What telescopes are better Celestron or Meade and why do you think that? I'm looking at purchacing a 8-12" sco

Question

I'll give stars to all good answers. Thanks

Answer 1

My g/f gave me a Celestron 8" for Christmas. I *love* it ... but I have to admit, I'm a novice with the scopes. I can say that it survived shipment perfectly, was easy to assemble, and I had no problem locating stars through the viewfinder.

Answer 2

I can't speak on behalf of the Celestrons (although I'm sure they make great scopes), but I have done extensive work with a Meade LX200 GPS scope. This scope is great, once you've properly aligned it.

If you are a beginner, I would suggest first investing in a decent pair of binoculars until you are more familiar with the night sky. I say this only because some beginners shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a nice scope, only to realize that they can't find anything because they don't even know the basics of star gazing.

If you are ready for a nice scope, however, I really enjoyed the Meade I worked with. Any "go-to" scope with a GPS unit is really great for novices since you can basically tell the scope to find anything up there you want (within reason), and it will automatically correct for the rotation of the earth. You can tell it to find Sirius, for example, center it and walk away for an hour, come back and Sirius will still be in your viewfinder. Also, I found the 8" to be more than enough for viewing the stars, star clusters, and planets I was interested in.

Ultimately, its your call. Just be sure to factor in your experience level, your budget, and what you really want your scope to be able to do. I hope this helps!

Answer 3

Celestron and Meade are both good brands and brand wise, one isn't better than the other.

Which particular telescope is best depends on what you want out of a telescope.

Do you want to do mainly plantary viewing, star clusters, deep space, or a little of everything?

Do you want something compact and easy to transport or are you willing to lug around something that could weigh a few hundred pounds?

Do you want to do astrophotography?

If you are going to purchase a 12" telescope, or any fairly expensive telescope for that matter, you had best do your research so you can decide what kind will suit your needs best.

A 12" Schmidt Cassegrain or Ritchey Chretien, when all set up, is huge and a lot of people get tired of having to transport them. If you buy from Celestron they offer some of their scopes standard on German Equatortial mounts, which I think is more preferable to fork mounts but you pay the extra price for them and you can really put almost any optical tube on any appropriatly sized German Equatorial Mount. You may also have to fork over extra to computerize it. The Meade LX200 series, however, comes standard on a fork mount but it's also computerized. You will have to buy a few extra things to do astrophotography with this though.

So it's not the brand, they're both good, it's what telescope you want.

Answer 4

Both are good scopes. Check out Sky & Telescope's website for reviews.

http://skytonight.com/equipment/telescopes