Meade's MySKY Opens the Heavens
A new device tracks objects in the night sky and entertains as well.
Nov. 1, 2007 — -- There's no substitute for a fine telescope to explore the boundless expanse of the universe. But using a telescope can be like randomly dialing phone numbers with no directory. Which star is which? Is that constellation the Big Dipper or something else?
Meade's mySKY ($399) solves this problem and adds a huge dose of education and entertainment to stargazing. The lightweight, hand-held device has a database of more than 30,000 celestial objects, a full-color display and a Global Positioning System that sets automatically to your location.
Setup is simple and there's no complicated instruction book to master. You start it up, get bearings from the GPS and then point to whatever object in the night sky you want to know about.
MySKY displays the object centered on the small screen, tells you what it is and then provides a professional-quality video clip with sound that offers additional information.
Although it uses ultrasensitive magnets to locate objects, this isn't a telescope. Instead, mySKY uses data already stored in its detachable, updateable memory.
In our tests, mySKY accurately identified objects in the not-so-dark night suburban sky between New York and Philadelphia, making it useful for everyone but those trapped under the umbrella of light glare that hangs over big cities. The device can be used indoors as well to skip around the sky and learn about celestial bodies using the LCD screen and included ear buds.
And if mySKY fires up a desire to find out more about the universe, the device can be connected to any of Meade's computerized telescopes.
