NEW Celestron NexStar 5SE Special Edition Telescope
	Price	$799.00	Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain
	Status	Active
	End Time	11/21/2008 6:36:03 PM EST 16h 21m 43s

NEW Silver 90mm Cassegrain Telescope Astronomy w Tripod
	Price	$149.00	Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain
	Status	Active
	End Time	11/21/2008 9:50:05 PM EST 19h 35m 45s

Meade125 etx, hardcase, tripod, 10lens eyepiece kit +more!
	Status	Active	Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain
	Price	$350.00
	Bid Count	1
	End Time	11/23/2008 3:14:25 PM EST 2d 13h

Meade 8" LX90GPS w/ UHTC & 4000 Eyepiece Kit
	Status	Active	Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain
	Price	$1,001.00
	Bid Count	17
	End Time	11/23/2008 5:33:37 PM EST 2d 15h

Celestron CPC 800 Series SCT w/ StarBright XLT Coatings
	Price	$1,650.00	Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain
	Status	Active
	End Time	11/23/2008 5:35:46 PM EST 2d 15h

This item is no longer available.

Meade LX200 10" Schmidt-Cassegrain with lots of extras!
	Buy, Bid or See more options
	Curent Price	2050 USD
	Item #	170253013025
	Status	Completed
	Condition	Used
	End time	8/29/2008 9:14:17 PM (EST)
	Ships From	Gurnee, IL
	Category	Cameras & Photo > Binoculars & Telescopes > Telescopes > Schmidt-Cassegrain

FROM MEADE'S WEBSITE, A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ITEMS ON WHICH YOU ARE BIDDING***

The most widely used research telescope on earth now comes with the most advanced optical system. Meade's LX200-ACF brings Advanced Coma-Free (ACF) optics within reach of aspiring astronomers everywhere. Nearly every observatory reflector in the world uses an aplanatic (coma-free) optical system like the Ritchey-Chrétien (RC), including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Now you can own similar optics to what the professionals use. The LX200-ACF includes all the field-proven features of the LX200 including GPS, Primary Mirror Lock, Zero Image-Shift Microfocuser, Oversized Primary Mirror, SmartDrive™;, Smart Mount™, AutoStar® II and more. Plus, the LX200-ACF comes with observatory-class optics and a Series 5000 26mm 5-Element Plössl eyepiece. The new LX200-ACF. It's the biggest news in astronomy since, well, the LX200. The "advanced" in Advanced Coma-Free. A traditional Ritchey-Chrétien (RC) is a type of reflector that delivers a coma-free, flat field of view via hyperbolic primary and secondary mirrors. RC telescopes (from a variety of manufacturers) are found in most of the world's top observatories and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Because the mirrors in these telescopes have always been very expensive to make, few amateur astronomers could enjoy them. Fortunately, Meade engineers developed a radical new Advanced Coma Free design by combining a hyperbolic secondary mirror with a corrector-lens-and-spherical-primary-mirror combination that performs as one hyperbolic element. This ACF design produces a coma-free, flat field of view that rivals traditional RC telescopes at a fraction of the cost. The design even eliminates diffraction spikes and improves astigmatism, both of which are inherent in the traditional RC design. When reviewing Meade's LX400-ACF Advanced Coma Free, Sky and Telescope magazine said, " [It] does indeed perform like a [Ritchey-Chrétien]. The difference between the off-axis images (compared to a Schmidt-Cassegrain) was dramatic to say the least."

Meade's exciting new LPI (Lunar Planetary Imager) can be used on any telescope for making images! It's VGA resolution (640x480) color CMOS chip is capable of creating high-quality lunar and planetary images, as well as daytime terrestrial images. And with the capability to make long exposures, you can digitally capture bright deep sky objects with the LPI system that only costs a fraction of a typical astronomical CCD imager system.

With an effective magnification similar to a 6mm eyepiece, the Meade LPI produces images that are inherently high magnification with no additional adapters, making it the perfect tool for imaging the Moon, planets, and small, bright deep sky objects. Using a barlow lens with the LPI will increase the magnification even more, and installing the LPI is just as easy as sliding in an eyepiece.

Autoguiding with the LPI requires an Autostar-equipped Meade telescope. Standard equipment includes cables with the Autostar Suite for linking the PC to the "RS232" port of these telescopes so that the software can make corrections to the telescope as the LPI tracks on a star. Autoguiding with the LPI is as easy as making an image— An initial image is downloaded, and one only has to draw a box with the computer's mouse over the star to be tracked. When used in tandem with the LX200GPS with Smart Drive activated, stars as faint as 10th magnitude may be used.

• Install the Autostar Suite software in your PC.
• Connect the USB cable to the camera and the PC. Windows will recognize the new device and a dialog box will appear asking if you want to install the new drivers. With the Autostar Suite CD disk still inserted in the computer, click "OK".
• Open Autostar Suite, click the "Image" drop-down menu at the top of the program and select "LPI Imaging". The camera's dim red L.E.D. "on" light will glow indicating you are connected.
• Click the drop down menu under "Object" and select the type of object that you will image, use "Moon" for taking images of the Moon for example.
• Center up the planet or region of the Moon that you wish to image with an eyepiece. Remove the eyepiece from the telescope's focuser, and slide in the LPI camera.
• The image will appear on the "Live" box on your computer at this time. You can now focus the telescope to get the sharpest image. Use the "Magic Eye" tool of the program to determine best focus.
• Hold down the left mouse button and draw a box around a region of interest, and let go. The LPI will "track" on that region during the exposures.
• When you are ready, just click the "Start" button and you will start tracking and stacking images. You can take and stack as many iamges as you like.
• Click "Stop" to finish. The LPI software will automatically name and save your final image. It is that easy!

As your familiarity of using the LPI software improves, you can over-ride all of the automatic settings and take control of nearly every aspect of the imaging process to further improve your imaging skill. For example, the exposure settings can be user-controlled from .001 to 15 seconds.

The LPI software automatically aligns multiple images images and combines them into one superior image. Generally speaking in making an astrophotograph there are still factors that can ruin an otherwise perfect image. Some of these factors would be moments of poor seeing, or high turbulence in the atmosphere, a gust of wind shaking the telescope, poor alignment that would cause poor tracking, even a small bump to any part of the telescope can cause problems. With the LPI system, the software's "Min Quality" setting can be set to discard all of the poor quality images and only combine the high quality images at or above the setting chosen.

Other features include taking dark frames with the LPI, or saving every image taken instead of just the final stacked image. Below are most of the primary features of the LPI software interface for controlling the camera:

      *Recommended Minimum System For Installing Autostar Suite:
      PC running Windows 98SE with 64 MB and 100 MB free disk space.