Lidl watch

Yes, if it's the NexStar 102 SLT it is a little overpriced compared to other European countries, until you include shipping. It seems to me that an Irish outlet should be able to cut down a little more on overhead by ordering enough product per shipment to take advantage of groupage prices.

I decided to ring Astronomy Ireland ( I recently became a member) and see what they thought and they said it is no longer made by Meade (and sure enough I cannot find it on meade.com) so it must be a discontinued model??

It is still made and sold : www.meade.com/lxd75/index.html

People that had problems last year were able to get replacement parts from Meade in Germany iirc.

Astronomy Ireland said they have equivalent and better scopes at lower or same price! 102mm refractor on GoTo mount for 599 Euro including delivery anywhere in Ireland and full lifetime support and advice.

What scope are we talking about? NexStar 102? Thats going for £299 in the UK, perhaps the Astronomy Ireland lads can shave another few euro off the price they quoted you If transportability is a concern then perhaps something more like a 4" or 5" mak might be worth considering. My travel scope is a 4" skywatcher mak that fits in hand luggage and I can mount it on a sturdy camera tripod (or an equatorial mount when needed).

Cheers,
~Al

Hi Al, thanks for all the info and the link, I couldn't find it on the site. Glad to hear those with problems got sorted but it is a real pain having to go through the whole process of buying something you can't use and having to wait for parts then. I like to be able to use things as soon as I get them, adds to the fun!
I'll give Astronomy Ireland a ring tomorrow and mention the NexStar in UK..... this might work out better than I thought! (as a matter of interest, what does 299 sterling convert to euros as?)

The scope is still sold by Meade.

Also 102mm is 4" as opposed to the 6" of the Meade. I am not the best on the different types of scopes, but in this case would that make the Meade scope the more powerful scope?

I'm not too well up on them myself but Astronomy Ireland said it was as good as it... I'll be contacting them tomorrow and I'll get solid info then.

The scope is still sold by Meade.

Also 102mm is 4" as opposed to the 6" of the Meade. I am not the best on the different types of scopes, but in this case would that make the Meade scope the more powerful scope?

I'm not too well up on them myself but Astronomy Ireland said it was as good as it... I'll be contacting them tomorrow and I'll get solid info then.

In terms of light gathering power its the area of the mirror or lens that counts. The 6" will have an obstruction where the secondary mirror is and this must be subtracted from the area to make the comparison.

At a rough calculation the 4" (102mm) has an area of 82cm^2.

The 6" has an area of 181cm^2. I cant find any mention of the obstruction for the 6" online, but my 10" LXD55 has an obstruction with an area of 43cm^2 so I'll assume the same for the 6", so the effective area of the 6" is 138cm^2. So eh.. that means that the 6" would gather 1.6 times the light of the 102 which is a substantial enough difference. A 127mm refractor rather than the 102mm would be a closer match.

Perhaps other can comment on whether that difference is negated at all by refractor -v- reflector design?

From the AI site, it looks like they are selling:
#22096 NexStar 102 SLT € 599

General Details:

- High quality 102mm short tube style refractor
- Fully computerized altazimuth mount
- StarPointer finderscope to help with alignment and accurately locating objects
- Quick-release fork arm mount, optical tube and accessory tray for quick no tool set up
- Sturdy stainless steel tripod and accessory tray included
- Good for terrestrial and celestial observing
- Includes CD-ROM "The Sky" Astronomy Software which provides education about the sky and printable sky maps

Personally, I prefer the LXD75 as it has a EQ mount and is pretty fast at f/5, the Celestron AI are selling is on Altaz mount and slower at f/6.47 Also the Meade mount can take other scopes, where has the celestron would probably need some modification.

Just my 2 cents and I am off to buy the LXD75 in the morning

Darragh

I have to agree.

The 6" Newt catches a big chunk of extra light, it doesn't suffer from false colour and the coma isn't bad. Maximum useful magnification, weather permitting, is 304x, which kinda beats the pants off a 4" achromat if it's properly collimated and used with good eyepieces.

The SLT mount's capacity is limited both in terms of the weight it can carry and the physical length of the scopes that can be used with it. It certainly wouldn't accommodate a 6" Newt or a large refractor. The LXD75 being an equatorial with a Vixen-style dovetail clamp is a versatile general purpose mount that can carry a wide variety of scopes that fall within its much more robust capacity, including Newts of up to 10", Refractors up to 6", SCTs up to 10" and respectably sized Maks and Vixen VMCs.

I'm sure the 102 SLT is a nice lightweight GoTo because I was more than satisfied with a NexStar 4 for several years, but it's no LXD75.