Meade LX200 12"

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Meade LX200 12"
excellent optics, fast setup, accurate goto

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38090

Meade LX200 12"
Excelent scope. Fine optics.
From: C.Saraiva (Macau)

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38091

Meade LX200 12"
Big but beautiful and worth the effort to manage it's size.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38093

Meade LX200 12"
OUTSTANDING in all respects. Excellent star test, easy to use, and quite stable. The only fault is the manual. VERY hard to figure out how to use the computer ssytem with the current manual.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38096

Meade LX200 12"
Star test excellent, never collimated
Brightness is fine. Contrast is good, but not as good as my Cave f16 classical cassegrain. But good enough that I seldom use the Cave.
Motor tracks without PEC 6 minutes in RA with 9mm guiding eyepiece on center.
With PEC no problems in RA, small amount of Dec, (no DEC training)
Telescope is observatory mounted, therefore, the mount seems stable enough for a fork mount.
I have had the telescope since they came out and have had only one problem. Meade responded at no cost even though it was out of warranty.
I almost didn't buy the telescope because of the negative comments on the internet. That would have been a mistake. It replaced a 1981 Celestron C11. The Celestron had excellent optics, the Meade is just as good if not better.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38097

Meade LX200 12"
Damn that's spensive

Overall Rating: No Vote
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38099

Meade LX200 12"
What a great scope. Replaced my vintage 1982 Black C11. The GOTO is very accurate, better than I could have imagined. The manual needs work, lots of 'stuff' to look through to find what you need. Once you get a taste of all the bells and whistles of the LX200 line, it will be hard to go back to the 'old way of doing things'. My only complaint is that the fork arm's are too short to fold down the tube into a compact unit. The end of the tube will hit the base (there are mechanical stops to prevent this). Meade should have shelled out the extra effort to get new fork casting for the 12" and the 7" Mak model. If mounted in a permanent Observatory this would be no big deal. Optics take a while, 1 to 2 hours to cool down. A cool down fan would have been a nice touch. Overall I am very pleased with my 12" Meade, not bad comming from a very long time multiple Celestron owner.

Overall Rating: 9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38100

Meade LX200 12"
Very good optics. Typical mirror shift on focussing ( a problem with most SC's )

Overall Rating: 9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38101

Meade LX200 12"
One incredible scope, manual needs some work as it is very confussing, but operating is straight forward after you use it a few times. HEAVY! Replaced a 1983 C-11. The computer and high precission pointing works as advertised. did I mention it is HEAVY! Would be best it mounted permanently or put on some sort of wheeled base. Somewhat noisy when motors runnung to find a object.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38102

Meade LX200 12"
Great optics, great mount, accurate go-to, serious serious tripod. I'm still surprised at how good the optics are after two years of use. I have it pier mounted and only occasionally travel with it.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Meade LX200 12"
I've only had this for a week. Where do I buy a lower jaw retension system? I'm tired of picking mine up off the dirt when I look through this thing. I'm amazed, just flat out amazed. You Meade bashers take a hike.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38104

Meade LX200 12"
Have had mine now for 7 months. Excellent optics providing beautiful images. Most recent views of Jupiter and Saturn at ~650x were astounding with no loss of detail or contrast from lower powers. The 3 moons of Jupiter (that night) were all nices disks of varying sizes. Star test is excellent (easily splits doubles to at least 0.6" - haven't tried anything less than that yet!). LX200 drive works as advertised. The only scope I would upgrade this for would be the 16" version!

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Meade LX200 12"
Overall, probably the best scope on the market today. Rigid tripod. Excellent pointing. Perfect tracking (with PEC). User friendly software. Best optics on any scope I have ever seen of any size. Small backlash in focus can be easily remedied by replacing Meade plastic thrust washers with roller bearings.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38106

Meade LX200 12"
A great telescope. I never seen a telescope like it. The HPP is a great feature.Tanks to Meade and my 12" LX200 in altazimuth mode, i can take CCD pictures of the deep sky with long exposures, thanks to the Meade Field De-Rotater.
Great telescope, great optics.

POLARIS CCD ALTAZ : http://members.aol.com/ccdalt/

Florent Poiget
President of POLARIS Association, France

Overall Rating: No Vote
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Meade LX200 12"
This scope works as advertised. Perfect collimation out of the box. No problems with motor controls. Slight image shift when focusing but this is to be expected with this design of telescope. Use the 2" diagonal with a TV 35mm pan or 17mm nagler and ....... LOOK OUT !! You might need a shovel to scrape your jaw off the floor. I did :) !!!

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38109

Meade LX200 12"
I have owned the scope for 9 months. It is superb on deep sky. Planets it can outperform large refractors, but only on excellent seeing conditions. Takes a while to cool down due to the mass. Drive and accuracy second to none.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Meade LX200 12"
Awesome scope. There is nothing that compares to aperature. Have gone from an 8" to a 10" to a 12". This scope is very large. It is a little hard to handle if you use the tripod. Fortunately I use a the wheely bar permanently setup and roll it out of the garage. The optics are first rate! Obviously they aren't a refractor or Newt, but with a Tak FS102 riding on top of it I can say that it is VERY good. Anyway you want to look at it, higher magnification and light grasp allow for a lot of detail in any object. On deep sky objects it really shines. Use a 31 Nag and you get almost a full degree of sky, which allows for good views of all but the largest open clusters. Contrast is very good. Slewing and tracking is first rate. Using HP if you can't see the object it isn't because it is not pointed at the object. You just can't see it. Fit and finish are first rate. Tripod is massive for a scope this size which it needs. I use in ALT/AZ mode as my low lat (26 degrees) would make the wedge very hard to use. Here is my only beef. The scope rides on the same fork mount that the 8 and 10 inch ride on. As such the scope because of it's longer tube length will not swing down between the fork arms. Meade should have designed it's own fork arms. Perhaps they did this to save cost but it would have made it a little more beefy and sturdy. However, I do have a TAK FS102 on a Losmandy setup with 5" rings and Meade hard dew shield on it. To boot it has 15 pounds of counterweights on the bottom. This is quite a load! In ALT/AZ (properly balanced) it has absolutely no effect on operation or tracking. Only with the tube pointed towards the zenith can you sense any type of of "effort" being exerted on the dec gears which is to be expected. I cannot say how it would work with the wedge/superwedge but I venture not as good. Accept for the fork arms this is a true observatory quality telescope and a dream machine for any amatuer. Get one if you can. You won't be sorry.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38111

Meade LX200 12"
I purchased my LX200/12 new in 1999.
It has the following virtues.
1. Solid mount and accurate RA tracking (polar mode).
2. Very good optics for an SCT; unusually high contrast (rare in an SCT).
3. Tight construction with few plastic parts.
4. Lots of accessories which actually fit w/o modification.
5. If polar alignment is within about 10 arcmins, the "goto" is quite accurate.
It has the following problems.
1. A poorly organized manual with incomplete technical appendices.
2. The OTA/fork is not statically balanced for the DEC drive.
3. The finder is way too small.
4. The tube will not swing through the forks; it's too long.
5. There is excessive DEC backlash.
6. The DEC bearings are plastic sleeves; they should be roller bearings.
7. The "superwedge" azimuth adjustment is poorly designed (a metal grinder).
I've solved the problems above and use the instrument as a fully remote controlled CCD imaging device. It is transportable but I use a small crane to mount/un-mount and move the OTA/fork (it's about 80 lbs.). This scope is for serious (obsessed?) amateurs. It will dig to nearly 18th mag with a CCD and the drive system is precise enough to yield 2 arcsec stellar images (maybe a little better). Visually, it will easily resolve 0.6 arcsec double stars when seeing permits.

Overall Rating: 9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38112

Meade LX200 12"
DISAPPOINTING.
We bought this telescope for the amateur astronomers group I belong to. We are based in Italy (maybe Meade sends less than perfect scopes over here...). We received the telescope directly from the italian official distributor and it showed:
1) A faulty connector (the one for the Dec. cable on the fork mount) which prevented the software from completing the startup sequence (and the telescope from working, obviously). Easily solved.
2) A collimation so poor you couldn't separate Gamma Leonis (GASP). Easily solved.
3) A mirror shift so severe you basically lose the star while focusing on a 2" 40 mm. Pentax eyepiece. We are searching for a solution to this annoying problem (try to do any CCD or astrophotography work with this...).
4) A back lash in the focusing knob so severe the problem mentioned at #3 becomes almost futile ... the thing is impossible to focus decently. We are searching for a solution to this too.
5) Finally ... even if you are able to reach focus with plenty of perspiration and hard work ... as soon as the telescope moves slightly the mirror does to and the focus is gone again ...

I have been the proud owner of a Celestron CG11 for a long time and my telescope shows a far better quality than this Meade thing. To be absolutely honest the setup is not that bad and the accuracy in centering the objects pretty good. Too bad once they are there you can't help focusing them decently!
GoTo is a great feature, ok. HPP might be too. But for the money we paid (a lot, this is no USA when telescope prices are considered) we would have appreciated a fork mount specifically realized for this telescope and not the one for the 10" with some spacers ...
To make a long story short: quality control before shipping seems to be non existent. The OTA has a lot to gain from a complete reengineering. The mount could be better.
We are curious to test a NexStar 11 GPS soon as see if it is a telescope as good as the CG11 optically and easy to use as the LX200 is.

Overall Rating: 5
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38113

Meade LX200 12"
Excellent in all respects. Has extensive range of after market accessories. Can not be beat either in terms of versatility or price.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38114

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