that features micrometric controls to provide precise equatorial alignment of your telescope at any observing latitude from 20 to 90 degrees. This alignment is useful for fully automatic tracking of celestial objects in right ascension. Should you decide to look at your own planet for awhile, the Altazimuth (90-degree) Orientation option provided by this deluxe field tripod is useful for terrestrial viewing. This is also the preferred mode for astronomical applications when using the Autostar controller for automatic object location and tracking. "Altazimuth" (alt/az) is a combination of the word "altitude" meaning vertical and the word "azimuth" meaning horizontal. So, altazimuth simply means that the telescope can move in both vertical and horizontal directions. With the tripod in altazimuth orientation, Autostar can move the telescope on both axis simultaneously to find the object you wish to view even faster. For added versatility and greater viewing comfort, this tripod is also adjustable from 25" to 43". You can easily set it up for your own height as well as having the option of viewing from a seated position.
Included With Purchase
#884 Deluxe Field Tripod, #497 Autostar, 8 x 25 right-angle viewfinder, Series 4000 Super Plossl 26mm (57x) eyepiece, hand-held electronic controller, and operating instructions.
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