Meade LX series - Opinions please

[prova]

possibly looking at another scope shortly and was looking towards a Bintel 12" Dob or a Meade 12" Lightbridge but I'm intrigued by the Meade LX series for it's size, portability and of course performance.

one question, can you option a goto and tracker if i was to get one brand new?

comments from owners and people who have used it are most welcome as i have no idea on the Schmidt-Cassegrain mounts..

[prova]

appreciate opinions on any of the above scopes

[mick pinner]

all the LX scopes are both go-to and tracking enabled.
if you are going to do photography in the future and plan for long exposures you are going to need a wedge to mount the scope on so allow about $800 depending on the size scope you may get.
once set up correctly the go-to and tracking ability of these scopes is superb, you also have the ability to alter the f/l of the scope by the way of focal reducers which gives you the option of having high magnification for planets, moon etc as well as wide field viewing of deep space objects.
the 8" and 10" is fairly manageable but the 12" and up are very heavy scopes and best suited to permanent setups. if price is no real concern then you cannot go wrong.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I had an 8" LX200GPS (prior to the R series) and I loved it. Fantastic little scope for driving around the skies and lookin' at stuff. The only reason I moved away from it was to focus more on imaging and the wedge for the 8" at that time was pretty shoddy to say the least. You can get a decent on now but you will pay nearly as much as a mount for it.

As Mick has pointed out the 12" is definately on the heavy side of portable. Even the 10" is no feather weight but manageable (if you don't have back issues). That is why I liked the 8", nice and easy to setup. Tracking and got never got any complaints from me. It was dead easy to use once you got the hang of the handpaddle. I still use an 8" Meade SCT for imaging and both this one and the last one were great optically. No it isn't a 12" lightbridge but then it doesn't pretend to be.

But if you already have an 8" skywatcher then you will have less contrast with the SCT than with the skywatcher due to the larger secondary. If you are thinking of visual work and like a goto consider a 12" or 16" truss dob with a servo cat to drive it and an argo navis to pilot it. Then get a better mount for you 8" skywatcher and use that for photography.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Gee, thats a wildly different set of choices there, what do you want to do, visual, planetary imaging or deep sky?.