Telescope Knowledgebase

LX200 Quality Concerns

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:39:18 +0000

I also read the incredible amount of negative commentary that appears in this group. It almost stopped me from acquiring a 12″ LX200. Almost. I now own thw 12″. the delivery took place in less than 14 days, the scope ha performed to specifications. It is one of the best telescopes I have owned. I’ve been doing astronomy since I was 13. I’ve built my own telescopes and refurbished many used telescopes (Celestron C11, C90, C5, Cave Astrolas etc.). This is my first new scope. I’m glad I bought it. I agree that quality can be improved across the industry, however, the Meade quality, mechanical and optical is right up with the best that I have used and owned over the last 41 years. It exceeds my 1981 C11 ( own of the best years optically for Celestron) and approaches my 1979 Cave 10″ f16 classical cassegrain.

Meade Pricing Conspiracy????

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:38:28 +0000

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this has been hashed out in SAA many times over the past few years. Your complaints follow for all products, not just telescopes. Have you checked the prices of other US items in Britain? Everything costs more in Europe. When I was over there two years ago, the price in pounds was the same as the price here in dollars. A book that costs $6 in the US cost 6 pounds in the UK. A toy that cost $20 here, cost 20 pounds there. (This excludes mass market items, those that are imported in a large enough quantities.) The local warrantee/repair centers are paid for by local sales. They are not free. A company decides on its repair budget by the number of items sold in a given region. If they only sell one or two, then they need a much smaller center than if they sell hundreds. The alternative is to either have EXTREMELY long wait times for repairs (because they only have one serviceman for all of Europe) or to require that you ship all items for repair back to the US (at your cost!) We have the very same problem over here with electronic and photo gear from Japan. We can purchase items at a greatly reduced price directly from SE Asia, but the warrantees will not apply for these “grey market” items. There is often the same “factor of two” price difference. I believe that this also applies to the various telescopes and accessories from SE Asia. In addition, there are import restrictions on the number of items that an individual can bring back with them when they travel.

Meade Mystique

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:36:50 +0000

Six weeks waiting for a LX10, only to find this brand new instrument had a major collimation fault. So back to the shop for an exchange unit, this time the optics were spot on, but the motor was not responding. Fortunately, I had chosen a good shop to purchase my Meade. They spent nearly all morning tracing the fault, and finally had to exchange the motor assembly for the one I had returned. Two LX10’s one faulty optics the other faulty motor, both of which were needed to get one functionally correct unit. The same day I decided to fit the declination motor, and yes, you have guessed it, I could not do it, one of the two securing holes had not been threaded correctly. Quite honesty I am beginning to wonder if Meade was the right choice, certainly the Stockport Binocular and Telescope Centre was the right shop to buy it from, they could not have been more helpful, BUT is this really the Rolls Royce of Telescopes? Comments please.

Brian Skiff Likes Meade Scopes At TS

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:35:35 +0000

For those who don’t have access to sci.astro.amateur, here is an abbreviated posting from the noted Brian Skiff, who attended the Texas Star Party last week (and gave an interesting talk as well): “I spent four nights/three days at TSP (Wednesday pm through Sunday am, 15-19 May). There were about 650 attendees (nearly a full house), with a full program of viewing and talks plus plenty of west Texas fellowship… ..By strolling around the two telescope fields I was able to look through a variety of instruments at whatever their owners happened to be looking at. I was pleased that no one was aimed at the standard showpiece objects (M51, M57, M13, omega Centauri) when I came up, but instead were doing Herschel 400 lists and the like. So I viewed instead mag. 11 and 12 galaxies, which from a dark site show plenty of detail even in a 25cm telescope. Not a one of the telescopes larger than 30cm (12 inches) aperture was sharp, mostly suffering from astigmatism. A very compact 63cm f/3 Newtonian being demonstrated by a “brand name” mirror-maker suffered the same fate, despite his claim of having spent 200 hours grinding and figuring it. This particular instrument was also an excellent demonstration of why shielding from stray light is critical for these fast telescopes. The field was grey and washed out because so much scattered light was getting into the eyepiece from every direction. Blech! The two best telescopes I saw other than high- end refractors were (are you ready?) an old Meade 25cm f/6 “research grade” Newtonian, and a 25cm Meade Schmidt-Cassegrainian. Some of the subarcsecond seeing was going on when I viewd through these, so it was easy to discern their optical quality. Both had sharp, contrasty optics and did their owners proud….” Frank Nowling and I both had our 10″ LX200’s set up in the area of Larry Mitchell’s 36″ and other Houston-area scopes where Brian spent much of his time observing. Would like to think that one of the folks coming by in the dark for views through either Frank’s scope or mine was the above Mr. Skiff! Anyway, a “keeper” to throw back at folks who bash our LX200’s before looking through them first. It’s one thing to know personally from critical viewing that your scope has excellent optics; especially gratifying when an “expert” endorses if not yours then its clone!

What Is The Word

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:34:05 +0000

I don’t know what planet Steve lives on but I would not rely on his comments alone. I have done several THOUSAND dollars worth of business with one NYC firm who advertises heavily in Astronomy and Sky & Telescope. I have NEVER had a problem with them and have been treated courteously on the phone. Granted they are very busy and tend to be curt sometimes. There is another NYC dealer who I will not deal with because they are rude and obnoxious. And no, this would not be my luck since I have had tens of transactions with this company for several telescopes, and lots of eyepieces, books and other accessories. As far as pricing, where else can you get a brand-new Tele Vue Genesis for $1720? I doubt anywhere except a large company who deals in large quantities. If you want a safe fuzzy feeling then go with Pocono who are very nice and open to questions of all sorts. And you get what you pay for…they sell the Genesis(last I knew) for around $1870. And if you’re an Orion junkie you’ll pay $2100(you’re subsidizing their 30-day refund policy, technical phone support and pretty catalog). To each their own buy I, for one, am not going to pay nearly $400 dollars more than I have to. I have other similar pricings for other telescopes and accesories I have purcahsed. These are facts, not the “gut feelings” you will hear from some people.

Any Thoughts On Orion 6″ Reflector Telescope?

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:32:54 +0000

I am very new to amatuer astronomy and I have been researching the different telescopes that are available. It seems that I would get more scope for my dollar by buying a reflector telescope. And, I guess this makes sense because there are less optics involved here than are used in refractor or Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. With this in mind, I was wondering about the Orion Skyview Deluxe 6″ EQ Newtonian (#9403) telescope. It is a package deal that includs a tripod, equatorial mount and the scope all for $599. This scope seems to be unique in that fact that it uses a parabolic mirror instead of a sperical mirror. What are your overall feelings about Orion products? Does anybody have experience with this particular product? If so, I would be very curious to hear your comments about it. Thanks a lot for your thoughts and comments.

Optical Coating

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:31:30 +0000

Congratulations on the win….I think. Telescopes of that size hardly seem like something one would blindly bid on, especially if it is indeed a 10″ LX200. But, if it works for you, great!! As for the “silver optics group” thing, I am no expert but it sounds like a hype in order to make the scope sell quicker. It also sounds like the words of someone who doesn’t really know anything about telescopes. The silver likely has something to do with the mirror coating. Sorry for being so negative. I am just a sceptic after seeing so many lame things on ebay. I sincerely hope you get a good scope for whatever you paid. Regards,

Meade LXD55 10″

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:30:17 +0000

Here’s some general information – you maybe already know all of this but I’ll give it to you anyway…. The f/4 Schmidt-Newtonian is a very “fast” scope. On the plus side, that means a wide field with images that are “bright” from a photographic (or CCD) standpoint. The corrector plate should help cut come near the edge of the field down to about 1/2 or 1/3 of what it would be in a normal Newtonian. I personally like the fast f-ratio because I like the wide field, shorter exposure times for CCD imaging, and in general the faster scope should be great for deep-sky imaging. On the minus side, the f/4 is going to have a large secondary mirror which will decrease contrast. The corrector plate will be subject to dew problems, and the short f-ratio is going to require more magnification to get a decent image size. Also, coma will not be non-existent. The faster scopes will have some coma no matter what. Now, an f/10 SCT is nice for planets and the moon due to the larger image sizes (relative to the f/4). Another nice thing with the f/10 SCT is a smaller secondary mirror so less light will be blocked and you’ll probably get better contrast. The f/10 means longer exposure times for imaging, though. You can get a focal reducer, however, that will effectively reduce the f-ratio to [typically] f/6.3 or f/3.3. Other than that, I think the rest of the story just depends on the manufacturer’s ability to produce optics that are free from flaws and well-figured. While I have heard some complaints, my experience with Meade telescopes is that their optics are typically quite good (as is true with others like Celestron as well). I actually worry more about the electronics in the mount than the optics. You didn’t ask this but I’ll tell you that I prefer the German-Equatorial mount style of the LXD55’s to the fork mounts on the LX200’s. Both work, but I don’t like dealing with field de-rotators and over-priced wedges that can’t quite hold the load (based on my experience this summer drift-aligning a 12″ LX200 with a wedge). Well, I don’t know if I helped you or not, but there’s my 2-cents. Clear Skies and Big Telescopes!

First Telescope – $1000?

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:29:08 +0000

After reading everything on the net I could about buying a FIRST telescope, I called the nearest dealer to see if he had what I wanted, a Celestron Star Hopper 4.5. Well the guy makes me feel like a complete fool. “Do you know the 5 laws of thermal dynamics”? Ect.. Well he goes on to say that since this is the South there is this thing know as DEW…do I know what DEW is? Ahh, yeah I do, thanks. Well DEW covers everything at nite here so he only sells telescopes with fiberglass tubes. He goes on to tell me that the Celestron telescope has a cardboard tube (its really aluminum). Next he tells me that he is a Takahashi dealer and that his scopes start at $1000. I’d like to spend a third of that for my first scope. Any thoughts on a good scope that can handle dew for $300-$400? And aren’t there heaters for dissipating dew? Thanks!

Telescope For 11 Year Old

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:28:05 +0000

Hi Jan, Some idea of price range you are willing to spend would help to provide more concise direction, but this is an overall guide that I hope will provide some help. Stay away from telescopes that advertised by power (i.e. 600X Telescope!!) and are usually available in department stores or variety stores. These scopes are almost worthless and cost about the same as a decent Dobsonian scope. Normally you’d want to get the largest aperture you can afford, that is the biggest diameter to obtain the most resolution and light gathering, but in this case you have stated that he want’s specifically to look at planets and the moon. The moon is not a real big challenge for most scopes of varying type, but for planets normally a refractor is the scope of choice, and it will also enhance views of the moon as compared to an equal quality reflector. Unfortunately a ‘good’ refractor is not as inexpensive as the various designs/configurations of Newtonian systems, and even more expensive than the compound reflector designs. I would recommend that you look in your local newspaper for announcements of local “star parties” held by your local astronomy club. These are usually announced in the paper during the preceding week of a new moon weekend (as shown on a calendar). The ability to get some hands on experience and some local direction as where to buy can be a big help. The operative word in the preceding paragraphs is “local”. In summary, I would suggest a refractor of 4″ (or better) diameter and a focal length of 800mm or more, try to get one that is color corrected (termed apochromatic). A Meade or Celestron refractor would be a good choice for a first lunar/planetary scope, but if price is no object a Takahashi or Astro Physics are at the premium end of commercially available scopes. I do believe that once involved he will want to also look at deep space objects and if that is possible then, it is very hard to beat a decent Dobsonian. For a few hundred dollars an 8″ to 10″ dob can be had with a decent eyepiece of about 25mm. This is truly an easy scope to use for all objects and with a one to one finder like a Telrad it’s basically a “point and view” set up. A smaller scope called a finder scope can really round out the capabilities of a dob. Once again do not buy a scope that takes plastic .965 dia. eyepieces. They will do nothing but turn off the user to astronomy because of their low quality. You nay want to check the phone book and see if their any shops that cater to astronomy in your area. You may also pick up a copy of Sky and Telescope or Astronomy at your local news stand for some additional help. Best of luck in your search,