Meade 127ED

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Meade 127ED
Frequent mechanical problems; though Meade has been responsive.
Spherical aberration(star test D). Unreliable pinching objective cell.
Mount actually quite stable. Motor tracks well when alignment
is achieved.

Meade would do well to cut their flashy ad and marketing campaign by
25% and put the proceeds into engineering and Q&A.

Overall Rating: 4
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38498

Meade 127ED
Takes a while to settle down but once it does it performs nearly the same in terms of resoution and brightness as an excellent 6" F-8 newtonian. This is especially true on the moon and planets. Star test does show a bit of spherical abberation. Mounting is the original 600 model- very stable and tracks quite well. Overall an 8 to 8.5 rating.

Overall Rating: 8
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38499

Meade 127ED
No ED-doublet should ever be called "apochromatic"!!!

Overall Rating: No Vote
Weight: <none>
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38503 

>No ED-doublet should ever be called "apochromatic"!!!

Everyone bashes Meade for this practice.  Remember that they're not the only ones calling doublets APOs.  The label is well-deserved.  Of course, if the optics aren't aligned, there will be a lot of color.  The same can be said for Al's best doublets.  I've seen it.
Meade 127ED
I had the chance to use on of these at the local community college. There was COLOR in the field when looking at saturn and jupiter. Tho the two planets did show good detail, like refractor should.

I only give this a 5 b/c of the advertising meade uses. If they would say near apo or achro I wouold give the scope optics a ten.

I haven't used the GOTO tho

Overall Rating: 5
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38504 

>I had the chance to use on of these at the local community college.  There was COLOR in the field when looking at saturn and jupiter.  Tho the two planets did show good detail, like refractor should.
>
>I only give this a 5 b/c of the advertising meade uses.  If they would say near apo or achro I wouold give the scope optics a ten.
>
>I haven't used the GOTO tho

Collimate the optics and the color will go away.
Meade 127ED
One can pay more, but this is a hard to beat scope for the price.

Overall Rating: 10
Optics:10 Mount:10 Ease of Use:10 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=176789

Meade 127ED
I address only the scope because I use it on a different mount, quite successfully.

The Meade 127 ED APO is an excellent scope IF its two optical elements are properly aligned and IF it is also properly collimated. When those conditions are met, it shows LESS color on bright objects than my TV-85 APO and presents very sharp and contrasty images that show much detail, given good seeing conditions and transparency. That said, its lens mounting cell could clearly be more strongly and better designed, but if the scope is not banged around, as no scope should be, it will hold its alignment and collimation pretty well.

The scope's focuser is also excellent, when factory aligned and lubricated. To retain that tight alignement and for any scope being manually pointed, do not orient the scope by grabbing the focuser or diagonal to move it; use the scope body itself. This is a common, but easily made mistake that in time compromises the fit of focusers.

I like my Meade 127 ED APO and disagree with those who argue it is really a semi-APO. It is only such when not properly aligned and collimated. When it is both, there is no improper color on the Moon, Jupiter or Sirius, for example. Stars of lesser magitude focus to pinpoints with lesser powers and bright stars with higher powers hold a good disk shape, without any longer spikes on any side. It is hard to ask for more, in regard to sharpness.

Contrast and sharpness of the Meade are only very slightly less than with comparable aperture Tak's and AP's using the same eyepieces; however, as one reviewer has correctly noted, using the best eyepieces in the Meade 127 ED APO (Zeiss, Tak and Brandon, for examples) and more typical eyepieces in the AP's and Tak's (Vixen's, some TV's, Celestron's, for examples), the Meade presents the same quality views in regard to sharpness and contrast as the Tak's and AP's of the same aperture, for virtually all seasoned observers. For the money and relative to the cost of a Tak or AP 5", the Meade 127 ED is an excellent scope and a screaming deal for its price, especially when a clean, well cared-for unit can be found used on Astromart or the like.

Overall Rating: No Vote
Optics:9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=367358

Meade 127ED
As mentioned before, if the optics are out of whack, the performance will suffer. These scopes are bargains - especially now that they are discontinued. I give the optics a 9 because it's not quite up to par with the OTAs costing 5-6 times the price - but close! 95% of the performance for %20 of the price is hard to beat. The mount is great if it's in good working order. It's a shame Meade used such tiny drive motors.

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:9 Mount:8 Ease of Use:9 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=495220

Meade 127ED
The LXD 650 mount was OK when it came out because Meade would fix them when (not if) they broke. They never got mine right. The OTA sucked until I discovered an out of collimation focuser cell. Once I modified and collimated it, I would have to rate the optics as very nice, better than most.

Overall Rating: 8
Optics:8 Mount:3 Ease of Use:7 Value:9
Weight: 5 (Veritable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=575817

Meade 127ED
I had to rate it a 10. I owned this scope for over 14 years, original owner, and is my favorite due to it being my first serious scope, and I own many scopes, I really enjoy scaning large areas of the sky, with a wide field eyepiece. Color correction is unnoticable, unless viewing very bright stars, but who stairs at very bright stars? The moon is incredible to look at, especially with bino viewers, it appears as if you were there looking out of a window hovering over the moon. Bright deep space objects like the orion nebula are razor sharp, and the contrast is incredilbe. Also a very portable scope for field use. The LXD 650 has never failed me and is easy to use, and accurate. I used this scope for star parties, or bringing it down to the local observatory for public viewing. Unlike its bigger brother that I own, I never had to center the optics, If you see one on the used market grab it.

Overall Rating: 10
Optics:10 Mount:10 Ease of Use:10 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=606955

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