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| What Does It
Have?
The Luminova 800mm is an excellent refractor telescope. Especially good for beginners or older children it is light and easy to assemble and use and it comes with quite a few useful extras. The Luminova 800mm is well suited to solar observation. To that end a solar projection screen is included which you can see in the picture opposite. You can use this to observe sunspots and solar eclipses safely. If you're going to do this you must follow the instructions and you must never look at the sun directly! First you have to find the object you want to observe. With a powerful telescope like this that is not too easy, the field of view, magnified as it is, is really quite small. This is where the Finder Scope comes in, this makes it simple to sight and locate objects, even while wearing glasses. The high quality glass optics and 1-1/4 eyepieces deliver sharp images and a wider field of view if you wish. With the Luminova 800mm you get three of these a 25mm, 12.5mm and 4mm. You also get two Barlow lenses (2x and 3.3x) which increase magnification further - giving a maximum magnification of 660x. Then there is the tripod. Made of aluminum for lightweight strength, the tripod also has an Alt-Azimuth mount. While not quite as good as the more expensive Equatorial mount it does come with a stabilizer arm and micro controls that enable you to track celestial objects. As we said above, there are two Barlow lenses included (a 2x and a 3.3x), these increase the telescopes magnification (the 2x doubles magnification and the 3.3x increases it more than 3 fold). Because of the way that they work, astronomical telescopes turn the image upside down. This does not matter when you are using the telescope for astronomy, there is no up and down in space anyway. However, you can also use the Luminova telescope in the day time. For this there is a 1.5x image erecting eyepiece that turns the image up the right way. The Luminova comes with a moon filter (worth £9.99). This moon filter is attached to the eyepiece and enhances contrast on the lunar surface so that you can see details better. The Liminova is also excellent for solar observation (observing the sun). For this you must never look through the telescope eye piece at the sun! Instead you use the included sun screen (you can see this in the image above and right). the sun screen safly focuses the Ease Of Use? Setting up is very easy. Using the telescope for observation can be a bit tricky at first. The main problem is locating the object you wish to view and then keeping it in view. The earth's rotation seems remarkably fast while you are attempting to observe an object millions of miles away. However, with some practice, it soon gets easier. The Luminova 800mm telescope comes with SkyWatch Astronomy Software. This is really great. There's a massive amount to explore - for instance information on stars, planets, constellations, comets etc. Photographs of stars, galaxies and planets. Best of all though there is a excellent solar system map that displays in real time (it gets the date from your computer). Using this you can get the position, rising and setting times of the Moon, the planets and any comets that happen to be in the solar system at the time. There is even a night vision mode so that, like we did, you can load the software onto your lap top or notebook computer and actually use it in conjunction with the telescope. Optional Extras? Books, maps, photo adaptation tubes, Barlow lenses and more. And So The Luminova 800mm Refractor is an excellent telescope with some great software for a brilliant value price. Better than that though we are selling you a way to get at the stars and planets and once you have the telescope that's all there is to pay. You get the greatest show in the universe for free. This is a fantastic telescope for a beginner or an older child. |
Useful Stuff Guarantee Ten year manufacturer's guarantee. Specifications
£99.99 Guess what! This is the price you pay within the UK, no VAT to add and no postage or packing charge.
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