Meade Telescope ACF-SC 356/2848 Starlock LX850

Meade ACF-SC telescopes:

Almost every large telescope worldwide is a Ritchey-Chrétien, including NASA's Hubble space telescope. The technology used by the pros can now belong to you too. Meade's new Advanced Coma-Free System - powerful and high-precision - is within the reach of all ambitious amateur astronomers, astrophotographers and CCD photographers! It provides perfectly sharp star images, at the highest professional observatory level, over the entire field of view. The secret of coma-free system is - as the name says - the complete absence of coma, an optical aberration in which starlight is distorted and pulled into comet-like tails outside the central part of the image. Whether for observing or photography, the ACF Cassegrain optics from Meade is way ahead of conventional mass produced telescopes. It offers fantastic image quality, previously only available from Ritchey Chrétien telescopes and other exotic systems costing several times as much as the Meade system.

Meade LX850 mount with StarLock:

The new Meade LX850 high-strength aluminium and stainless steel equatorial mount provides a precision tracking platform which is also suitable for larger telescopes. This accuracy is due to the large 147mm worm wheels and 17mm worm gears. The GPS supported AutoStar II computer control system can position the telescope on any of a large database of 144,000 astronomical objects. A rock steady tripod provides a firm base.

Meade StarLock is a high-precision system which allows very accurate object positioning and tracking. The two built-in cameras have different optics for this purpose and work together perfectly. Fist the wide-field camera provides rough positioning and then the narrow field camera places objects with a precision of up to 1 arc minute.

Initial alignment is also carried out by these two cameras and they bring the required alignment stars exactly into the centre of the field of view as the basis for optimal GoTo.

StarLock works by permanently and automatically autoguiding for maximum tracking accuracy. Once the telescope reverts to tracking mode after carrying out a positional movement (e.g. slewing to the position of a new object), the narrow field camera automatically searches for a suitable guide star of down to magnitude 11. It then uses this star for guiding until the telescope is moved again.

The Drift Alignment Assistant allows optimal equatorial alignment. The LX850 uses a suitable star for this. The exact deviation from true celestial north is calculated by the telescope on the basis of a 30-second exposure with the wide field camera. The LX850 then moves to the calculated correct position. The telescope can then be precisely aligned on this point by using the fine adjustment on the mount.

StarLock data:

• wide field camera: lens diameter: 25mm, focal length: 26mm f1.04, 1/2" CMOS sensor, field: 14.72x1.78 arc minutes
• narrow field camera: lens diameter: 80mm, focal length: 400mm f 5, 1/2" CMOS sensor, field: 57.2x45.8 arc minutes
• total weight 2.7kg

Specifications: