Exclusive to Scopes'n'Skies - fabulous complete astronomy starter kit featuring the Sky Watcher Deluxe 90 (90mm x 900mm) refracting telescope and a host of accessories including a FREE 4pc Philips Astro Box, to get anyone, young or old, started in the fascinating hobby of astronomy!

The Deluxe 90mm refractor is an ideal scope to get started in astronomy (a lot better than my first 2" scope! James) and has a superb 90mm or 3.5" air-spaced achromatic doublet primary lens and comes supplied with a well-engineered German equatorial mount with fully geared manual slow-motion hand controls on each axis (upgradable to electric drive if required)and a rigid aluminium full height field tripod (just the tripod and mount is amazing and looks like it would cost over £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 £159.00 (inc UK p&p!) but here goes!

Supplied with the unique Deluxe 90mm kit are Two excellent eyepieces - 10mm, and 25mm (see below for full specification) giving a useful range of magnifications from high to a lower power (wide-angle). The instruction manual (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 high quality optical finder!

To make the best use of the deluxe 90 the kit also includes a fantastic 290mm (11.5") FREE Philip's Planisphere to identify the stars and constellations from your back-garden any hour of the night. The Planisphere is made of flexible plastic to make it water-proof and hard wearing. It's probably the most popular sky and star guide in the world and most astronomers discover it after they get a telescope - we are making sure you get one of these excellent companions with your new scope. (the Planisphere normally sells for £7.99!)

This outfit is one of our best astronomy starter kits giving everthing you need to start enjoying your new hobby - in fact, all you will need to supply is a clear night!

Telescope specifications

Primary lens: Air-spaced achromatic doublet

Focal length: 900mm

Aperture: 90mm (f10)

Magnification with supplied eyepieces:

36x and 90x

Mounting: German equatorial with dual-axis manual slow motions

So what's so great about the Sky-Watcher Deluxe 90mm telescope kit?

Well, overlooking the fact that it has everything you need to get going (apart Deluxe is a great astronomy telescope. It has a decent-sized aperture, 90mm (3 and a half 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.

Viewers of Sir Patrick Moore's Sky at Night TV program or readers of his numerous books will know that he has always recommended a minimum telescope aperture of 3" (76mm) for serious astronomy (the Deluxe 90mm comfortable exceeds this recommendation by half an inch.

At two or three times the price, the Sky-Watcher 90mm is a well-made scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with an ultra modern optical finder scope (to make pointing and target finding easy) As well as direct photography through the scope - you can also get into guided astro-photography with this scope. The tube rings 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 Deluxe 90mm 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 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 Deluxe 90mm.

What can you see with the Sky-Watcher Deluxe 90mm 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 Deluxe 90mm telescope.