Hi, I also bought an ETX 90 just recently from the discovery channel store. I live in Northern VA and I was a little disappointed with the results the first time out. I think a lot of it has to do with light pollution and a lot of people around here drive about an 1 1/2 hour away from DC to look at stars. Fortunately, there is also an astronomy park located in a dark area of my suburb. Hopefully performance will improve there and its only 20 min away. The eyepiece the ETX 90 comes with is only 48X and I think you really need at least 250X in a dark area to see Jupiter, Saturn and Mars with any detail. I saw Mars with 48X but you really couldn't see much other than it was a orange disk. I haven't tried galaxies yet and I am also getting the $99 eyepiece. I'll post back info on how it performs.

• Magnification with ETX-90 - danieldgj - September 29, 2003 - 03:37 UTC