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Telescope That Takes You on a Tour

Techstination feature for Thursday, March 12, 2009

A telescope that takes you on a tour of the stars. Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It's the latest technology in telescopes from Meade Instruments. Officially it's called the ETX-LS. The LS stands for light switch and the meaning here is that it is as simple to use as flicking on a light switch. Previous generations of automated telescopes required the user to align them....not always a simple task. Meade VP Greg Bragg says the ETX-LS....does away with that....using GPS and what the company calls Integrated Sensor Modules....to automatically set itself up. And from there...finding objects in the night sky....like Venus, for instance, is easy...


"There's a hand box that has all the database information in it. You just go to the solar system, objects, scroll down until you find Venus, hit enter and go to and it automatically slews over to that object, puts it in the center of the eyepiece. You look at it through the eyepiece and it will keep track of it until you tell it you want to look at something else. Very simple."


Are there more proficient astronomers, who are into this hobby, who are saying don't do this to us...


"No. Any guy who is proficient, let's say they want to do imaging, the guys that get serious about it want to do imaging, all that requires you to track the object. All that's done for you with this scope."


The ETX-LS is slated to arrive this spring for about 13 hundred dollars. Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.