First light for the 16" Lightbridge tonight, and I'm a happy boy
. This is my first review of a scope and I'm no expert, but here goes... I should also mention that I am not associated with Meade or any telescope shops; any 'gushiness' can be put down to the fact that I have a new toy.
There was a little bit of thin, high cloud around and I was observing from outside my suburban house on paved ground, so conditions weren't perfect, but not outrageously bad. As you might expect, the weight of this scope is not inconsiderable and it takes a bit of effort to move the primary mirror cell around. However if you are not lugging it too far this shouldn't be much of a problem. I think some sort of trolley will be useful for moving it about at home. I noticed a previous post said the wood for the mount looked flimsy, but it seems to me to be pretty solid (and reasonably heavy) once screwed together.
I found initial construction to be straightforward, with the instructions in coherent English (which makes a nice change). The struts lock in nicely, though I found attaching the secondary mirror tube to the top of the struts is probably best done with two people, though I did manage it by myself.
After collimation (nice to note that there are knobs rather than screws for the primary mirror) and cooling down time, the first target was the Orion Nebula. I found the scope to be nicely balanced and easy to move and aim (with the red dot finder). There are friction controls on the alt and azimuth axes, that you can use to adjust how easily the bearings move, but I found I didn't need to play with these much. For my height I didn't need a step ladder to reach the EP, but to view at zenith a step might be handy (at least for me).
Anyway, on to the views. Using a 27 mm Panoptic on the Orion Nebula, I was really impressed with the brightness and detail in the view. With an OIII filter, the view was awesome. With this in mind I moved to the Eta Carina Nebula and was even more impressed. The wide angle view really takes in a lot of the nebulosity (in comparison to my 8" SCT) and there was plenty of fine detail to be seen in the dark bands and wisps. Omega Centauri was also a fine sight with a little more magnification (13 mm Stratus), resolving plenty of stars. Saturn with a 5 mm Stratus was not much improved compared to the view through an 8" SCT, which could have been due to some wispy cloud, atmospheric limitations or the fact that I am still a newbie at collimating (maybe all three). I didn't try for any galaxies or other faint fuzzies tonight, which I guess will be the strength of this scope, but there's always tomorrow. I didn't find coma to be too intrusive for my tastes, but a Paracorr might be a useful addition somewhere down the line, given the scope is f4.5. A minor negative was that I did find the EP holding screws to be a bit small for my fingers and it seemed to have a tenuous grip on the 2" eyepieces at times, but that might just be me. Other than that I found the focusser, with its coarse and fine dials to work smoothly.
So overall, I was really impressed with the Lightbridge and can't wait to try it out under a fully dark sky. I think a big plus is that this scope makes relatively large apertures accessible at a reasonable price. I can't vouch for how it compares with other dobs of the same aperture, but I can see that this will be the scope that keeps me occupied for years to come.
