The Totally Non-Geeky Guide to Choosing and Using Telescopes (The Totally Non-Geeky Guides Book 1)

Best Telescopes for Hobbyists and Serious Learners (Assembly Required) — 2018 Guide

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Science is ever changing and self-correcting. To memorize the sky from Earth is one thing and to explore the universe is another. Technology makes Astronomy possible for all who are willing to learn and grow. Why not use both to your advantage. Doug, I really praise the point of your article. I also love to teach everything I know about the topic to anyone who's interested in the subject, like most amateurs.

Like you said, there's no to little sense of elitism in those groups. But I also know this: Like all the really rewarding things in life, Astronomy requires persistence and solid interest. I decided to comment your article since I disagree on some things you wrote and that contrast may help people who read it, look at the picture from another angle.

Trying to find Deep Sky Objects or the planets very easy with little experience and knowledge in the sky, is where most of the fun is! Having a computer doing it for you is like you own a Porsche and let a chauffeur drive you. The only difference here is that, unlike the chauffeur, the computer has no fun at all! I didn't find anything interesting on cloudyskies. Did you mean www. If your interest is solid, you've got nothing to fear, understanding the sky is a lot easier than most people think. Diogo et al, My bad!

Yes of course I meant www. It's a great site for advice, and mostly cogent tips on purchasing and use. I think we can agree that for some, starting with GoTos is a great way of getting into astronomy. Then you can progress to star charts and maps, relying less on the GoTo.

I want to encourage people to begin this exciting hobby. Amateur astronomers are one of the few science disciplines where amatuers can and do make professional level contributions! And even though I understand how the SkyScout works, it is unbelievable to actually use it and watch it ID an object, or have it guide you to some random star in its database For me, this really helped me better learn the night sky. It's like using a crutch or a chaffeur then weaning yourself away from it and driving yourself.

Much less pain, and kick butt fun. Hope this answers your concerns. Doug, I am a beginner in the field of astronomy and astrophotography and I would like to purchase some equiptment. Im not exactly sure what types of telescopes and astrophotography equiptment would be best for a beginner and it would be great if you could offer me some advice. If you have any advice that would be great! They are both written to help the adventurous home cook get the most out of their sous vide machines and wow their friends and family.

The Genrenauts are a team of narrative specialists that travel to parallel dimensions each embodying a story genre Westerns, Science Fiction, Romance, etc. The Little Deaths of Watson Tower is a standalone twenty-page comic about a group of kids who are turned into tiny grim reapers and end up confronting death on more than one level, written by me, Nick Bryan hi!

Available in print and digital, see more details and some artwork here: I freely admit to the collusion between myself and fourteen other artists and authors on The Subverted Fairy Project. In a coffee, and sometimes mead, fueled rage, we met and melded art and words in defiant tales capturing the brutal essence of nature.

We discarded the image of svelte fairies flittering about, and giggling. Removing the bonds of tradition, our fairies, became rooted in nature and made alive by organic collaboration.. It reminds me of Douglas Adams, the careful plotting mixed with those absurdities and jokes that sneak up and make you snort tea through your nose. After wreaking havoc and destroying many nations, the aliens have dug-in underground and regularly storm out of their hives to feed upon humans.

As incursions sirens blare, TacNet orders armed citizens into battle as the first line of defense. My book boils down 25 years of reading and trial-and-error into a framework you can use to build your own productivity system. The Peacemaker and Other Stories: Ander is a prince, diplomat, and soldier in the clockwork army.

Upon returning to his home from a months-long diplomatic mission, he learns that his father, the king, is dying. Messages from the void. Secrets at the edge of the solar system that threaten to destroy the future. Mandira Research Station beckons at the heliopause—the brink of interstellar space. After Forster sees flashes outside that no one else can, the captain of an incoming ship is attacked by an invisible foe.

Forster and his enigmatic coworker Efron search for a missing daughter who might be the cause of it all. Can the team stop the force from taking over Mandira, and the entire solar system? Buy Heliopause today on Amazon or any other online vendor, or order from your indie bookstore! I wrote the book and my niece illustrated it. I have been doing some readings at libraries and the kids really seem to enjoy it.

Please check it out. On the day twelve-year-old Sophie Furrow learns that she may never walk again, she discovers that her seemingly ordinary farm horse, Rooster, just might be able to fly! When a messenger accidentally leaves lifesaving medicine behind, his son must ride a stubborn pony through a dangerous shortcut to reach him in time. This story takes place years before the The Pegasus Potential. And of what happens when it falls into the wrong hands! We keep moving with rich details from the organic worlds of the past to the synthetic worlds of the future, from the dark and dense deeps of ocean to infinite space, a delightful narrative of where we are and at the same time wanting to go back to the other worlds to check what happens next.

Charlie Neylan and his son Alain thought their adventures were over, as they settled into the shape of their new lives on Conglommora. But things get complicated as Alain risks his life to find answers to the secrets of their world, and their very world gets a lot larger than anyone thought. The new hidden undersea base, Denisova, expanded their world. So much new to study, so much to see—but safely, hidden from their descendants. They had to keep them isolated, alone. What was left of humanity was utterly alone. Contemporary fantasy with romance. Perfect for reading by candlelight on the Winter Solstice.

A paranormal menace looms over an unsuspecting world. The dead are agitated. Golems walk the earth. The living shed their mortal skins and visit the shades of the afterlife. Dreams become nightmares, and when those nightmares let something nasty slip through the cracks in reality, no one is safe. The Order of Aldred secretly guards against these supernatural threats, as it has for centuries. When a conspiracy is discovered at the very heart of the Order, all that stands between the peaceful dreams of humanity and a gruesome fate is Moxie Gore, a stubborn and troubled year old girl who just wants to survive her junior year with her GPA intact.

Moxie has known about the paranormal threat since she was a young girl, and she has the psychic scars to prove it. She can see them. They can see her. In the realm of shades and shadows, she discovers the secret behind her ability to see the dead and the truth about her history. It turns out the dead were right to be afraid. Determined to find them, he stumbles, hungry and filthy, into a back alley owned by Maow, a queen with the desire to live alone.

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Maow keeps the mouse population under control and the tom cats at bay in her alley. Maybe Bress can help with that. One poorly phrased comment could send him to the doghouse. Or in his case, the barn. Back in , a group of my friends were jokingly batting around ideas for a themed anthology to work on together. We all had a good laugh, but the idea stuck.

And so that summer, I enlisted the help of two of these friends, and we set out to make it real. Skies of Wonder, Skies of Danger contains thirteen stories of airships, pirates, and wizards. Our tales span from high fantasy to steampunk to post-apocalyptic to dieselpunk and beyond. So grab your cutlass and your magic wand, and take to the skies with us! Published in by Jagged Door Press sadly out of business , it is still available through Amazon in print or on Kindle. Palmer has managed to take dusty old myths and breathe new life into them.

Yet here I am: On this wet rock you come, my hair around your waist in streams like ocean foam; the pressured salty taste rests upon my tongue. As we swallow the night the morning rises stung and stained with our delight. Here in this temple crows are swelling from the altar screaming the holy vows I promised I would keep. I have done much more than falter and vengeance never sleeps. Janni is a person. He is fighting to show his protectors that he is their equal co-inhabitant of the planet.

The enemy thinks all people should be removed from the planet. But everything changed once Ro Maldonado resurrected the damaged AI on a derelict spaceship. When she and her accidental passengers aboard Halcyone stumbled upon a hidden planet and Ada May, its brilliant but reclusive leader, they became entangled with her covert resistance. But behind the scenes of the Commonwealth lurks an even bigger enemy: The Chamber knows Halcyone is the key to finding and eliminating the resistance. When May vanishes through an impossible wormhole, taking the leader of the Reaction Chamber with her, she abruptly shatters a decades-old stalemate.

Available in all ebook formats and in trade paperback. All are available in various ebook formats and paperback. Best way to get them is through my site: Reminds me a lot of John Scalzi, whom I also enjoy. Wildly creative and surprisingly fun. Too good to be true, Jack passes. Now, the only chance Jack has to save them is the Carlton Job. The problem is, its no longer available. A Legitimate Businessman is based on the actual Carlton Intercontinental Heist, a crime which remains unsolved. It is a twisting and stylish international crime thriller that will keep you guessing to the last page.

Getting it was one thing. Getting away with it…was something else. All Nem Aster wanted was to pay his debts. He never expected he would be at the center of the world coming apart. Does he have the power to save the world? Fin and Rook wish prophecy would go fulfill itself. Black-ops nanotechnology, extraterrestrial invaders, and a guerrilla televangelist are not even the full list of their problems. But that, of course, is not a service he provides for free.

His grandfather fought under the name in World War II and his father fought under the name in Vietnam. On the day Ben retires, his teenage son will inherit their legacy. Until then, he serves his nation as the stalwart leader of a squad dedicated to saving lives and stopping rogue supers. When the team is dispatched to Brazil for a covert mission, dark omens send them crashing into a conspiracy moving swiftly enough to set the world on fire and cast shadows over generations to come.

Ben must choose between honor, duty, orders, and family to protect all he holds dear, including his own life. Travel marketing specialist Mark Vandermar leads an itinerant life. Falling in love with the colorful campos and canals of Venice comes naturally but how far will he go to chase the love of the right woman? The geography of his new life is marked with discovery and reinvention, but what he really seeks is to learn to live beautifully, to find a place and a person to call home.

My Central Galactic Concordance space opera series is adventure, telepaths, mystery, and romance. Oh, and there might be a rebellion brewing in the big damn story arc. Seven books so far, with the next in January. Start with Overload Flux book 1. The galaxy enjoys years of prosperity, thanks to the sprawling Citizen Protection Service. The agency uses any means necessary to keep the peace, from allying with giant pharma corporations and political maneuvering, to secret black-box projects with darker purposes.

The CPS also employs minders—people with telepathic and telekinetic talents—for service and security, and covert operations. Throw in corruption, hidden agendas, planet-sized secrets, and space battles…. Some content was stripped by our security filters, but it should be possible for one of your Editors to embed the content for you. You can check out other work of mine at http: Do you like your paranormal sprinkled with romance? They say to write about what you know and what you love — so I merged them together into fun adventures with ghosts, witches, and more.

My first book entitled Adrift is available to download for FREE from most digital booksellers except Amazon which is being a pill, there it is listed as. Here is the link https: In the past, it was an active port for smugglers, but now it serves as a tourist destination for those seeking cute shops, seaside relaxation, and nautical history.

It is said that on foggy nights you can see the wispy figure of a woman standing on the gallery of the lighthouse, searching the sea. Some claim that they have seen her jump over the edge and plunge screaming to her death. Much of Canada has been annexed by an alien force known as the daemon. Raised in a Vancouver ghetto on the edge of daemon territory, Bennejin Skye is adopted into the United Space Corps and becomes the commander of the highly successful, if somewhat maverick, Strategic Team 6. When the outermost interstellar Way Station suddenly ceases communications with Earth, Commander Skye and Team 6 are sent to investigate.

They discover a new alien threat—the insectoid Ragnar, who move through space consuming resources like a virus. Humanity and daemon-kind must unite in the fight to protect Earth. However, there are those within the United Council who believe this latest aggressor is daemon, and this faction will go to any length to rid Earth of her newest inhabitants. Overpowered within the United Council, Commander Skye and Strategic Team 6 must turn rogue to save the alliance, or Earth and all who call it home are doomed.

Purchase links, if your interested: Oh, and they just might be fated mates, too! All Redclaw Security stories can be read as standalones Just 99 cents through Christmas. Ghost of a Chance by McKenna Dean http: Jordan was an average college student until she was bitten by a werewolf and rescued by a vampire. Her smart mouth lands her in trouble with the hostile alpha of the local pack and the stiff-necked vampire elder.

She now has less than a moon cycle to master shape changing… or else. And the besotted werewolf who started this whole mess is stalking Jordan, killing her friends. In the Northern California town of Rancho Robles where the children of the Wolf and the Bat share an uneasy coexistence, one woman makes an epic mess of the status quo. Chaos Wolf is available from major ebook retailers. And the wettest State of all? Can you say-free-for all? Jackson Dwyer would be hard pressed to remember the last time he attended church.

But he has pined for Camilla McClelland—the teetotaling sweetheart who jilted him—for over thirty years, and fought the urge to drink for almost as long. And then, with Prohibition on the horizon, he is elected mayor and his life turns upside down. The bayside town of Nevis is overwhelmed by bootleggers, sniping temperance forces, and rumrunners seeking riches at any cost. With a tenacious reporter digging for a career-defining scoop, and racketeers knocking on his door, Mayor Dwyer struggles to strike a balance between Prohibition, the needs of the community, and his personal ethics.

Everybody loves a pirate, right? Well I do and you should. You can read all about pirates on Mars in any one of my three novels. Visit my Amazon author page for buying options. Not feeling very adventurous yet? Sample pages are on view at Chimera Spoor: Glenn and his buddy Lennie are supposed to clear it out.

But go through the front door, and you immediately tumble out the back—without passing through the rooms between. Things get complicated when Glenn accidentally finds a way to enter the house: There are impossible views out the windows, very unlikely books on the shelves, a severed foot on the mantle—and worse. Now their crooked boss has sold the house to a pair of crooked cops, and Glenn has discovered what truly dwells in the crooked house. Thanks, John, for this opportunity. My most recent book, Elixir , came out yesterday. His country is shattered. His city is dying.

Clay Foster is fighting a losing battle against the dark tide that threatens to engulf Brooklyn. Science stopped the rising of the ocean waters at seven meters, but it has found no answer for Elixir. The drug has infiltrated every stratum of society. Who searched his home and hurled his wife from the balcony? What were they looking for, and what happened to her SynchDrive full of data? You can get the first three chapters for FREE as well as find purchase links for all major eBook retailers at https: His mentor, the Arcanist Mordekai Gethsemane, had been arrested for conspiracy to commit regicide.

Zarachius knew it was false. He did what had to, and snuck onto a military train to break Mordekai out. They need to know what he knows. Thompson into a blender? An epic fantasy novel that goes to Low-level adventurer Elberon of the Isles has a problem. Even worse, this screaming skull may in fact be the very skull of the Deathless One, the dark wizard who last appeared five hundred years ago to conquer the Free Kingdoms.

Can Elberon and his friends learn the secret of the Screaming Skull before the evil forces arrayed against them can kill him dead? And more importantly, where can a simple fighter get a stiff drink around here? The Screaming Skull is the first volume of the epic and hilarious heavy-metal fantasy trilogy The Chronicles of Elberon. This e-book edition features four interior illustrations by renowned fantasy artist Obsidian Abnormal.

After an exhausting stay with his boisterous extended family, all he wants is a quiet trip home and a chance to rest before Thanksgiving with his parents in Massachusetts. But the weather has different plans for him. Once Upon a Rainbow, Volume Three. This anthology features a selection of awesome fairytales full of queer characters, including my story, Loose in the Heel, Tight in the Toe:.

And when catastrophe strikes both their lives, how can their arrangement hold together? Check out the rest of my work at valetinewheeler. They only need to keep up the ruse for a few months, after all, but that ruse soon turns into something else entirely and the two women learn that love, and happiness, are far more complicated than stories say.

As the chase leads to London, Amsterdam and beyond, Aldridge and his allies must battle a ruthless adversary: With time running out, Aldridge discovers that he and his enemy share an astonishing secret, which may be the key to salvation — or cause death on an unprecedented scale…. Get the paperback and eBook for free here: The stories take an unflinching look at the changes motherhood brings, and also challenge our ideas of what stories are worth telling and what it means to be the lead character in your own story when key events are beyond your control.

A great gift for the women in your life who want — actually, need! In this tale of space oddity, humans mine Helium 3 from gas giant planets throughout their inter-stellar colonies, and though plentiful, it drives their economies. Balloon-World space stations are placed in the upper atmospheres of He3 rich planets where hyper-velocity winds swirl and rampage. A human crew tends to the gas collection, administration, and external repairs of the hull called the Skin.

A sleep-cheat and a daydreaming doctor must solve a mystery when the Wind-Striders, who repair the Skin, disappear and a deadly A. They must resolve the problematic equation or lose time, life, and worst of all for the corporate sponsors, money. A late second discovery is infused into the turmoil and a terrible choice must be made.

My most recent book is When We Were Forgotten , which can be purchased in both paperback and Kindle formats. Both versions can be found at: Tales of wizards training apprentices and interstellar operatives protecting more primitive worlds. How one university copes with a student from very far away, and where do some wizards get their supplies? All in their collective scope portraying a tale of helmers, personnel and civilians attempting to cope with the strains and toils of everyday life. Silence With The Fog is a novella in the speculative genre. Incars is short for incarnations and basically refers to a initial period of earth-days.

This fog attribution being a reference not only to thick, dense packets of clouds but also of vampiric drainage systems, emeraldean aether layers, wooded forests and more…. Thanks so much for doing this, John! Captain Alisa Marchenko was ready to settle down to a quiet life of cargo hauling with her finance, Leonidas, her daughter and crew. This novel was originally published as part of the Kindle Worlds program and has been republished with the permission of Fallen Empire author and creator Lindsay Buroker.

Available in all eBook formats. You get nine sexy romances for just three bucks, with lawyers, alpha and omega wolves, spies and more. Malaika is a barista that works in the big city… just trying to make a living. For some reason, she now has a demon and an angel following her around because they were ordered to. Life is about to change drastically for Mal, her best friend Ven, and her ultra conservative roomie, Aaya. Some evil corporation has kicked off Armageddon ahead of time and started a war between angels and demons… all centered around Mal.

Mal-adaptive is available on Amazon as an eBook and also paperback 5-star rating so far. If you like Mal, I have another novel about a kid that finds out he has any super power he could ever imagine… and how to deal with the consequences in Unlimited also available as an eBook and paperback — 4-star rating so far. A dishonorable discharge left Margo unable to find honest work on Earth. Signing onto a colonizing mission to a new world promised a fresh start.

On the ground, the straight forward colonizing mission becomes a scramble for survival. Accidents keep happening—too many to be just bad luck. Margo finds a trail of evidence that changes everything. One colonist is a saboteur, but who? Or check out the first two chapters here: She gets lost at home among her bazillion brothers, sisters, and cousins. And no one ever takes a pixie seriously.

But when the Enchanted Forest is threatened, can she measure up to the task? The Balky Point Adventures: Sometimes a lighthouse is more than just a lighthouse. Go on a journey of adventure through space and time with aliens, time travel, ghost planets, and infinite universes in The Balky Point Adventures, starting with The Universes Inside the Lighthouse! A Wrinkle in Time meets Doctor Who.

Or buy it for yourself! I love finding a new book with well developed characters, and a huge dollop of uniqueness! Discover the wonder and imagination when everything is possible in The Universes Inside the Lighthouse! For Megan Montaigne, library director, living in the top floor of the mansion-turned-library is a dream come true.

At least it was, before the murders started. The small-town library director has always secretly wanted to be a forensics investigator. But when a local celebrity turns up dead, the time has come to put her sleuthing fantasies into action. Has she unwittingly invited the murderer into her own home? A fantastically well-written novel with characters so real that one might reach out and touch them. Immerse in yourself in a cozy with a philosophical twist in Final Chapter. Death at Glacier Lake: An atmospheric whodunit for fans of traditional and cozy mysteries! For two decades, the lush, isolated forests of the North Cascades have hidden a secret.

A seemingly innocent creative design firm shows up for a company retreat, but all goes awry when one of their own turns up dead. The pace was just right for an evening spent curled up on the couch with a book. The whodunit plot kept me guessing throughout with an air of the murder mystery dinner party you have with your friends. Jo Mann is down to her last few dollars and looking for work when she bumps into literally Professor Alistair Conn who is looking for an assistant.

Soon she is swept into a world of action and adventure Steampunk style. With a thinking automaton, train rides, airships, and a dastardly villain, The Marvelous Mechanical Man starts the series off with a bang! Available for Kindle for 99 cents. To find out more about the series, and read the first chapters of all five books, check out The Conn-Mann Chronicles website—https: Other people talk about first-encounter ethics, intra-species accountability, and existensialism. For the person or book club that wants to dig down, there are reader questions at the end of the book.

When a quantum energy experiment goes horribly wrong, it accidentally shatters the future allowing alternative pasts to co-exist. As Alexandria Jane Merk passes through the nexus of the effect, she splits into two identities-each with full histories of their own-merged into one body. One identity, Army veteran Alex James Monroe, remembers a life full of failure and loss.

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The second identity, freshman college coed Sarah Beth Merk, remembers a difficult childhood in a suburban upbringing. Both sense each other but neither believes the other really exists. To survive, they must accept their shared fates and find the person responsible for the fission before time runs out. Because if they fail, they will not only die, but they will also take everyone they have ever known with them. A mind-bending journey into existentialism and the interconnectedness of the human race.

His jumpsuit, white satin. Cursive embroidery on the chest, magenta silk thread, spelling: I wrote my novella Polymer based on a premise which, I think, no reader of good taste should be able to resist: Castlevania meets Purple rain. It was released earlier this year from Eraserhead Press, a small but awesome publisher of Bizarro and other weird things. If you like personal finance, fairy tales, parodies, or tongue-in-cheek cultural commentary, check it out! You can also read the title story for free: Getting into a Parisian art school was a dream come true for Ariana, but night terrors are disrupting her sleep, making it nearly impossible to complete her coursework, and now she faces expulsion.

When a mysterious woman gives her a pendant, promising it will solve her problems, Ariana is desperate enough to try it. Instead of sweet dreams, it transports her to the Demos Oneiroi — the dream world of the ancient Greek gods — and thrusts her amidst a war between the gods.

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Now Ariana must choose to let the gods fight amongst themselves, or risk everything to keep their feud from spilling into the real world. In a world of supernatural beings, not knowing what you are is dangerous. Can she learn the truth about herself and do what is needed in time to defend the Stronghold?

All three books are available on all platforms https: On top of working for someone they hate, they end up having to deal with spider-bears. Written in the early 90s and first published as a short and then in serial form, Boomerang is now available collected. It came out print on demand in paperback for the first time this fall for a few dollars more.

Bloodborne Pathogens is a dark, gritty UF series that follows Mina Sun…little sister, orphan, reluctant vampire. In A Scarlet Fever , Mina wakes up after a night of partying to find herself caught in the middle of an ancient battle between mostly good and unapologetically evil. And with a thirst for blood. As she struggles to adapt to her new life, and come to terms with her unnatural thirst and unexpected hungers, a new threat arises — part terrifying myth, part half-forgotten legend.

It jeopardizes the precarious ceasefire between warring vampire factions, and puts everything she loves — her city, her family, her friends — in danger. A Scarlet Fever Book 2: A Plague of Shadows. Thanks once again to John Scalzi for providing a promo opp. Both the coffee and book will wake you up! Come dance to the End of the World! Apocalypse Tango Science Fiction. Follow the adventures of Wondry Dragon as she finds a new home with her new human friend, Rhea. Rhea and her mom and dad have never had a dragon in the house before, and they all learn what Wondry can and cannot do.

Rhea and Wondry play together, help out their neighbors…and try to stay out of trouble. Rhea can never tell what Wondry will do next. You can find this and more of my books at http: Newly divorced Becca Winters hopes to write away her sorrows on an extended stay at the new Kernroote Castle hotel. Unfortunately, the Castle and its companions may have other plans for her. The desk clerk is creepily serious and cold. The hallways are too silent and dark.

Footsteps without a source thunder down the halls at night. Certain she is having a breakdown, Becca intends to tough it out. However, even she has to acknowledge what her senses are telling her. Unfortunately, her acceptance comes too late. Her tires are slashed and she is trapped at Kernroote.

All you had to do was point the telescope at three bright stars, and SkyAlign would do the rest. Now, Celestron has completed its engineering journey with SkyProdigy, which uses the company's StarSense technology. Just plant the telescope under a dark sky, and turn it on. A camera on the mount's arm takes an image of the sky, compares it to an internal database, slews the telescope to a few other locations, takes a few more images and then triangulates its position. In less than 4 minutes, the scope knows where it is, and you can pick up the keypad to enter your choice of target from among the 4, possibilities listed.

This is similar to the way telecommunication satellites, military assets and science research probes hold their orientation in space; they employ "star trackers. We found the SkyProdigy extremely quick to unbox and set up. The tubular steel tripod is sturdy, with smooth lock knobs that are large enough to operate with gloved hands on cold nights.

Attaching the mount is very simple and mistake-proof — a rare joy! But effortless setup and precise pointing are not all the SkyProdigy has to offer. It's a beautifully designed Newtonian reflector with a workman-like aperture of more than 5 inches 13 centimeters. The optical tube is made in China in the same factory that manufactures telescopes from many other brands.

You will need to "collimate" this telescope from time to time. During this procedure, you keep the line of light vectors parallel to one another or with equal angles of reflection, so that the image entering your eye is tightly focused. The SkyProdigy has a well-engineered set of adjustment knobs and locks, back by the primary mirror platen, to make this process easier. Celestron gives you two Kellner eyepieces: With the higher-power eyepiece 9 mm , the telescope maxes out at a little over x. The focusing mechanism is smooth, with plenty of range. However, we found the knurled focus lock knob to be small, and it doesn't completely immobilize the in-out travel.

But we do love that the focuser can accept 2-inch 5 cm eyepieces, which also makes it appropriate for full-frame DSLR cameras though the additional mass may affect the motorized mount's tracking. Celestron doesn't provide a separate telescopic finder scope it expects that StarSense will do the finding for you , but there is a "StarPointer" reticle with an illuminated red dot of variable brightness if you should need it.

You probably won't, leaving you a slot to perhaps mount a small camera to take long wide-field time exposures as the SkyProdigy holds its attention on your chosen point in the cosmos. We think Celestron's SkyProdigy is a fantastic rig. If you have the knowledge — and take the time each and every time — to align the telescope to your local sky, you can get exactly the same observing experience with Celestron's NexStar SLT or the nearly identical Orion StarSeeker IV , and the quite similar Levenhuk SkyMatic GTA reviewed below. This big Orion gives you huge light-gathering ability — so you can haul in dim objects — and instant manual control.

But there's no motor, and you must know enough of the sky to "star hop" to where you want to go. The SkyQuest is an 8-inch-aperture 20 cm Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount. Serious astronomy hobbyists refer to these big Newtonian reflectors as "light buckets. Before you can fly, though, you must build it — and there's a lot of assembly required.

You start by building the "rocker box" mount from precut pieces.

Then, you have to set up the electronic encoder boards; thread the correct sequences of bushings, washers, spacers and locknuts; attach the eyepiece rack; and more. The few tools you need are included, but beware: It is at least an hour-long project, albeit a fun one. The parts are large, so it's nice to have a second pair of hands, thus making this a good endeavor to share with, for example, an older child.

The Orion's large parabolic primary mirror is cast of borosilicate glass, chosen for its ability to hold its shape as the ambient temperature changes after sunset. The glass is nicely coated in aluminum and silicon dioxide. But all this beefiness adds up to mass: The full SkyQuest XT8i rig weighs In contrast to classic Dobsonians which have no electronics , this scope actually has a brain. Although it's a manually driven machine, the SkyQuest is called an IntelliScope because its tracking computer can guide you to objects. It does so by telling you which way to move to acquire your target.

To pilot the telescope, grab the comfortable navigation knob under the optical tube's "chin. To enable IntelliScope, you need to go through a two-star alignment process. If you have assembled the telescope well, the two magnetic encoders altitude and azimuth will do their jobs, and the IntelliScope guidance will work. Several users have reported minor issues with either slippage or binding, requiring workarounds. But Orion's telephone customer service and live-chat assistance are excellent, and most buyers are quite happy with their purchase.

You will especially enjoy the smooth, precisely machined Crayford-type focuser. It can accommodate 2-inch eyepieces — just what you need for catching galactic vistas, witnessing nearby nebulas in their cosmic context and taking in wide swaths of the Milky Way. Your 2-inch wide-field eyepiece must be purchased separately, and we strongly recommend that you do buy one to get the most out of this telescope. Out of the box, the SkyQuest comes with Orion's standard-issue Plossl-type pair of 1.

If you like the analog approach and want to go deeper — or happen to be feeling flush with cash —— you might want to consider one of Orion's even bigger light buckets with up to a whopping 12 inches All three telescopes have the updated i. Less light is blocked, and fewer artifacts appear, than with the previous generation. This is not a bad thing; interchangeable parts and accessories are easy to find.

We were impressed with how quickly and smoothly the SkyMatic went together. It takes only a few minutes to unbox it and get going. A Phillips-head screwdriver and triangular driver are included in the box, but we found these tools completely unneeded during setup. We like the tubular tripod. Rectangular or square tripods tend to bend if they have been warped even slightly. Attaching the accessory tray is literally a snap! You just place its nicely designed keyway on the matching part, twist it and lock it.

This keeps the tripod spread securely and gives you a convenient place for eyepieces, red-lens flashlight, filters and other items. The single altitude-azimuth arm plops neatly into its saddle and is perfectly aligned to the screw holding it in. A couple of spins of the cone cap, and you're there! Fitting up the optical tube is similarly simple. Our only objection to this design is that it puts a relatively long and massive optical tube on a single arm. When you slew the telescope using the keypad , it takes 6 or 7 seconds after you've stopped for the wobble to settle down.

Each time you increment the pointing, it sets up a new wobble, and in windy conditions, you get constantly dancing stars and planets. That said, a sturdier arm and tripod would have cost more and been much heavier to lug around.

THIS MACHINE MOCKS FASCISTS

The focuser will accept 2-inch eyepieces. It looks almost absurdly large on the 5. The two included 1. The focuser is easy to use as well; we just wish it had finer teeth, to allow for more precise adjustment. This focuser lacks the second "vernier" fine-focus knob seen on more expensive telescopes. The SkyMatic's overall design is simple, elegant and modern. Only the battery pack seems absurdly archaic: The wires' connections are easy to break and are under constantstress , with no strain relief. You're supposed to hang this thing somewhere on your telescope.

It's a clunky rig, but sadly common among telescopes of many brands. When the telescope is not powered up, you must be careful not to spin rotate the scope — in other words, change its azimuth. Doing so voids the warranty if you break it. Only the altitude "tilt" may be manually adjusted when the scope is not plugged in. That SynScan slips into a plastic bracket, which you affix to one of the tripod legs with a nylon band with a Velcro closure. It's easier to get the SkyMatic aligned and tracking on the sky than it is with many other telescopes. But it is not fully automated. You will need to know your latitude and longitude, your local time in hour format, and the identity of at least one of the bright stars in your sky.

The SkyMatic can carry a small camera. Larger DSLRs, however, will load down the drive motors and make the tube wobble. For astrophotography, you'll need to go one step beyond the simple star alignment: It's not difficult; but it takes some time, and you need to be able to recognize some additional celestial objects. The SynScan onboard computer has a database of almost 43, objects. That's a lot more than you'll ever see in one lifetime.

The sad truth is, most of them will never be visible under most observers' sky conditions. But if you can get your SkyMatic out away from city lights on a clear, moonless night, you can look out across the cosmic ocean and back into the depths of time. And you will wonder, "Who is out there, looking back? Certain telescope configurations lend themselves to learning; Meade's Polaris is a perfect example. You'll obtain excellent views of objects, but for you to get them, the Polaris will gently compel you to understand some key celestial mechanics and a fair bit about how telescopes work.

It's a completely manual telescope. To get it set up and start sky hunting, you'll need to understand the nonintuitive equatorial EQ mount, and you'll have to learn how to read a star chart. But everything about the Meade is slightly bigger, better and more refined and, yes, rather pricier. Telescopes should be scored based on how nice the objects viewed through them look. But we were taken with how this Meade itself looks, standing proudly on its precision mount, the tube sparkling in metallic-blue Meade livery. Even the toe-saver screw is a finely knurled bauble wearing a blue anodized coat.

There's strength beneath the splendor: The accessory tray is well-molded, high-impact plastic. It's cleverly designed, too. Topologically, it's a pregnant triangle sculpted to nestle up into the tripod's spreader arms, where it's captured and seated by a threaded stud with a six-lobed knob, making it easy to undo at the end of a crisp night. There are cutouts for three eyepieces and a finger for hanging "lanyarded" gear.

There's also a dedicated cutout for a telescope remote, but with no motors onboard, the stock Polaris doesn't use one. The telescope rides on a well-constructed "German equatorial" mount. Such mounts are not the best for beginners; EQ mounts are tricky to understand and demanding to operate. You need to know the latitude of your observing site and the direction of your closest pole north or south. You should be able to locate exactly where your celestial pole is; it's either the star Polaris the North Star or the complementary point on the southern sky close to the star Sigma Octantis.

Longitude on the sky becomes right ascension on the telescope, and latitude maps to declination.

With a manual telescope like this, finding objects requires knowledge of how to read star charts and how to translate coordinates to the telescope, which can be taxing to do in the dark. But this Meade's setting circles — the numbered rings you use to point the telescope to a location by its coordinates — sport bright, easy-to-read markings.

It's more work than you'd have with a computerized Go-To mount. But this Meade scope will immediately reward you with crisp, colorful starlight memories. Meade one-ups the competition by including three eyepieces: That last one is best used to see surface detail on bright planets, but it has a very small aperture and exit pupil the diameter of the image formed by the ocular. Some folks will find it hard to get their eye aligned on it.

It's become common practice to include a Barlow magnifier, and Meade follows the trend with a 2x lens. Placed into the focuser with the eyepiece fitted into it, the Barlow ups the focal length, increasing the effective magnification. Meade's eyepiece capture screws are, thankfully, metal. Other brands use plastic, which tends to break in the cold, warp in the heat and shear off with even a small amount of over-torque by an enthusiastic thumb and forefinger like mine.

The optical tube strikes a nice balance between high quality and economical production. The rack-and-pinion focuser feels silky but, to my touch, could use knobs of larger diameter. When observing a galaxy, I like to nudge the focus very slightly in and out a few times; it tricks my brain into noticing more of the object's structure. But this hack is harder to do with smaller focus knobs.

As on the Levenhuk Skyline reflectors, the tube rings provide a threaded stud for your camera.

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