| While you can see seven stars in the Pleiades open star cluster (the Seven Sisters) with your unaided eye, you can see perhaps one hundred stars in the cluster with a 70mm telescope. But look with the 127mm (5”) aperture of the Meade DS-2130AT reflector and you can see over 250 stars! And, under dark sky conditions, you can even see the faint nebulosity around some of the primary stars of the Seven Sisters. Nothing beats a big aperture for showing the wonders outside the solar system, and nothing beats the 5” aperture fully computerized DS-2130AT reflector for value. If you can tell the telescope the day and the time, the name of the closest big city, and where North is, the DS-2130 will locate and move to the planets and hundreds of deep space objects for you at the push of a button. It will then follow them automatically as they move across the skies so you can observe them at your leisure. If you’re a beginning astronomer, the Autostar will let you see hundreds of objects your very first night out observing. The lightweight DS-2130 is easy to carry to any observing location, whether to a distant mountaintop or just out to your own back yard. Then, a quick and easy 60-second alignment of the telescope’s computer on the sky will start you on your way observing. Within our Milky Way galaxy the DS-2130 lets you view hundreds of nebulas; star clusters; double, multiple, and variable stars – plus dozens of external galaxies. All of the major planets except Pluto can be seen through the DS-2130. You can study the rings of Saturn; the cloud belts and four major moons of Jupiter; and prominent features on Mars. You can see mountain ranges on the Moon and lunar craters by the hundreds. The Meade DS-2130 reveals amazing amounts of outer space detail that you just can’t see without the telescope. This Telescope’s Optical System . . . - Reflector optical tube: 127mm (5”) aperture Newtonian reflector with all-glass mirrors. Each mirror is coated with highly reflective aluminum and overcoated with quartz for long life. No plastic mirrors. Aluminum tube with protective tube end rings. The 1000mm focal length f/7.9 focal ratio optics can provide both low power wide angle views and high power closeups. An achromatic relay lens in keeps the tube length conveniently short, despite the 39” focal length of the system. The reflector design of the scope is totally free of the purple haze of spurious color visible around the Moon and planets in lesser refractor scopes. Images are sharp and clear. You can collimate (align) the mirrors for the sharpest images. This will have to be done only rarely, thanks to the special design of the cell holding the lightweight mirror.
- Rack and pinion focuser: The 2” focuser has a 1.25” eyepiece adapter so you use it with the widest possible variety of eyepieces. The focuser has dual focusing knobs for precise image control with either hand. The large focus knobs are easy to operate, even while wearing gloves or mittens in cold weather.
- Two eyepieces: You get two very good 1.25” Super Plössl eyepieces with your scope – a medium power 9.7mm (103x) and a low power 26mm (38x) that has a 1.3° field of view (over two and a half times the diameter of the full Moon). The eyepieces are seven-layer multicoated with antireflection materials to give you very high light transmission and excellent contrast.
- Finderscope: A low power 6 x 30mm finderscope attaches to the side of the optical tube. The straight-through viewing finder provides a traditional inverted mirror-image astronomical view, the same as the view through the telescope eyepiece. If properly collimated (aligned) with the view through the main telescope, its crosshairs will help you center distant objects in the telescope so you don’t have to search for them using the narrow eyepiece field of view.
This Telescope’s Mount . . . - Fork mount/drive system: The DS-2130 has a very stable single arm fork mount with two built-in motor drives. Oversized bearings and precision worm gear drive systems on each axis permit smooth pushbutton control of the telescope motion using the supplied computer hand control. Eight internal (user-supplied) AA-batteries power the DS-2130 for up to 20 hours in the field.
- Control panel: Integrated into one of the fork arms is a control panel that serves as a central connection point for the Autostar computer’s hand control as well as for an RS-232 serial interface adapter (that is included in the optional #506 AstroFinder Software and Cable Connector Kit). Using the RS-232 interface, new or revised software can be downloaded from the Internet through your PC to the telescope so that the computer program never becomes obsolete. The positions of Earth satellites may be updated regularly to allow their observation through the telescope. You can also download the positions of newly-discovered objects, such as comets, which can them be located and tracked by the Autostar computer.
- Autostar computer: The #494 Autostar computer hand control lets you automatically locate and precisely track over 1500 celestial objects. Just enter the object you wish to observe on the Autostar display, press GO TO, and watch as the telescope moves at a rapid 4.5° per second in both axes simultaneously to place the object in the field of view. There are dozens of other Autostar functions to add to your observing enjoyment and educational opportunities. For example, the Autostar also gives you automatic go-to capability to any celestial coordinates, such as the comet positions published monthly in Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines, not just the objects already in its memory. It gives you continuous digital readouts of the telescope position in the celestial coordinates of right ascension and declination. You can store 200 user-defined objects of your own in its database. You get pushbutton 9-speed dual-axis operation, from a slow 2x the sidereal rate (the speed at which the stars move) to fast 4.5° per second. You get guided tours of “Tonight’s Best Objects,” and over 20 other menu options.
- Tripod: The supplied lightweight aluminum field tripod has the rigidity and stability needed for high-power astronomical observing. The tripod permits altazimuth (vertical-horizontal) alignment of the telescope and easily adjusts for standing or seated observations through the telescope. The tripod includes an accessory shelf that holds your eyepieces and your Autostar hand control.
- Star Navigator software: Included with the scope is a basic planetarium-type software program on two floppy disks that will display over 10,000 stars and objects on your computer. You can use it to print out star charts for observing from any place on Earth, at any date and time. It can also can be used to identify and display the positions of the planets and the moons of Jupiter. The program needs only Windows 3.1 or higher to operate and uses a mere 640k of RAM.
If you add up all you get – a good-sized 5” telescope, dual motor drives, two high quality eyepieces, an Autostar go-to computer, and a full length adjustable height field tripod – you have a telescope that was unavailable to the amateur astronomer at any price only a few short years ago. The fact that the Meade DS-2130 exists, that it works so simply and so well, and that it costs so very little for all you get, is a marvel indeed. For the serious beginning deep space observer, the Meade DS-2130 is a first rate choice indeed.
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