Note: Just to be clear, I do not care for any of these telescopes. Buy one if you wish, but I think you'll be frustrated. The rankings are relative.
The Wegat visual backs are here: www.wegatoptical.com. Note that the Wegat back does not help with focus shift issues, but it does eliminate a lot of plastic, as well as the flip mirror. You will need to supply a diagonal and SCT-style visual back.
Goto ETXs are power hungry. You will deplete the 8 AA batteries after only a few nights use.
I do not view the tripods (#883, #884) as optional. On the electronic ETXs the hole spacing on the bottom plate is made to fit the tripods. If you have one of the refractors, I suggest replacing the stock too-light tripod with a #883 or #884.
The newest ETX90 Observer is OK but not great. I was hoping for a major upgrade but there’s still a lot of plastic. One nice feature – they made the OTA easy to remove.
Watch out when buying older used ETXs on Craigslist or ebay. Even many of the ones not listed as “for parts or repair” are in fact broken or missing parts (to be fair, the owner may not know). A good rule of thumb – when buying used, assume the electronics are broken no matter what the ad says.
The three spindly little legs on the ETX RA are useless.
Amazon Affiliate Links:
Orion Starblast Telescope [ Ссылка ]
Zhumell Z114 Telescope (same as the Orion Starblast) [ Ссылка ]
Orion Skyline XT6 Telescope (new version as of 2022) [ Ссылка ]
Orion Skyline XT8 Telescope (new version as of 2022) [ Ссылка ]
Sky-Watcher 6” Dobsonian Telescope [ Ссылка ]
Sky-Watcher 8” Dobsonian Telescope [ Ссылка ]
TeleVue 24mm Panoptic (my favorite 1.25” eyepiece) [ Ссылка ]
TeleVue 13mm Nagler Type 6 eyepiece [ Ссылка ]
TeleVue 7mm Nagler Type 6 eyepiece [ Ссылка ]
TeleVue Everbrite 1.25” Diagonal [ Ссылка ]
TeleVue 2X Barlow (Much better than the cheap throwaway barlows found in cheap scopes) [ Ссылка ]
Heated gloves [ Ссылка ]
Heated vest [ Ссылка ]
Small planisphere [ Ссылка ]
Large planisphere [ Ссылка ]
The Cambridge Star Atlas [ Ссылка ]
The Stars: A New Way To See Them [ Ссылка ]
Sky & Telescope's Pocket Star Atlas [ Ссылка ]
The 21st Century Atlas of the Moon [ Ссылка ]
Turn Left at Orion (good beginner’s book about finding stuff) [ Ссылка ]
My tiny 8X21 binoculars are here [ Ссылка ]
A decent pair of 7X35 binoculars [ Ссылка ]
A decent pair of 7X50 binoculars [ Ссылка ]
The Orion 8X42 binoculars are here [ Ссылка ]
Camera used for filming [ Ссылка ]
Camera I’m using for 4K video and some B-Roll [ Ссылка ]
The lens I use for filming (80% of the time) [ Ссылка ]
The lenses used for filming the rest of the time (17-40 f/4 and 24-70 f/4) [ Ссылка ] and [ Ссылка ]
My tripod [ Ссылка ]
My ballhead [ Ссылка ]
The softboxes I use [ Ссылка ]
Wireless mic: [ Ссылка ]
My astrophotography book contains advice on telescopes observing, and taking pictures (based on my award-winning Dartmouth thesis, June 2020) 255 pages, 258 color images: [ Ссылка ]
Top Three Recommended Beginner’s Telescope Video: [ Ссылка ]
Top Beginner’s Astronomy Books: [ Ссылка ]
For Complete Beginners, Part 1: [ Ссылка ]
For Complete Beginners, Part 2: [ Ссылка ]
Hundreds of other telescope reviews on my web site at:
www.scopereviews.com
