Lidl telescope extravaganza on 22nd!

Great idea Phil. A while back when the Lidl telescopes were in stock, I wrote a letter to the Nenagh Guardian (my home paper) which they printed. The letter suggested anyone wanting advice about their Lidl telescope should contact a local astronomy club and also gave the IFAS forum web address. I'm not sure if it was widely read but one person did got in touch afterwards and I passed on Shannonside's contact details.

It's the blood pressure monitor I need at the moment with all the changes we've to put into our payroll software to cater for Budget 2009

All the best,

John

Great to see Lidl's doing the deal again, I can't justify buying another scope myself....I mean, a person can have too many scopes, I mean really. That 4" refractor looks nice..hhmmm.

Signed
Very Confused
Co Laois

Declan

BTW

I think the idea of advertising the existance of Astronomy clubs thru Lidl's is a good idea. A small self adhesive address label with a short text and phone number on the box might work

The Bresser R-102 is nice. It's an f/9.8 achromat so colour correction isn't perfect but how noticeable it is depends on how much of a nitpicker one happens to be. I find a Baader Fringe Killer filter eliminates anything that's noticeable enough to bug me.

I bought the LXD75 N6-AT the previous year and while the Newt itself is fine the LXD75 Autostar mount, which accounts for most of the cost, is more trouble than it's worth. I find that I far prefer the manual GEM that came with the 4" and when I use the Newt I tend to put it on my Giro2 mount instead of the time consuming LXD75.

I still have both of them, I've owned a Skylux and I've looked through the ETX70. For what an opinion is worth, of the four I think the Bresser R-102 represents the best value for money and possibly the longest term investment. It's a good planetary achromat and quite capable of handling the Messier catalogue for starters.

Please note that there is a mistake in the description of the Bresser Skylux -

The mount has never come with motor drives and in any case the equatorial mount supplied with previous editions only supported an optional single axis drive. It's more than likely that the line "Dual-axis motor drive system." was inadvertantly copied over from one of the other descriptions when the web page was created.

The specifications outlined in the other descriptions are accurate apart from the suggestion that the Bresser R-102 can be "turned on". The descriptions of their capabilities are excessive but that's just marketing.

Looks like the skylux is on an alt-az mlunt this time with slo-mo controls.

That's the photo they put up the year I bought it too - but the mount in (and displayed on) the box was an equatorial.