Meade are a well known name in consumer telescopes, recognised for using computer technology to make telescopes easier to use.

That technology reaches a peak in the new ETX-LS, which combines GPS and optical sensing technology to optimally align itself in 3 minutes, anywhere on the planet.

Once you’re looking at an object in the sky the telescope will work out what you’re looking at and if it knows about it, give you information through the built in speaker. It will even present related video on a connected TV.

For the uninitiated, here’s why auto alignment is cool: we are sitting on a ball of rock moving through space and spinning at 1000MPH. If you try to use a telescope to look at the sky you’ll find that it very quickly moves (remember we’re spinning) and you have to readjust the telescope to keep the sky still.

Motorised telescopes can do this adjustment automatically but they need to be told where they are on the earth so that they can work out which direction to move in.

So the ETX-LS can work out where it is automatically using GPS, fine tune itself by recognising the sky, find anything you want to look at automatically, keep track of it for as long as it’s over the horizon and also (if it’s a well known object) tell you something about it. Pretty neat!