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The Sky-Watcher Maksutovs will provide high quality, high contrast images, all in a compact optical tube and low price.

Compact Maksutov high power optics and an a super day and night electronic finder make this telescope great for astronomy and can even be used for high powered terrestrial daytime use!

High-power/small size The Skymax 80 is a high-powered 80mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope with a wide magnification range and electronic finder for day and night-time use. This fantastic scope delivers the resolution and contrast you'd expect from a much bigger (more expensive!) telescope. The Maksutov design optics will easily out-perform an achromatic refractor of comparable aperture and the optically compressed design makes it ideal for high-powered terrestrial nature watching as well as astronomy.

Electronic finder One of the cleverest features of the Skymax 80 is the electronic red dot finder. Pointing a telescope as powerful as the Skymax can be tricky - especially when trying to find targets in the darkness of the night time sky. So this scope is equipped with a reflex finder (it works a bit like a pilots head-up display) that places a red dot over the target making it very easy to point the instrument at any target any time of the day or night. The finder has a variable brightness setting - bright for day and dim for astronomy use.

Amazingly this powerful telescope is just 279mm long (and weighs only 680g) and can be easily transported (and used with ordinary photo tripods). Don't forget though - this super telescope comes complete with a robust full-height field tripod with a brilliant EQ1 equatorial mount for great astronomy target tracking.

Used terestrially the image will be flipped left to right. If this is a problem the image can be easily rectified by use of a recommended acessory - see lower left.

Specifications:

Magnifications (with eyepieces supplied): x50 & x100

Highest Practical Power (Potential): x160

Diameter of Primary Mirror: 80mm

Telescope Focal Length: 1000mm (f/12.5)

Eyepieces Supplied (1.25"): 10mm and 20mm

90º Diagonal

Red Dot Finderscope

EQ1 Equitorial Mount

Aluminium Tripod with accessory Tray

So what's so great about the Skymax 80 telescope kit?

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart from a clear night that is!) the Skymax 80mm Maksutov is a great truly great all round telescope. It has a serious 80mm (or 3 and 1/8 inch in old money!) aperture to achieve high resolution images, and has a useful long focal length to achieve high magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.

At two or three times the price, the Skymax 80 is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with a red dot finder and all the accessories you need to get going - first night out.

Fully upgradable! The equatorial mount can be upgraded with an RA motor to track the stars - far too many lower-cost scopes offer no kind of upgrade path and if you really get bitten by the hobby (and you may well with this great scope) with inferior instruments you have nowhere to go but to buy a new scope. In fact, our main forte is supplying astronomy telescope accessories and the Skymax 80 can be upgraded and added to in many different ways. For example, it has a standard 1.25" eyepiece holder (regarded as the hallmark of a serious telescope, by the way) allowing a wide range of additional accessories to be attached. These accessories include camera adaptors (to try your hand at astrophotography), Barlow and amplification lenses (like the one we are offering FREE) to increase the magnification without using short, difficult to use, eyepieces), as well as wide-angle and higher-powered specialist eyepieces and other accessories to make the telescope easier to use on terrestrial targets. Even a safe Solar observation filter is also available for the Skymax 80.

What can you see with Skymax telescope?

At low to medium power the ancient landscape of the Moon becomes a fabulously intricate panorama of craters, rays and rills. At higher powers individual crater systems can be explored. The planet Mars will show many details on its surface and the polar cap can be seen during ideal observing conditions. At good observing times, when observed at just 45x or higher magnification, the planet Jupiter will appear as a banded disc larger in size than you normally see the full Moon with the unaided eye! The cloud belts of Jupiter will show ever changing detail that will show drift across the planet's face in just a few minutes. The four main moons of Jupiter will be seen orbiting the giant planet, sometimes casting shadows onto Jupiter's dense cloudy atmosphere. The planet Saturn will show its magnificent ring system and its bright famous moon Titan. These are just a few of the things that can be seen in our own solar system with the Skymax 80mm telescope. But you can even focus the Skymax on subjects as near as 5m - very unusual for a telescope design for long range viewing. Don't forget though - this is not a telescope for bird or wildlife watching unless the targets are a long way away - it's just much too powerful to be used on close moving targets!