This fantastic complete astronomy starter kit would normally cost over £159 - it's now only £119.99 inc UK delivery

Featuring the Bresser 70x900 high power refracting telescope and a host of accessories to get anyone, young or old, started in the fascinating hobby of astronomy!

The Bresser 70x900 is an ideal scope to get started in astronomy (a lot better than my first 2" scope! James SnS) and has a superb 70mm air-spaced achromatic doublet primary lens and comes supplied with a well-engineered German equatorial mounting (see photo)with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis and a rigid steel full height field tripod (just the tripod and mount is amazing and looks like it would cost £150 on its own!).

We can't praise the Bresser 70x900 equatorial mount enough. Equatorial mounting is the best way to mount this type of telescope, for high powered viewing the facility to compensate for the rotation of the Earth by turning just one knob is truly invaluable. We've been selling refracting telescopes like this for years and this version of the Bresser EQ mount is probably the best one we've ever seen!

Supplied with the 70x900 is a complete kit of accessories including three excellent eyepieces - 4mm, 9mm, and 25mm (see item 1 in photo and below for full specification) giving a useful range of magnifications from high to medium and lower power (wide-angle).

Moon filter (item 7) Included with the eyepiece set is a pale blue filter that can be attached to all eyepieces for reducing the brightness of the moon and allow more detail to be seen.

The instruction manual (item 9 - in well-written English!) is illustrated, and if this is not enough guidance we have included TV astronomer Robin Scagell's Stargazing with a Telescope FREE. This 192-page fully illustrated book is a great read and will guide the new telescope user in the methods of telescopic observation. It also introduces many of the fantastic targets that can be seen from UK back gardens.

To help find your way among the stars and constellations there's a fantastic electronic red dot LED finder! Red dot finder (item 4 in photo) - it's a clever little gadget that you switch on and it appears to project a red dot on the sky - simply place the red dot on the target you wish to look at! To help get your directions right there's even a magnetic compass included(see item 6 in photo - you only really need to know where North is!)

Also includes a useful 2x Barlow lens (item 2 in photo) to allow you to double the magnification of any eyepiece used. Simply pop the eyepiece into the Barlow lens and put the combined unit into the scope as you would the eyepiece and the Barlow will increase the magnification of that eyepiece by a factor of two - it's like getting six eyepieces with the scope instead of three and gives a range of magnifications from 35x all the way up to 450x!

This outfit is a great astronomy starter kit - in fact, all you will need to supply is a clear night!

Telescope specifications

Primary Lens: Glass achromatic doublet

Focal length: 900mm

Aperture: 70mm (f13)

Magnification with supplied eyepieces:

35x, 70x, 100x, 200x, 225x & 450x

This is achieved with the following combinations:

25mm = 35x plus Barlow = 70x, 9mm = 100x plus Barlow = 200x, 4mm = 225x plus Barlow 450x

Mounting: German equatorial with dual-axis manual slow motions

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

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart from a clear night that is!) The Bresser 70x900 is a long focus refractor telescope. It has a useful and bright 70mm (two and three-quater inches in old money!) to achieve high resolution, bright images, and has a useful long focal length to achieve high power magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.

At two or three times the price, the Bresser 70x900 is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with an ultra modern red-dot finder scope (to make pointing and target finding easy) and the simple two-screw collimation system shows a nice attention to detail and user convenience.

Over and above the top specification the thing that impresses us most is the nice 'touches' that although not that important in themselves, display the attitude of the manufacturer. The manufacturer really has spent time and money making sure this serious scope is top of it's class.

Fully upgradable! The 114 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 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, 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 and amplification lenses (like the one included, to increase the magnification without using short, difficult to use, eyepieces), 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 safe Solar observation filter is also available for the 70x900.

What can you see with the Bresser 70 x 900 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 in fantastic detail. The planet Mars will show some occasional detail 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, and at just 60x magnification, 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 Bresser 70x900 telescope. Outside of the solar system hundreds of gas nebulea and galaxies come within the reach of this great starter instrument