Explore the mysteries of the universe from the comfort of a lawn chair with the Meade MySky ($299).
The gun-shaped device is one part science teacher and one part GPS tool. It knows where you are and where you're pointing it in the night sky. With data on 30,000 deep sky objects, stars and other bodies in its flash memory, the standalone tool delivers prerecorded audio snippets about whatever celestial object you aim at and displays photos on a small LCD screen.
In a live view on the MySky screen, major stars and star clusters swing around in unison with the slightest hand movement. In "tour" mode MySky guides you to the best objects for viewing at a given time and location. The unit can be connected to some Meade telescopes and direct them to find objects of your choosing. It's a nice feature, but if you're going to break out heavy gear like a telescope, odds are you already have a quality star map or an astronomy software application and have all the information the MySky gives. I like MySky better as a standalone product.
The MySky audio quality is fine, and there's plenty of detail about the brighter stars in our sky. Clusters that appear as faint smudges become more interesting when a pocket astronomer is whispering all the details in your ear.
The MySky has a slot for an SD memory card, and the catalog of objects within can be updated online should that become necessary.
Reader comments
Click here to view or add comments on this story
Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form