Reporting from Las Vegas - The Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t officially start for another 24 hours on eve of Jan. 8, but the press events have begun.
CES Unveiled, the so-called “Official Press Event of International CES,” was my first stop. About 50 companies displayed their goods at one of the Venetian Hotel ballrooms.
Meade Instruments, the Irvine telescope maker, was the first to catch my eye. The company introduced a new telescope, the ETX-LS, with something called LightSwitch technology. As Brent Kikawa, a Meade senior marketing manager, explained, ”It’s as simple as flicking a light switch.”
Turn on the ETX-LS, and it figures out where it is, what time it is and what’s in the sky. Even if you try to trick the device and turn it on during daylight, it knows, Kikawa said. LightSwitch relies on the scope’s built-in GPS chip, level sensors and CCD imagers to align the telescope with the night sky. Here’s an official photo from the company — see the switch?:
From a handheld control, users can scroll down a list of items and pick what they want to see. Pick Saturn and the telescope will find it in the sky and focus in on the planet. Through built-in speakers, the telescope will then launch into educational factoids explaining the size of Saturn, how many moons you can see and how many light years away it is from earth. Hook up the telescope to a monitor to see a similar series of educational programs about the object in the sky.
Some tech specs: Uses 8 “C” batteries or AC adapter, includes 256 MB built-in memory and has a MicroSD card slot if you want to capture images and save for later. It also has 30 minutes of movies and animation and over four hours of audio guides featuring the voice of Sandy Wood from “Star Date.”
For $1,299, I was hoping to plug the telescope into a big-screen TV so we could all see the night sky in high definition. Maybe the next generation?
The ETX-LS will be available at the end of January.
More from CES 2009:
Here's a list of TV/mobile companies helping consumers one tweet at a time. 
