I purchased my Meade ETX-90EC in the summer of 1999. My wife and I were joining my parents for a few days on their vacation to Bend, Oregon. I can’t remember why I went into the store but I did and noticed the ETX. I was amazed that it was automatic and could point at an object in the sky. I hadn’t followed astronomy or telescopes at all so this seemed unbelievable to me. I thought this might let me do the things I wished a could do as a kid. So, I went back to the store and purchased it. I even have the original receipt that I kept with the manuals.
I recall trying it out a few times but never finding the time to really use it. I never even learned to align it. I did purchase a carrying care, a few eyepieces, a Barrow and an adapter for my Nikon SLR. But, I never used it and it moved from apartment to apartment as we moved.
A couple of years ago I restarted some of my hobbies including astronomy. With eBay’s help, I was able to get a full tripod and a Meade camera called the LPI Imager. I was thinking astrophotography sounded interesting and figure an old camera would be a good thing to take a look at. I even found a book written by Mike Weasner called “Using the Meade ETX”. He has a website called Weasner’s Might ETX Site. I found and re-found this website over the years and it is an incredible site for ETX owners.
I did get the ETX out a few times in the last years to let the kid’s look through it for a major astrological event. I even setup the camera but never found the time to set it up to start some test astro-photographs. But, that is now the goal and I will update my progress in this blog.