Exclusive to Scopes'n'Skies - fabulous complete astronomy starter kit featuring the Sky Watcher Classic 900 (70mm x 900mm) refracting telescope and a host of accessories that normally cost £100 alone to get anyone, young or old, started in the fascinating hobby of astronomy!

The Classic 900 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 (picture D) with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis (see picture B,2)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 £99.99 (inc UK p&p!) but here goes!

Supplied with the unique Classic 900 kit are two good quality eyepieces - 10mm, and 25mm (see below for full specification) giving a useful range of magnifications from high to medium and lower power (wide-angle). The instruction manual (in well-written English!) is illustrated, and if this is not enough guidance we have included a choice of guide books.

To help find your way among the stars and constellations there's a fantastic electronic red dot LED finder! Red dot finder - 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! (the red dot finder can even be used during the day to find terrestrial targets).

Also includes a useful 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 our best ever astronomy starter kit - in fact, all you will need to supply is a clear night!

Telescope specifications

Primary lens: Air-spaced achromatic doublet

Focal length: 900mm

Aperture: 70mm (f13)

Magnification with supplied eyepieces:

45x,90x and 180x

This is achieved with the following combinations:

10mm = 90x plus Barlow = 180x, 25mm = 36x plus Barlow = 72x,

Mounting: German equatorial with dual-axis manual slow motions

So what's so great about the Sky-Watcher Classic 900 telescope kit?

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart from a clear night that is!) Classic 900 is a great truly "classic" astronomy telescope. It has a decent-sized aperture, 70mm (2 and 3/4 inch in old money!) 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 Sky-Watcher 900 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. As well as direct photography through the scope - you can also get into guided astro-photography with this scope. The tube rings (see picture C,1) 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 Classic 900 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 Solar observation filter is also available for the Classic 900.

What can you see with the Sky-Watcher Classic 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. 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 Classic 900 telescope.