Meade 8-Inch LX200-ACF (f/10) Advanced Coma-Free Telescope

by Meade

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 15 x 72 x 23 inches ; 95.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 100 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0029YMM1U
• Item model number: 0810-60-03
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,205 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
  • #25 in Camera & Photo > Binoculars, Telescopes & Optics > Telescopes > Catadioptric
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 17, 2003

Product Description

Aperture: 8-Inch. Focal Length: 2000mm. Focal Ratio: f/10. UHTC coatings, Standard Field Tripod, 1.25-Inch Diagonal Prism, 26mm Series 4000 Super Plössl Eyepiece. The most widely used research quality telescope now features 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, Oversized Primary Mirror, SmartDrive; Smart Mount, AutoStar II and more. 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. 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 LX200-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.”