Meade ETX-70AT

[Jimmy]

Hi has anyone had any experience with the Meade
ETX70-AT?

Just wondering thats all.......

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

A friend of mine has one and it is a lovely little scope that gives a good image. Light and portable. Nice little planetary scope. It has a huge number of users and advocates. Its a *very* noisey though, unless meade have done something about the drives.

[iceman (Mike)]

I think seeker has a small ETX or something.. He does some great stuff with it.

[MintSauce (Gordon)]

I quite fancied this scope myself, but I wanted apature!

It looks great and is cheap with a hard case and the hand controller which is nice.

G.

GL deciding btw jimmy

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Hi Jimmy:

I have had an ETX 70 for some time now and love it. Its now become available (from time to time) at the Meade eBay store in the US for US $129 (refurbished) so I dont know if Australian prices have come down..at one time Camera House and so on wanted something like a 100% premium over the US street prices.

I use it quite a lot for imaging and have posted a few images on this forum as well as on Cloudy Nights (in the ETX forum), and you can get some idea of what can be achieved with a modified for long exposure webcam such as the Atik 1 C and this scope. (the picture of the Triffid nebula that you see on the left was taken with this scope)

(Remember though that the modified webcam , plus laptop plus software etc can cost considerably more than the ETX 70 itself.)

The scope is highly portable, is easy enough to use and great fun. The GoTo feature is great for finding stuff. Optics are great. If you take it out to a dark site you will be very impressed with what this little scope can show you.

On the other hand:

it was expensive here in Oz-you may get much greater (visual) bang for your buck with an 8 inch dob.

the Meade supplied tripod was designed and made in hell. Lasted one session before the clips broke. Not uncommon I hear. Had to make my own.

The focus knob on the ETX is a real pain on the butt.

The tracking is fine for visual work but usually good enough only for 10 to 15 second images.

And don't forget it is only a short tube achromat -so the images you see -though sharply defined thanks to top class optics-will be tiny.

It consumes batteries at an alarming rate -but you can make your own power supply. (should you decide to buy this scope I can give you the Dick Smith part numbers so you can make your own. You have to be careful though, plenty of peole have fried their ETX by stuffing up the connections..there is no protection in the circuitry)

My overall feeling-its the greatest second scope-take anywhere, fun , can use for low cost imaging. However, all things considered, If I were only to buy the one scope I'd still get an 8 inch dob-unless I was certain that I was going to be doing more imaging than visual observing.

hope this helps and doesnt confuse you further..feel free if have any questions

[Jimmy]

Is the ETX 90 allot better?

[iceman (Mike)]

I imagine it's got the same advantages/disadvantages, with a 20mm bigger aperture..

Get teh 8" dob and you won't regret it Jimmy

[Jimmy]

Whats so good about UHTC coatings?
Is it worth paying extra?

Im going with the dob, im just finding out a few things about a couple of goto scopes thats all!!

THanks

[MintSauce (Gordon)]

the UHTC coatings are meant to be worth the extra cause of the ammount more light (think of it as adding a little apature, so it can get a bit more light than a non-UHTC of the same size - resolving power stays the same tho)

To get a decent goto scope you will be paying more than for the GSO dob - and probably will not see so much, but depends on how good you are at reading star maps and stuff - if your impatient the GOTO might be better - if you want to learn where stuff is and about it then the Dob is definately better.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

I believe the ETX 105 is reputed to be the best engineered of the ETX series. The tripod is much better and allows polar alignment, both gears arent plastic-I think one gear is still plastic though.

Having said that the ETX 90 I read somewhere is the largest selling scope

If you really want to know everything there is to know about the ETX line there is no better place than Mike Weasner's site

http://www.weasner.com/etx/menu.html

( I did this as a quick reply so you may have to copy and past the link)

[Jimmy]

Has anything ever gone wrong with your ETX70?

[Jimmy]

Can you attach other telescopes to the etx70 drive system?

Can you use a 497 goto with this telescope?

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Jimmy,

I don't know, Seeker might.

Just wondering when you are getting your 8" Dobber?

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally posted by Jimmy
Can you attach other telescopes to the etx70 drive system?

Can you use a 497 goto with this telescope?

I dont believe you can attach another tesescope to the ETX 70 drive system -not without some fancy engineering at least

Yes I think you can use the 497 hand paddle.


Overall I have had many hours of observing with the ETX 70 and not had a major problem with it.

It goes psycho when the battery runs down but that is an easy fix.

I also had some wierd behaviour when we switched to daylight saving this year-coulndt get it to behave and even Mike Weasner couldnt help me figure out what was wrong

in the end it turned out that for some weird reason
it worked only if I inputted time in the 24 hour clock when aligning.

The motors bind if I tighten the tripod bolts too much-shouldnt happen but it does, I have to leave the bolts half tightened
--as a result I cant use the wedge I made for polar aligning.

and I think I mentioned the tripod-it is junk.

But never lose sight of the fact that it is a very short focal lenght modest aperture scope-think a big binoculars with GoTo, so that should be a guide as to what you can reasonably expect to see with this scope.

[Jimmy]

Originally posted by seeker372011

But never lose sight of the fact that it is a very short focal lenght modest aperture scope-think a big binoculars with GoTo, so that should be a guide as to what you can reasonably expect to see with this scope. [/B]

Excellent. I think my wife will be happy with this. Im getting a refurbished one sent over from the us delivered with hardcase for 400AU.

Im just thinking that later on I will probably upgrade this to larger aperture ( a few years) and by then the 105 or 125etx (with no AT) should be significantly cheaper. I have read about some other scope (90, 105, 125 withough AT) and that you can attach an autostar to them...how do you do that? do you need a special mount with motors in them? or can I just plug the autostar in?

Just wondering for the future thats all.

The dob should be arriving this week.
Ill let everyone know how it goes.
Thanks

[MintSauce (Gordon)]

the mount has the motors which are controlled by a normal controller, the auto star is the controller with a knowledge of where objects are.

How did you persude them to ship a meade product out of the US, I was gonna get one of these but they all refused to ship them.

[Jimmy]

What I meant was can you fit another etx model in the same mount (most likely the 60). What about the 90 or 105 models?

I bought in on ebay, then I said ooops... didn't see that it was only to US .... then I said don't worry about it... then the person under my bid said they didn't want it, so he sold it to me. It cost like 150 bucks to ship it with tripod and hard case and flexifocus. (approximately - ill check when bill comes).

Im lucky because Ive been emailing him allot and he's going to personally test it before he send it.

I've scored myself a friend at scopetronix in the US!!!!!!!!

[MintSauce (Gordon)]

heh, well done.

I think the mounts are specific and they don't really look like they come off, I don't think that you can get an unmotorized ETX (apart from the real old models) but the hand controller should work with other models; but I think you get a better one with the 105/90/125.

if you can get them to ship the larger ones then they are worth getting but here in oz it's very exspensive.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally posted by Jimmy
What I meant was can you fit another etx model in the same mount (most likely the 60). What about the 90 or 105 models?

sorry I dont know..worth checking at Mike Weasner's site.

But I'd be very surprised if you could fit the 90 or 105 usefully. I think the models 90 on have a different drive system compared to the 70.

Maybe the 60 OTA could be retrofitted on the forkmount of the 70 but it may involve some engineering.

Most efforts I have seen on the net have gone the other way --people have taken the ETX 70 off the fork mount to use its excellent optics for a guide scope

[Jimmy]

What are the most usefull eyepieces on this scope?
I want to buy a couple of extras.

Whats the highest usefull magnification I can go?
3x or 2x barlows?