Meade DS-60EC Telescope

Meade's DS-60EC refracting telescope offers high-quality optics and easy push-button electronic operation, making it a perfect instrument for the serious beginner. It features a multicoated, achromatic two-element objective lens and precise, smooth altitude and azimuth movements. It includes the Meade handheld electronic controller, which allows for four-speed push-button operation and easy object location and tracking. It also includes Meade's StarNavigator software, which displays more than 10,000 celestial objects for help in locating galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, stars, and planets. Additionally, the telescope comes with a full-length adjustable aluminum tripod.<p>The DS-60EC exhibits Meade's fine attention to detail and quality, from the precision-polished crown and flint optical glass components and contrast-increasing multicoatings, to oversize bearings on both telescope axes that facilitate great precision in tracking. It offers a resolving power of 1.9 arcseconds, a limiting visual magnitude of 11, a 200x maximum practical visual power, and a 5mm by 24mm viewfinder.<p>The DS-60EC is also built to be fully compatible with Meade's Autostar computer controller, for automatic location and tracking of celestial objects.

Reader Reviews
Two hundred years ago Jean Francois Champollion decpihered the Rosetta Stone and unleashed the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. You'll wish you had old Jean by your side when you tackle Meade's pictographic nightmare called the "instructions." Any revision that Meade makes to the instructions should contain the following warnings: 1) Send your spouse, kids, and pets to bed. 2) Remove yourself to the most remote corner of the house. Bring along a large, but unopened bottle of asprin. .... The instruction booklet is 10 pages. The first half of the booklet contains 24 separate pictographs labeled A to Z (hey, I thought that there were 26 letters in the alphabet?). Oh, and just so you know, steps I and O don't exist. I think that Meade wants you to make them up on your own. Steps C, E, and F have nothing at all to do with the DS 60 so it is a mystery why they are included. Step "W" contains 16 different parts that require assembly. Oh, I failed to mention the joys of assembly. The telescope comes almost fully assembled except for the tripod. You'll need to disassemble almost the entire telescope so you can add a part or two. And, if part 5 points to a widget in diagram "T", then part 5 in diagram "U" is something completely different. I've assembled a lot of toys in my day, but by far, this one was the worst.