Product Catalog
W W W.ME A D E. C OM 8 0 0 .6 26 .3 23 3
Aperture. Gather all the light you can.
You can nd a more detailed denition of aperture on page 57. But for most ETX owners, it is enough to know
that aperture (diameter of the telescope opening) aects how much light your telescope can gather. The
bigger the aperture, the brighter the image. Any serious astronomer will tell you aperture is signicantly
more important than magnifying power. Magnify a faint image and you get a big faint image. Magnify a
bright image and you get a big, bright image. It’s that simple. An ETX-125 has twice the light-collecting area
of an ETX-90. So buy as much light as you can aord. And know that the ETX-90, with its generous 3.5" of
aperture will show you more in one night than Galileo saw in a lifetime.
UHTC
™
coatings. The “other” way to see the light.
Aperture isn’t the only thing that aects light gathering ability. Meade’s proprietary Ultra-High Transmission
(UHTC) lens coatings (see pg. 68) are an amazing scientic breakthrough that increases brightness (light
transmission) by the equivalent of up to nearly an inch of aperture (depending on telescope model).
Which AutoStar
®
controller?
This is mostly a question of what you can afford. The ETX-80 comes with our Basic AutoStar controller (#494).
It gives you the same object-finding capability of our Deluxe AutoStar controller (#497) but with a smaller
object database. Its collection of over 1,400 night sky wonders will keep you busy for a very long time. All ETX
Premier Edition models include the Deluxe AutoStar controller #497 (see pg. 13) which includes a database of
over 30,000 objects.
Adding on to your ETX:
While your ETX comes with everything you need to get started, it can also grow with you. Additional eyepieces
will give you more magnification power and/or expand your field of view. Filters can reduce the effects of
city lights or bring out details of planets, the moon, and nebulas. See these and more in the accessories section
(see pgs. 130-145).
Choosing an ETX
®
is easy.
You’ll understand more about the various types and sizes of telescopes
as your knowledge of astronomy increases (see optica l systems, pg. 45).
But i nstead of worrying how to pronounce Maksutov-Cassegrain, rest
assured that there’s not a telescope on the market with a better
track record of converting budding astronomers i nto full-fledged
ones tha n the ETX. Sky & Telescope magazine predicted the ETX
would “grow the hobby in a way heretofore unimagined. And so far,
it has. Once you decide on the ETX, you need to choose the aperture
that best suits your needs (see p.57). In gener al terms, you will want
all the aperture you can afford. But aperture isn’t everything. For
outrageously simple portability, you can’t beat a 90mm ETX-PE.