Meade ETX125EC Telescope w/ Autostar Controller (497) and Tripod (884)

Rating:
Summary: First thought
Review: I've only had the 125 ETX for a couple of weeks but here are some things I'd like to have known:

Quality:
Seems very well made. Manual perhaps a little brief but there are some great webpages on the web about settings up and using this scope.

Portable:
18 lbs for scope + 11 lbs tripode.... fairly easy to lift and walk with, even assembled together.

Noise:
On the balconey when slewing at full speed I'm worried about the neighbours, but very quite at slower speeds. So I'll probably look for a deserted bit of road to slew without worry.

Moon:
Sharp around 200 times magnification. With a 9.7 mm eyepiece. Even with barrow magnification doubler at 400x looked good.

Deep Space:
Andromeda galaxy seemd perhaps a little dimmer than in my 7x50mm binoculars, however the telescope showed a steadier much enlarged image. I'm guessing the math is
telescope 125mm*125mm / 73 magnification = 214 sqmm per something
binoculars 50mm*50mm / 7 magnification = 357 sqmm per something
(Plus I get to use 2 eyes)
Because this is a "fast" scope the lowest magnification I can get appears to be 48X which should make Andromeda as bright through the scope and still 7 times larger than the binoculars.
I'd probably need a darker site that my backyard to see all 110 messier objects though.

Summary:
A great scope for planets a good scope for deep space objects. You need to plan to get a higher magnification eyepiece for the best planet viewing and maybe a lower magnification for deep space objects.

Rating:
Summary: A lot of scope for under $1000
Review: The ETX125 with Autostar is a very good telescope for a reasonable price. It is portable (not as much as the ETX90) and has a generous 5" objective in the small package afforded by the Maksutov-Cassegrain design of a lens and two mirrors. The optics are of high quality, as are most commercial Meade and Celestron scopes today. The included 26mm Super Plössl eyepiece gives it a magnification of 73x. A good first accessory would be a 15mm or 12mm eyepiece for higher magnification. The views of Mars and the Moon through this telescope are stunning. With enough practice, quite a bit of detail on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn is visible, in appropriate seeing conditions (steady skies). The mount is adequate for mounting the scope in altitude-azimith mode (as pictured), but a beefier mount is needed if one wants to use the telescope in polar mode for imaging. The Autostar is a great boon to this telescope, if one takes the time to learn to set up the telescope properly, and learns the locations in the sky of the stars the alignment routine uses for set up. Taking time to calibrate and train the drives really improves the pointing accuracy. One annoyance is the delay and backlash (initial move in the wrong direction) of the controls to move the scope. The focus knob can be akward to use with the scope in certain orientations. There is a third party accessory that remedies this, or one can get Meade's motorized focuser (I ordered this with my scope when I was purchasing it based on my experiences with the spotting scope version of the ETX90). Another annoyance I have experienced with the tripod is that the clips on the mounting bolts tend to slip off. Each of the two mountng bolts has a clip, washer and spring that can be difficult to find in the dark if the clip slipping causes them to shoot in a random direction. I bought this scope to use to observe/image the planets and moon from New York City, while my bigger scope is in a less light polluted site.