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The Moonraker 80 is our lowest priced full sized 80mm GEM refractor - and it's another Scopes'n'Skies exclusive!

This great astronomy starter kit features a brilliant 80mm refractor (as recommended by Sir Patrick Moore as the minimum requirement for serious astronomy). At just £142.99 inc UK mainland p&p it's a stunning bargain reduced in or sale from £169.99!

The kit comprises the Moonraker 80mm refracting telescope on the EQ1 equatorial mounting and a host of accessories to get anyone, young or old, launched in the fascinating hobby of astronomy!

The Moonraker 80 is an ideal scope to get started in astronomy (a lot better than my first 2" scope! James SnS) and has a superb 80mm (3") air-spaced achromatic doublet primary lens and comes supplied with a well-engineered German equatorial mounting with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis and a rigid aluminium full height field tripod (just the tripod and mount is amazing and looks like it would cost £150 on its own!).

With our small web pages we are going to struggle to list all of the features this stunning kit has to offer for only £142.99 (inc mainland UK p&p!).

Supplied with the Moonraker 80 kit are two good quality eyepieces - 8mm, and 20mm (see below for full specification) when used with the Barlow lens giving a useful range of magnifications from low wide-angle through medium to high power.

Also included:

FREE a 3 piece discovering astronomy kit with a classic Philip's guide book (By Robin Scagell), Planisphere Starfinder and a super full size Lensatic field compass! Normally £28.97 - the guide book kit has all the information you need, including where to observe, planets and remote deep-sky targets like galaxies and nebulae and it's your FREE when you buy this great scope.

Large field compass - to orientate the telescope and assist with finding exciting targets.

To help find your way among the stars and constellations there's an optical cross-hair finder

2x Barlow lens 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 double the magnification of that eyepiece - it's like getting four eyepieces with the scope instead of two!

This outfit is one of our best ever astronomy starter kits and easily our best ever value for money full sized 80mm telescope - in fact, all you will need to supply is a clear night!

Telescope specifications

Primary lens: Air-spaced achromatic doublet

Focal length: 900mm

Aperture: 80mm (f11)

Magnification with supplied eyepieces:

45x, 90x, 112x, 225x

This is achieved with the following combinations:

20mm = 45x, plus Barlow 90x 8mm = 112x plus Barlow = 225x.

Mounting: German equatorial with dual-axis manual slow motions

So what's so great about the Moonraker 80 telescope kit?

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart from a clear night that is!) the Moonraker 80mm is a great truly "classic" astronomy telescope. It has a serious 80mm (or 3 and 1/8 inch in old money!) aperture 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, the Moonraker 80 is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with an optical cross-hair finder scope (to make pointing and target finding easy).

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 Moonraker 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 astrophotography), 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 Solar observation filter is also available for the Moonraker 80.

What can you see with Moonraker 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 45x 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 Moonraker 80mm telescope.