LXD55 10" Schmidt-Newtonian with standard coatings Preliminary Review by Jason R. 8/4/02

My background:
Last had a telescope when I was a kid. It was a ~4" Newtonian reflector on a pier-type of equatorial mount. This was homebuilt by a cousin, and my parents bought it from him for a Christmas present. At the time, I really wasn't using it properly (I was about 10 years old), but eventually I was able to see the planets pretty well. Last time I used the scope I was about 16-18 years old and has been about 10 years since I last used a scope. Now, I am a chemist and more competent in using more complicated scientific instruments!

Ordered Oct 23:
before any announcement of the UHTC coatings. Was given "the business" for the past 10 months from Meade. Every time I inquired on the status of the order, they always projected a delivery time one month later than the current month. Decided on not upgrading to the UHTC because I figured that the extra money will be better spent on extra eyepieces and the such. Finally got the call on Aug 2nd from my dealer that it arrived ! The kid brought it out (2 boxes) and the one carrying the scope was HUGE. You would have thought there was an 18 inch Dobsonian in there, but this was obviously necessary to accommodate the securing styrofoam packaging. This box was pretty heavy. After assembly, it was clear that transporting this equipment to a dark site need not be done using these boxes. My wife and I have a pickup truck and a small Saturn car. The telescope tube could probably be strapped in across the backseat of the Saturn, quite safely, with the tripod/mount in the trunk. On the other hand, the 2 fully packed boxes would never have fit in the car: these barely fit in my pickup, with all the other junk I have in the bed (tires, flare kit, toolbox, sandbags, etc.)

Assembly:
Very easy. To me, the connections for the parts were obvious, and Meade clearly designed it so that you could not put this together incorrectly. Full assembly in about 30-40 minutes. Manual was pretty clear, although I recommend one change: Adjust your latitude setting BEFORE you attach the counterweights, otherwise the counterweights will bash against a tripod leg while you screw it in. Also, it was scary putting the scope for the first time onto the mount, into the cradle rings. You shouldn't need to tighten the bolts very much. With the telescope loose, on the cradle ring, it was hard to get the bolts to engage in their respective holes. The first time I was tightening these bolts, an alarming creaking sound was made: it sounded like I was compressing the metal tube, but I don't think that actually happened. Let me repeat: there is no need to tighten these bolts very much. Also, at the time of this writing, I haven't had the chance to get the 8 D batteries, therefore all of my observing so far has been done manually. In addition, I haven't checked the collimation yet, but as you will see below, it can't be too bad, if it is off.

First Light:
I just set up on my second-floor apartment's porch, which is enclosed, and unfortunately is also enclosed by glass/screen windows. Luckily, one half of the window can open completely, giving me a window of about 3.5' wide. Alas, there is another floor above us, and I had to stick my head out and look up in order to see Deneb and the rest of the "Summer Triangle." In other words, that region of the sky is out of reach with this particular setup. My porch faces East, toward 2 airports and Detroit, which is about 30-40 miles away. Needless to say, it is quite light polluted. It was also quite hazy out, which made the sky brighter than usual. Despite the light pollution, I was able to see a slew of stars no matter where I pointed the scope. This is probably because this is near the Milky Way region of the sky, but I was impressed nonetheless with the light-collecting ability and the wide field of view. I was also quite pleased with the finder - you center the object on the crosshairs, and it was in the field of view of the scope eyepiece. I think I got lucky with this, because for some reason I removed the finder scope from its holder before attaching the holder to the main scope tube. I then put the finder into its holder and I haven't even sighted it in!

So, after scanning the sky, Andromeda had risen, and I decided to look for the galaxy, which I haven't actually seen before. It took me about an hour to realize that I was trying to star-hop from the WRONG star in andromeda (duh). Once I corrected myself, I found the galaxy in about 5 minutes. I thought this wasn't too bad considering this is my first time with the scope and I wasn't using autostar or the motors. The galaxy looked pretty much like a big green fuzzball to me, and at this stage, I wasn't able to notice any real details. But it did look vaguely oblong. There was also a whole mess of stars around the fuzzball, thanks to the wide field of view. While I was observing the galaxy, a satellite cruised past in the eyepiece FOV (right over the galaxy!) and not more than 2 minutes later, a meteor burst across in the opposite direction! The meteor was VERY bright. How much more lucky can I get?

Second Night:
Only got to play around for a short time. It was hazier than the previous night, and I could only barely see the brighter stars by naked eye. I did manage to locate M15 (manually). This is when I decided I will definitely need a higher power eyepiece. M15 looked very small and fuzzy: the magnification with the supplied 26 mm eyepiece is only 39X. I wonder what >100X would look like? Also, my eye isn't trained very well yet. I was playing M15 with my eye, and occassionally, a brighter central point in the cluster would pop in and out of the image.

This night, my wife looked through the scope and she enjoyed seeing all the stars. Because the light pollution was bad, she must have been getting impatient because when I was observing, she was fidgeting with her foot. On the second floor, wood floorboard porch, the image was wiggling a lot with her foot. I haven't bothered with the precise balancing procedure yet, but to try astrophotography with this mount on this porch would be foolish. I have to try this scope on firm ground, yet. In any case though, my current set up is just fine for visual observing, as long as there is no movement from myself or my wife! But I probably won't be able to use autostar from the porch because my FOV of the sky is too small to get the necessary alignments accomplished. We are moving (hopefully to a house!) next year, and if I get a chance to take this outside before then, I will post my experience with using the autostar.

In Conclusion:
So far, I would say this scope is pretty nice. It is big, but not so big that I can't use it or move it around. Of course, you need to take the scope off the mount to move it, which isn't a very big deal to me right now.