SkyWatcher Mercury 707 - 70/700 StarQuest

The SkyWatcher 70/700 telescope on StarQuest mount has a compact size, easy to use, and provide a nice picture. With StarQuest mount the objects can be find easily. The Fraunhofer type air gap achromatic system is very lightweight so it is very suitable for observing planets and the Moon, but also good for brighter deep-sky objects. All glass-air surfaces of the optic have fully multi coatings to ensure maximum image contrast and light transmission.

You can see small details on the Moon, on the planets (of course, the Saturn's ring looks nice), magnification can be increased (up to about 120x-140x) without the image becoming dim. Beside the Moon, you can see Jovian Galilei-moons and Saturn's giant moon Titan. Beside bright objects some deep-sky objects cane be observed well.

The package contains two Barium eyepieces (10 and 25mm, 28x and 70x), but additional standard eyepieces can be used for the entire recommended zoom range up to about 140x. An accessory 90 degree star diagonal makes observing with the telescope convenient. The 31.7 mm standard size focuser has T2 thread, which is especially useful for shooting.

StarQuest is functionally very similar to the Avant mount, but instead of the polar wedge we can adjust the pole height using the two screw solutions. Like the Avant, the axes are lightweight, but they have a strong design, and can be fixed by the discs on the bottom. Both axles have fine-tuning (with the usual flexible arms). The instrument can now be fixed to the mount with a more practical plate. The counterweight sits on a threaded end counterweight shaft. The length and weight is less than the EQ2 mount. The reason for this is that, due to the more compact mechanical head, the center of gravity of the telescope is closer, so a shorter axis and less weight are required.

The head is located on the thinner aluminum tripod, which still provides sufficient stability even on the 130/650 instrument. The head can be fixed to the stand with the usual hand-held screw. The head has a black finish with green sticker scale. The capacity of the mount is approx. 4 kg.

Direction of Dec and RA axes can be rotated at 360 degrees. The RA and Dec gear tooth numbers are 122.