I am looking at a Meade 10" SCT not the LX200's, but the older blue tube 10" SCT with non UHCS but has multicoated optics. What are your thoughts comparing this oldish scope to the newer LX200's, LX200R's etc?
Any big differences even though they are the same apperture? What about comparsion to the c9.25?
If it is "old" how are the surfaces..mirrors need re doing at some stage one would expect..so how far has this one to go would be my first thought.
alex
If the optics have been looked after they should be fine, but you would need to look through it or get someone you know to check it out first. My old orange Celestron 8" is 30 years old and the optics are still fine.
The other question would be does the older Meade SCT have a mirror lock to stop mirror flop? I guess you will be imaging with the scope and for long exposures a mirror lock is a must.
I used an LX5 10" for Many Many years before selling earlier this year, a great work horse. Cleaned the corrector a couple of times, but was very capable of doing some great imaging. I'm sorry I parted with it!!!
If the price is right, and no obvious defects I'd go for it.
If it's a pre-mirror lock model it will probably have a hole in the rear casting used for the shipping bolt. A longer bolt can be used in that hole to work as a mirror lock.
cheers guys. thanks for the advise. the scope will be mainly for imaging not quite sure if it has a mirror lock up or whether the bolt can be extended. here's a pic of the back
Yes for it to have mirror lock there would be another knob as well as the focuser. There has been some work done on using a long 1/4" bolt and spring that helps to lock the mirror in place. It screws into the mirror lock hole, as Tony said. Don't know how good it works though.
Mirror flop is a real problem if you want to image for longer than 2 minutes, and then it can vary a lot depending on the angle of the primary mirror when you are imaging.
As you know, to get the very faint objects you will be hoping to go 5 minutes and longer.
