Celestron CPC 925 or Meade LX90 10" ?

[HomerJ]

Hi all,

some advise required please.

I'm tossing up between:

Celestron CPC 925 and Meade LX90 10"

Any thoughts please?

THX

[The_bluester]

I can not compare, but I have the celestron and it is a very nice scope and very easy to set up and use. I would say it is right at the limit of portability, size, weight and awkwardness wise though.

[KenNo2658]

I've got the CPC 8 and absolutely love it! So easy to align, at least without the wedge which I haven't tried yet. I have no trouble handling the weight of the 8 but I don't know about the 9.25, haven't even seen one of them yet.

Ken

[casstony]

Welcome to IIS Homer :)

Choosing between those scopes is tough. The Meade has more aperture but the Celestron will be more stable and has a nicer hand control.

Are you ok with lifting and carrying the 50 pounds or so that the ota/forks weigh?

[HomerJ]

Thanks for the feedback all.

Yes I was kind of thinking about the CPC-800 now and spending the 'savings' on better eyepieces. Weight was the major factor.

Now that I'm in 'buying mode' I feel the retailers are really screwing with me. One will not sell the CPC unless I buy a set of eyepieces too. (I'm buying the CPC at the listed price on their website).

Another has changed his price from this morning (rang me just now) and denies he gave me this morning's price and then tells me 'no stock' and to switch to the Meade (and that he doesn't know when stock of the CPC will be available ???).

Another was not even an authorised Celestron dealer.

Is there any honesty/integrity is this market?

I now have a bad taste in my mouth and probably just forget about it all together.

This reminds me of buying a new car a couple years ago. I could not get a price from 3 dealers I visited. So gave up and bought nothing. When I did finally buy 3 months later it was a different model all together.

[casstony]

The non-authorised celestron dealer still has a good reputation and (IMO) is responsible for bringing a modicum of competition to the market - the Australian celestron distributor doesn't do us any favours pricewise. It's still better to buy complicated gear like these locally if you can for warranty service.

Is this a first scope Homer? You can have a ball with a 10" dob; one of these could keep most of us happy for a lifetime of visual observing if we didn't have access to other toys.

[Waxing_Gibbous]

If you are set on an SCT, I would by-pass the LX90 in favour of the LX200 if you can.
The LX90s mechanicals aren't as good as the 200s (it struggles with a 10" over long sessions and wears out quite quickly).
The C9.25 is a great all-round scope, but you are quite correct in that the dealers will try and squeeze you for every penny.

Another alternative is to buy just the OTA, and mount it on a go-to equatorial mount. You could save some $$ by purchasing the tube second hand, freeing up some money for a new mount which would be covered by warranty. It's really those tricky electronics you need to watch-out for.

Another alternative is a 10/12" Skywatcher or Orion Dob with Go-To.
They run about $1700-$2000 and if you wanted to get into A-P, you could buy an equatorial platform for a couple of hundred extra.