LXD5555 10" SN Vs. the Meade 12" Dob by John Ensworth

Light Pollution: "6"  (1 fantastic - 10 Las Vegas strip) 
Visual: minimum
Magnitude: about 5.5.
Transparency:  4  (1 vacuum - 10 Mt. St. Helens ash cloud)
Seeing:   2 (1 vacuum - 10 Bottom of the swiming pool)
Winds:  Light to nonexistant

Eyepieces used:  Low Mag:  Meade 24mm
High Mag:  Meade 15mm + 2X Barlow

Both telescopes were well collimnated and had clean optics.

There is more magnification with the same eyepiece (LXD55 = 1016mm F.L., Starfinder =
1524mm).  But I tranStarfindererred the same eyepiece from scope to scope for this
comparison.

Sky Objects Compared, and results are below here ..

Altair: (Low and High Mag)  The four spikes caused by the secondary support
of on the Starfinder and were nicely missing (of course) from the LXD55.  The
starfield around the bright star was cleaner and less 'foggy' looking. Even
with the slight greying of the field in the Starfinder, I believe I could catch a
few dimmer stars using averted vision in the Starfinder.

M-57 Ring Neb: (High Mag)  The LXD55 clearly won this view. Even though the
magnification was less, there was more internal structure visible in the
LXD55.  I did lower the magnification on the Starfinder this time to try to compare
the views (without the complication of the light being more spread out in
the Starfinder).  The inner 'empty' region was cleaner and more easily seen in the
LXD55.  This might be due to the light fogging in the Starfinder.  I didn't try the
views with a nebula filter (next time).

M-12 Glob: (Low Mag)  There was a lot of light pollution in the moist summer
atmosphere this low in the southern sky. The LXD55 found the cluster quickly
and showed a noticeable but not great view of the glowing ball. It was
harder with the Starfinder to find it (I had to re-sync to nearby stars) and the
view was very polluted with the skyglow. LXD55 won again.

M-31 And Gal: (Low Mag)  Neither telescope (of course) could pull in the
full galaxy. The galaxy was located high in the eastern sky (about the
darkest location).  Both views were OK for a city site, but the Starfinder showed
the central bulge as brighter (greater contrast) than the surrounding
portions than did the LXD55.  The LXD55 had a better display of the galaxy with
surrounding stars, but the Starfinder did marginally better on the galaxy itself.
The view in either was not as good as my old 8" Meade has produced from
Black Mesa, OK  in the fall.  Light pollution is the clearly (pun intended)
enemy.

Final thoughts.
The LXD55 did better in a light polluted summer sky than did
the larger (2.5" diam) Starfinder.  There is a hint that in a dark clear
sky, the Starfinder would draw even with or surpass the views of the LXD55.  This
October/November I'll see what happens!

John Ensworth