A few months back I purchased a Meade ETX-80 telescope and managed to get everything up and running. I was able to view some excellent shots of the Moon and also of Jupiter. Part of the draw of this telescope is it’s “Autostar” controller, which once programmed and aligned allows you to simply enter what you wish to view and it will turn and rotate to zone in on the object you selected.

There is also the option to connect the telescope to your laptop and use the AutoStar package to it. I was going to purchase the cable to connect it up until I came across the Meade MySky. It’s not available just yet, but it looks excellent. You can simply turn it on, point it at a object, and then pull the trigger to identify planets, stars, nebula and galaxies. It has a 480×234 full-color LCD screen, uses SD cards for storage and a 12 channel GPS unit. Best of all, it will connect to my existing ETX-80 telescope and control it too. I’ll have to get my hands on one as soon as they are available.