electronic telescope?

Question

I ve heard of this telescope thats electronic. In its memory are stored about 4000 space objects and when asked it will automatically point to them! You basically need to just enter your country coordinates and its ready to go.

Anyone has one of these? Whats it called?

its not so big by the way and can be carried around in a car. i ve heard its about US $ 500

Answer 1

Telectric!

Answer 2

Okay: Here it is in a nutshell...

This telescope (look at Meade) must be placed on the ground or viewing location with the base oriented in a specific direction.
Then you turn it on (battery powered). There is a memory bank inside the electronic box which has the azimuth and elevation stored for several thousand stars and the planets. You select one for the telescope to aim at, and the little computer chip in the black box reads the listing in the memory and makes the motors turn the telescope to the correct place - azimuth and elevation, so that the telescope is pointing right at the place you selected
(star or planet you chose to look at).

I am not in telescope sales, but I think that the cost of these is around $700 to $1000 US for a basic unit like that. Equipped with the computer thing you might be talking $1500. On the used market, it is possible that you could get one for $500 if you spent a lot of time doing research and checking (inspecting) closely before purchasing one. I would recommend joining a telescope club to learn as much as possible before you spend lots of money. Try looking through various telescopes and getting an idea of what they can do, and how they work. Then make up your own mind.

Answer 3

As Bob says, they're called GOTO telescopes. You need to point the telescope at 2 known objects and then the 'scope knows how it's aligned and can find things in its database.

We have endless debates about the pros and cons of these things in my astronomy society - I think they're great for experienced observers, but I don't like them for beginners.

1/ You're spending a lot of money on a system to do something you can do yourself - I'd rather spend the money on good optics, big enough to give me a chance of seeing something. It can be incredibly frustrating trying to find things yourself, but it gets easier with practice.

2/ Most astronomical objects aren't that impressive and observing with a telescope takes practice - you have to train your eye to see subtle contrast differences or tiny detail. If you've just spent 30 minutes finding an object you're likely to spend some time looking at it! I've spoken to many people with goto 'scopes who'll tick off a dozen objects on their observing lists without ever realy observing them.

3/ I like being outside under the night sky and knowing where things are - there's a sense of familiarity. I don't believe you can get this if you always have the scope do the work for you.

Answer 4

Many manufacturers (Celestron & Meade are the two major ones here in the USA) have such electronic scopes with storage of a number of celestial sights in it. They are basically a computer which, given the local time, your location on earth in latitude & longitude and calibrating it with two or three known bright stars, it can move the telescope to the correct position and compensate for the earth's rotation. Meade's most popular one and the one it sounds like you are talking about is called the ETX-90, a 90 millimeter Maksutov type combination lens/mirror telescope, which makes it very short & compact but relatively powerful. There are smaller versions of the ETX (lens only) and larger ones too (ETX-125). They can be found new and used on eBay.

Answer 5

There are many of them. They're called "GOTO" telescopes because they go to the object that you tell them to. Here are some:

http://www.telescopes.com/specialty_v2/go-to-telescopes.html