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.
The LightSwitch GoTo mount:
The new innovative LightSwitch technology avoids all the difficulties that most beginners normally encounter with telescope alignment. After turning it on, the telescope aligns itself completely automatically and without further input. Equipped with an integrated sensor module (ISM), encompassing GPS and LNT (Level North technology), and combined with the new Eclips CCD camera, the new patented LightSwitch technology replaces the human eye and offers the only alignment procedure, worldwide, that needs no user input currently available in the field of amateur telescopes. After turning it on, electronic sensors download the current time and work out the current location of the device. Precision alignment is then carried out with the help of two stars, which are recorded and compared to an internally generated current star map within the camera. The telescope is then aligned, with no interactive user input necessary.
Equipped with a simple-to-use user interface and a high-sensitivity, low-noise wide-angle digital camera, the user can create high resolution images of the night sky, which can either be stored on SD card or immediately examined via the telescope's video output. By means of built-in speakers and video output, the 'built-in astronomer' (Astronomer Inside) takes the user to the most beautiful celestial objects, and includes an encyclopedia of the night sky that can provide interactive guided tours of hundreds of deep sky objects using pre-programmed audio and video material.
It not only matters which telescope you buy but also where you buy it. Our additional services:
- We are a leading telescope dealer and know the devices we sell. Our customer service team will gladly help you after your purchase if you have problems with assembly or operation.
- We provide a copy of the 80-page Telescope ABC beginners handbook with every telescope.
Our expert comment:
The instrument has been tested by our colleague Marcus Schenk and has left a very positive impression. You only have to turn it on, and the entire location and time inputting as well as alignment using the alignment star takes place automatically. His comment: A marvel of technology!
The instrument's own camera is only used as an electronic finder for alignment with the star selected. Photography through/with the optics of the telescope is not possible. Although it is possible to output the signal, it is actually not a good astronomy camera. If you want to look at the image on a PC, we recommend adding the DSI camera from Meade
Menu navigation on the Autostar control is in English.
(Bernd Gährken)
