My Meade LXD75 Page

During the time that I have had a fixed observatory the view from it has become more restricted.In June 2005 I decided to build another telescope mount at the other end of the garden close to the house so that I could fit a Vixen GP mount to it and view mars from it.This was made by sinking a four inch plastic pipe into the ground and setting it in concrete.I then purchased three one metre lengths of 10 mm all thread.These I put down the tube and then poured in more concrete until the tube was full.A pair of aluminium plates were fitted to the top of the all threaded rods to mount the telescope drive base onto.These plates were separated in a way allowing me to adjust them to get them dead horizontal before the mount was fitted.This worked very well and in November I decided to replace the mount with a LXD75 goto mount as its base and fittings are identical to a vixen GP mount.With this you get a free telescope, either a refractor or a shmidt newtonian.For some crazy reason I had the five inch refractor version .On test the mount was great as expected for the money but the Refractor telescope was a chinese sewer pipe with a piece of bantha poodoo as a lens in the end.It went straight back to the dealer as a swap out for the six inch newtonian version.In the mean time I bought what was really intended for this mount and that was a Vixen VC200L.The Meade newtonian replacement arrived and it was a total transformation. I collimated the loose main mirror and the secondary against an artificial star generated from a one inch ball bearing stuck on the garden shed with blue tack.It was easy to shine a torch against the bearing while adjusting the scope.The optics turned out to be excellent and I tested them against mars and the images were reasonable with a 2X barlow.It really needs a 3X for better results.I ran the telescope on the mount in my bedroom in test mode through the plate glass window for a month and with the bad winter weather managed to get some glimpses of the orion nebula with the camera onboard. The picture below was taken through double glazing and consequently there are imaging artifacts.However The bedroom telescope was fun because I found that at times when I woke up at night and there was a break in the clouds I could do useful warm astronomy then go back to bed again.With this telescope originally I thought I was going to have to take out the shmidt plate and use it in the hall as an umbrella stand as I always wanted an umbrella stand with meade on the side, but the scope turned out ok and will be useful and fun to use.There is always the tripod, and the goto mount can be recovered form the garden post .The whole lot goes on the back seat of a car easily for portable operation if necessary. Up to now I have no complaints with the goto mount considering its tracking performance with the small diameter worm and wheel.The only software moan with the mount autostar controller is with the timer.It does not auto reset itself and you can not see the countdown time so it is a pain to use.Both drives are tight with minimum backlash and cope with tracking at high magnifications after being set up by the drift method.All of the photographs below are shown one third of their actual size and there is a corresponding quality reduction.

It then struck me that this was an F5 scope so I should be able to at least see the flame nebula or the horsehead with it.

These are poor examples of what the scope is capable of and it will be interesting to see how much better they are later in 2006 on the proper mount outside in a clearer sky.

The image below is M42 taken this year Jan 2007.This was taken outside on the properly set up mount now in operation..note the difference from above..

As the telescope post holding the mount is fifteen feet away from the computer in the house I pass out cables for USB and focussing control.It struck me that I might be able to extend the cable to the autostar hand controller.I tried using a standard cat 5 network cable with a back to back socket adaptor on one end.The cable was plugged into the LXD75 mount and the autostar flexible cable into the back to back socket on the end of the extension cable.It worked perfectly with a 5 metre extension cable.You CAN NOT plug this cable directly into the hand controller as Meade have adopted a policy of reversing the wiring connections to be different from a standard computer cable.In a standard cable the wires go from pin 1 one one plug to pin 1 on the other.In a meade cable they go pin 1 on one cable to pin 8 on the other and so on.This means that I can make all corrections to the telescope camera set up without going out to the telescope once set up and running.

The following pictures are taken outside, they are roughly what you would see through a 50mm eyepeice.The point to note is that even though this is a cheap scope the aberrations across such a wide field are very minimal.When I use focal length conversion lenses on the other scopes they cause problems at the edges of the field trying to get similar wide angle views.It is a very good match to the Canon EOS350D.

The field of view around m27 including the star with the extrasolar planets found recently.Same in the double cluster below.The master images are much better than shown here.

Finally a longer exposure showing the emission nebula IC 5146.....

Very difficult to see visually even in a good dark sky using filters to help.

This could have been improved with guiding but all my photographs are unguided using mounts set up by the drift method.

NGC7000 is slightly better than IC5146, at the one end there is a trace of the veil nebula.The only problem is the overburn on bright stars caused by the light pollution filter in my set up with the canon EOS350D.

M33 is a typical object that is on the limits of what I can get out of the light pollution.However the LXD75 does a reasonable job on that...

This is part of the veil nebula the rest of it is in my canon EOS350D pictures part of this site as this covers a large area of sky...

And Finally an easy bright target M31...

And for a final final ...This is a group of galaxies around M86 if you look carefully there are at least 12 in view

The scope is reasonable with planetary imaging but not as good as a refractor or a large quality newtonian for obvious reasons and needs a 3x barlow to cope, as with the rest of this site if I get better results I will change images to match to be fair to the product .

As a simple collimation tool for this scope I made an eyepiece diameter clear plastic plug out of perspex about an inch long.Through the center I bored a 5mm hole and inserted a high brightness white LED into it.The front and back edge of the plug have a sanded matt finish to the surface.I centered the secondary mirror in the middle of the main mirror using the main mirror screws as normal.When the LED is lit if you look at the reflection of it back from the main mirror you will see it has changed colour to an electric blue.When the LED is at the focal point it returns a blue image of itself back to the focal point if in collimation.If the secondary mirror is offset the blue dot or circle can be seen out of kilter and to the side of the LED on the surface of the plastic.This can be adjusted by the secondary mirror screws to disappear behind the LED.If you point the scope at a sheet of white paper or a wall you can see a white disc with the secondary mirror shadow in it.This also gives you an indication of alignment as well.

Yes I am impressed.. this is a good quality value for money product in the mount and the telescope for any beginner to start with.