$60,000 to view the heavens

(Credit: Popular Science)

One of the more popular gadgets on the market these days is the home planetarium, and Crave has responded with items ranging from the handheld version to egg-shaped aliens. But all these pale in comparison to the Meade RCX400 with its robotic Max Mount--a combined 500 pounds of star-gazing equipment.

As any amateur Galileo will tell you, it's nearly impossible to get a decent image of the heavens because of exposure issues and planet rotation. The solution, according to OhGizmo, is a robotic mount like this one that can track objects in the sky while they're moving.

This is all fine, of course, until we get to the price: The telescope costs $40,000 and the mount alone is another $20,000. Meade, it seems, isn't afraid of applying the term astronomical to its pricing as well.