Skywatcher Mercury-705 on AZ3 - Beginner Refractor 70/500mm

The Skywatcher Mercury 705 Refractor Telescope with 70 mm Aperture offers a reasonable start into astronomy. Furthermore is is a compact and powerful travel instrument. Several hundred nebulae and galaxies are visible as well as of course the moon and the planets - and the sun when using a safe filter.

Particular compact:
The particular advantage of the Mercury 705 is the compact way it is built. The telescope is only about 50 cm long and the whole weight of the instrument is about 7 kg with the mount. Hence the instrument qualifies for airline travel as it can be dismantled into small components within a few minutes.

Magnifications (with eyepieces supplied): x20 & x50

Highest Practical Power (Potential): x140

Objective Lens Diameter: 70 mm

Telescope Focal Length: 500 mm (f/7.14)

Eyepieces Supplied (1.25"): 10 mm & 25 mm

Red Dot Finder

45° Erect Image Diagonal 1.25"

AZ3 Deluxe Alt-Azimuth Mount

Aluminium Tripod with Accessory Tray

Tube material: Aluminium

36% more Light Gathering than 60 mm

Facts about the Mercury 705 on AZ3:

Good image quality:
Despite of the short tube the focus is well defined, making the compact instrument useful for moon and planets as well. Stars appear as fine pin points, also when magnified higher.

Very useful focuser:
The focuser works clean and smooth without vibrations. You can get the objects into focus very precisely. You may even opt to connect a camera to take images of them.

Setup and start:
That is the principle of this refractor telescope. This telescope is always aligned and ready to use. Even children can use it after short training by adults.

Solid azimutal mount with field tripod:
The AZ3 holds the compact refractor well, while the height adjustable aluminum field tripod is well matched. You have a fine micro movement in both axis to follow birds, aeroplanes and stars.

Manual:
Teleskop-Service has collected a lot of helpful information on refractors and made it available as a PDF: refractors.pdf

Refractor telescope with 2 tube rings

Camera connection for piggyback photography

AZ3 azimutal mount with field tripod

1.25" eyepieces: Super 10mm (50x) and Super 25 (20x)

1.25" 45° Amici prism

Red dot finder Starpointer

Manual

The both 1.25" RK Eyepieces with comfortable eye relief.

So what´s so great about the Sky Watcher Mercury 705 telescope kit?

The Mercury 705 is a great "classic" 70mm astronomy telescope. It has a good-sized aperture (70mm) 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 705 is a well-made scope - at our price it´s extraordinary value for money. The telescope is well equipped with a state-of-the-art electronic red dot finder (to make pointing and target finding easy day or night).

The included AZ-3 mount and tripod is a brilliant innovation allowing the telescope to be used terrestrially in daytime (for distant target viewing) and also to smoothly track targets in the night sky, at the turn of a knob - be sure to watch our video demonstration of this feature. The 705 can be upgraded and added to in many different ways.

For example, it has a standard 1.25" eyepiece holder (regarded by the telescope industry as the hallmark of a serious telescope) allowing a wide range of additional accessories to be attached. These accessories include camera adaptors (to try your hand at wildlife and astro-photography), 2x Barlows, to greatly increase magnification with each eyepiece as well as wide range of specialist eyepieces. A safe Solar observation filter is also available for 705.

What can you see with the Mercury 705?

At medium power the Moon becomes a fabulously intricate landscape of craters, rays and rills. At higher power individual crater systems can be explored. The planet Mars will show numerous details on its surface and the polar cap can be seen during ideal observing conditions.

At good observing times, when observed at just 50x magnification using the included 10mm eyepiece, the planet Jupiter will appear as a banded disc larger in size than you normally see the full Moon with the unaided eye! In ideal viewing conditions, detail can be seen in the violent atmosphere of this greatest of the gas giants that can be observed in motion on the planet´s disk 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 - they too can be see to clearly move and change position in just 20 minutes of observing. And don´t forget these are all things that you cannot possibly see with the un-aided eye (unless you actually go there that is!).

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 Mercury telescope.

Safety informations: PDF Download