Great starter outfit featuring the National Geographic 70x900 refracting telescope and all the basic accessories needed to get anyone, young or old, started in the fascinating hobby of astronomy!

Now with a choice of FREE gifts!

The National Geographic 70x900 is an ideal scope for night-time astronomy and day-time high-powered terrestrial viewing. The kit comes supplied with a well-engineered all-metal mounting with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis and a full-height field tripod.

Supplied with the National Geographic 70x900 are three excellent eyepieces - 4mm, 12mm and 20mm (see below for full specification) giving a useful range of magnifications from high to medium and lower power (wide-angle). A 3x erecting lens for terrestrial viewing.

Telescope specifications

Primary lens: Air-spaced achromatic doublet

Focal length: 900mm

Aperture: 70mm (F13)

Magnification with supplied eyepieces: 4mm = 225x, 12mm = 75x, 20mm = 45x

Mounting: combined altazimuth and equatorial with dual-axis manual slow motions

So what's so great about the National Geographic 70x900 telescope kit?

The National Geographic 70x900 is a great "classic" astronomy telescope. It has a good-sized aperture (70mm) to achieve high resolution images, and has a useful long focal length to achieve high magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.

At two or three times the price, this is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with a good quality wide-field fully corrected (the image is the right way round and the right way up) finder scope (to make pointing and target finding easy day or night) and a the quick-release shoe fitting and the two-screw spring-loaded collimation system shows a nice attention to detail and user convenience.

The hybrid AZ and equatorial mount is a brilliant innovation allowing the telescope to be used terrestrially in daytime (for distant target viewing) and, at the turn of a knob, the mount can be set-up for astronomy. The National Geographic 70x900 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) allowing a wide range of additional accessories to be attached. These accessories include camera adaptors (to try your hand at astro-photography), 2x Barlows, to greatly increase magnification with each eyepiece as well as wide-angle and higher-powered specialist eyepieces.

What can you see with the 70x900?

At low to medium power the Moon becomes a fabulously intricate landscape 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 National Geographic 70x900 telescope.