okay, after reading all the review posts i know this will seem like beating a dead horse. bare with me though, i'm very confused about the reviews from uncle milton being the same as the homestar. and maybe a little in denial, as i just spend $120 on a homestar pure (the egg-shaped one), when it looks like i could have spend $50 on the uncle milton theater pro...

i read reviews of the two, and it looks like the homestar got pretty decent reviews for my purposes. this is a xmas gift for my boyfriend-- we're both completely awed by stargazing when we get far enough away from the city that we can actually see the sky, but we are really just that: stargazers, not astronomers. i went with the egg-shaped one because, for the extra $100 the pro costs, it didn't seem worth it. maybe someday, when i'm not a student, i can afford the extra...or whatever "toy," as you guys call them, is hot.

BUT the reviews for the uncle milton were actually quite bad. a lot of people said it didn't work/the quality was so poor that it didn't suit a 5-year-olds needs, etc. but a few of the reviews were decent. i felt so confused, and since it's kind of last minute, i just went with the homestar pure because i thought it was "safer."

did i just waste $50 on a homestar that is the exact same thing as the uncle milton?!?!

question 2: since i got the homestar, i was looking at the extra discs and they look kind of cool. i'm sure my bf would like to learn a litttle something from the planetarium, and they've got some discs that look informative.

here are the ones i found on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Disk-Homestar-The-...=item483dd9e9b9

any information about the discs, especially if you'd recommend one for stargazers who would like to learn a little bit, would be really appreciated!!! thanks!!!!

Just saw this post...

I have the regular homestar and I think it's pretty decent. If you want to turn the lights down in a dark room, play some ambient music, and relax, it would work well. The stars are all the same brightness but are different sizes corresponding to brightness. I haven't seen the homestar pro, but I would imagine that the extra $$ is worth it.

I'm sorry none of us got back to you sooner!

-Adam

I guess I missed this as well, sorry and welcome to OCP.

I think that Uncle Milty just puts his name on other peoples products an an import distributor. I'm guessing that the Homestar Pro just uses a brighter lamp for a brighter display.

I also have only the original Homestar and in a totally darkened room its brightness in more then adequate. As I have said before, the sky is brighter then in nature. As Far as I can tell, all of the Homestars come with two discs of the sky, one with constellation stick connectors one one without. I would stick with the normal "real" sky and use a small star chart to find the constellations and then look for them in your planetarium sky. More fun that way, like you're actually outside looking.

They have extra discs for the Moon and planets but I think they are way over priced. One can get beautiful slides of most any sky object from NASA for just a few dollars and easily make an adaptor to mount them in the Homestar projector.