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It’s also excellent as terrestrial spotting scopes for vacations, birding, or nature studies. In addition, optional camera adapters turn the TV-85 into excellent 600mm (12x) f/7 telephoto lens for terrestrial and lunar photography.

The TV-85 uses a 3.35" (85mm) apochromatic doublet lens using an SD (special dispersion) glass formulation. Thanks to these special glasses, chromatic aberration is essentially non-existent with the TV-85, even at 200x and up.

The TV-85 has a 2" rack and pinion focuser with a non-marring brass clamp ring to hold star diagonals and accessories in place. It comes in a soft foam-fitted Cordura nylon carrying case that has cutouts for eyepieces and other accessories. A retractable lens shade improves daytime contrast when viewing at low sun angles, while a thread-in metal dust cap protects the optics from damage while stored or travelling.

A split-ring tripod adapter allows the scope to be mounted on any optional sturdy photo tripod for casual use, or on an optional equatorial or altazimuth mount (such as the TeleVue Panoramic and Gibraltar mounts) for more serious observing. The split ring design allows the TV-85 to be moved fore and aft in the adapter to balance the weight of camera or accessories.

The TV-85 is supplied with a 2" Everbrite dielectric mirror diagonal that lets you use long focal length 2" eyepieces for low power rich field observing. It also has an adapter for using 1.25" eyepieces. Both pieces use non-marring brass clamp rings to hold eyepieces and accessories. The standard equipment eyepiece is a 20mm 1.25" TeleVue Plössl. This premium eyepiece provides a magnification of 30x, with a field of view more than three times as wide as the full Moon. It has a good 2.9mm exit pupil for deep space observing, one capable of revealing literally hundreds of nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters. Put in an optional lower power eyepiece and the TV-85 becomes a true rich field telescope, capable of scanning wide scenic vistas by day and revealing multitudes of large, faint deep space objects by night. With an optional 1.25" 40mm TeleVue Plössl (15x, with a 2.8 degree field), or a 2" 55mm TeleVue Plössl (11x, with a 4.6 degree field that’s wide and flat to the very edges), the TV-85 is not only a superlative rich field scope, but it is its own best finderscope, too.

The TV-85 will focus as close as 15’ (even closer with optional extension tubes). This lets you use it as a long distance microscope to view or photograph those wee beasties too dangerous or skittish to approach closely, such as hornets’ nests and spiders in their webs. For observing somewhat more distant objects, optional eyepieces and/or Barlow lenses will provide high powers to let you examine details in the storm belts of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the mountains of the Moon, and much more. And the resolution of those details will be crisp and detailed, often visibly superior to larger telescopes more easily affected by atmospheric conditions.

An optional TeleVue Qwik-Point non-magnifying illuminated finder quickly attaches to the scope’s mounting ring. The Qwik-Point seems to project a small red ball of light wherever the scope is aimed, day or night, making it easy to align it on distant objects.

There are few optical systems that combine into one compact body a serious astronomical telescope with true apochromatic optics, a terrestrial spotting scope, and a top-quality telephoto lens – but the 19" long TV-85 does it all beautifully. Whether you want to observe the skies from your back yard on the spur of the moment, or travel round the world with a very portable telescope that will reveal and photograph everything nearby and distant, you’ll find it hard to beat this truly exceptional TeleVue refractor.