This Sky-Watcher Startravel 80mm short tube refractor offers high quality, high contrast images, all in a compact optical tube.

The Startravel 80mm refractor is an ideal scope to get started in astronomy (a lot better than my first 2" scope! James) and has a superb 80mm or 3.1" air-spaced achromatic doublet primary lens and comes supplied with a well-engineered German equatorial mount with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis (upgradable to electric drive if required).

Supplied with the 80mm are Two excellent eyepieces - 10mm, and 25mm (see below for full specification) giving a useful range of magnifications from high to a lower power (wide-angle). The instruction manual (in well-written English!) which is also fully illustrated.

So what's so great about the Sky-Watcher Startravel 80mm telescope kit.

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart from a clear night that is!) the 80mm Startravel is a great astronomy telescope. It has a decent-sized aperture, 80mm (just over 3 inches in old money!) to achieve high resolution images, and has a versatile focal length to achieve wide-field views and high magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.

Viewers of Sir Patrick Moore's Sky at Night TV program or readers of his numerous books will know that he has always recommended a minimum telescope aperture of 3" (76mm) for serious astronomy (the Startravel 80mm comfortabley equals this recommendation.

At two or three times the price, the Sky-Watcher 80mm is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with an ultra modern optical finder scope (to make pointing and target finding easy) As well as direct photography through the scope - you can also get into guided astro-photography with this scope. The tube rings have a tripod fitting boss that allows cameras to be attached directly to the telescope mount for tracked photography.

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, Scopes'n'Skies main forte is supplying astronomy telescope accessories and the Startravel 80mm 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 astro-photography), Barlow (included) and amplification lenses 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 Solar observation filter is also available for the Startravel 80mm.

What can you see with the Sky-Watcher Startravel 80mm 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 50x 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 Startravel 80mm telescope.