Sky-Watcher 70/500 Mercury AZ2 Telescope

A lightweight astronomical telescope designed for beginner night sky observers, especially for children. It is a small, easy-to-use refractor with a diameter of 70mm that allows you to enlarge the image up to 100x (with additional glasses up to 140x). The equipment weighs only a few kilograms and can be easily moved from place to place even by very young observers. Contrary to many telescopes in this price group, the SkyWatcher 705AZ2 is distinguished by relatively good equipment (Kellner glasses instead of cheaper Ramsden and Huygens ones) as well as a fairly good quality lens.

Optical system
The Sky-Watcher 705AZ2 is a short focal achromatic two-lens refractor. The lens has a diameter of 70mm and a focal length of 500mm. It is covered with quite good anti-reflective coatings. A telescope with this type of lens allows you to find the brightest nebulae, provided that the observations will be made far from city lights. This type of telescope allows for a wide field of view, making it perfect for observing star clusters.

What will we see through this telescope?
This telescope allows for interesting observations of the moon, it will also show the bright planets of the solar system in a basic way. Sky-Watcher 705AZ2, despite its modest size, beautifully shows Saturn’s rings, shapes of planetary discs as well as basic details such as stripes in the atmosphere of Jupiter or Martian polar caps during periods of good visibility of the red planet. Equipped with a simple objective solar filter, the 705AZ2 telescope will be an excellent instrument for observing the Sun (in the case of children, obligatory under the supervision of an adult). The kit allows you to obtain 20x, 40x, 50x and 100x magnification.

Spectacle lift
A 1.25 “eyepiece extractor, rack and pinion, with a 90-degree mirror angle cap was used. The telescope has a horizontally inverted image (mirror image), the vertical orientation is correctly maintained. The extractor and the cap are compatible with most of the currently sold accessories

Installation
The telescope is suspended on a very light AZ2 azimuth mount. In terms of operation, this assembly is similar to a photo tripod.

Included
The set includes 2 Kellner glasses 10mm and 25mm. In addition, the set also includes a 2x Barlow lens that allows you to obtain two upper magnifications. The telescope comes with a 1.25 “mirror angle cap and a 5×24 finder.

Observation possibilities
Solar system
• Sun: visible spots and granulation (observations only with an objective filter)
• Mercury: visible phase of the planet under favorable conditions
• Venus: visible phase
• Moon: visible surface details larger than 4 km, mountains, craters and seas
• Mars: during opposition a slight polar cap may be visible
• Jupiter: two stripes on the face of the planet, changes in the position of Galilean moons
• Saturn: visible ring of the planet and the brightest moon – Titan
• Uranus: visible as an asterisk
• Neptune: visible as a star

Deep sky objects
• Open clusters from the Messier catalog
• Globular clusters visible as bright spots
• Nebulae visible at low magnification
• galaxies visible as hazy spots

Equipment