More Information  · Supplied Accessories

The scope consists of three main components. First is the four pound aluminum upper cage containing the diagonal mirror, focuser, and red dot finder. Second is the aluminum tub holding the primary mirror. It weighs only 18 pounds, including the mirror. Six light-weight but rigid aluminum truss tubes connect the upper cage to the mirror tub. They weigh only one pound and attach quickly to anodized brackets on the cage and tub by means of large hand-tighten knobs, making assembly easy. Finally, there’s the 20 pound laminated particle board base in which the mirror tub sits. The entire scope weighs only 44 pounds, fully assembled and ready to observe.

The performance of the BK7 optical glass parabolic primary mirror of the 8” Meade LightBridge is guaranteed to be diffraction limited – for sharp high contrast images of nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters. Planetary images are also sharp and crisp. The mirror is overcoated with magnesium fluoride for high reflectivity.

The Meade LightBridge uses a fully adjustable metal cell to hold the primary mirror. The open frame of the mirror cell allows the mirror to cool down to ambient temperatures quickly, so you can start high magnification observing sooner. In addition, there’s a standard equipment battery-operated cooling fan on the mirror cell. This lightweight low-vibration fan draws cooling air over the back surface of the mirror for faster cool down times.

The scope’s BK7 diagonal mirror is mounted in a fully adjustable diagonal holder on a low-diffraction four-vane thin spring steel spider. The diagonal is polished to diffraction-limited accuracy, aluminized, and overcoated with magnesium fluoride.

The altazimuth base that the mirror tub rides in is crafted of strong, lightweight, and water-resistant laminated particle board. The base is shipped disassembled, but can be put together in about a half an hour using only a screwdriver and the supplied hardware. The polished aluminum trunnion bearings of the mirror tub are good-sized, for smooth scope motion. Teflon altitude bearing surfaces assure smooth, effortless, and backlash-free movement. This deluxe model scope moves in azimuth on steel roller bearings riding on a metal track. Push the scope lightly in any direction and it starts moving at the touch of a finger – smoothly and with no fuss. Stop pushing and it settles down immediately, with no shudder or vibration to mar your viewing experience.

The deluxe 8” Meade comes with a machined aluminum 2” Crayford focuser (with a 1.25” eyepiece adapter). A quality 26mm 2” QX-Series Wide Angle eyepiece is standard equipment. It provides a magnification of 47x. With an apparent field of 70°, it has an actual field of view that’s a very wide 1.49° across, essentially three times as wide as the full Moon. It gives very rich and expansive deep space views of star clouds, galaxies, and nebulas. The scope’s upgraded non-magnifying finder has four different illuminated reticle patterns available by simply rotating a dial in the finder. The various reticle patterns are shown in the feature illustration below. Also supplied is a CD-ROM of the Autostar Software Suite Astronomer Edition. This planetarium program will let you plan your observing sessions on your computer and print out star maps to use at the eyepiece to guide you to the many deep space objects the scope is capable of revealing. Its database contains over 19,000,000 stars and objects, more than enough to keep you busy observing for years.

Because of its compact component size and light individual component weights, the 8” Meade be easily transported and set up by one individual. Set-up time is only about 10-15 minutes. The 8” Meade LightBridge Dobsonian is designed for visual observing only – to show you as much of the night skies as possible. Photography is not possible with a Dob.

Given suitably good seeing, Encke’s Division and other minor features in Saturn’s rings occasionally become visible in the 8” LightBridge, as does Saturn’s faint crêpe ring. Low contrast banding and details in Saturn’s atmosphere begin to make themselves apparent, as well. Lunar features less than one mile across become visible, while Jupiter’s four Galilean moons start to show as tiny discs. Under dark skies, the Orion Nebula becomes a glowing complex of filaments, filling the wide 1.06° field of the standard eyepiece. Globular clusters are often resolved to the core. Messier, NGC, and IC objects show detail and structure never visible in the smaller telescopes that are more common in this price range. As with any serious telescope, the performance of the 8” LightBridge on faint objects will be improved by a dark sky observing site. Light-polluted city and suburban sites are not the best for observing very faint objects with any 8” scope.

Taking advantage of the weight-saving sophistication of a truss design, the 65 pound Meade 8” LightBridge Dobsonian makes it practical for one individual on his or her own to explore the heavens with a truly big scope, whether from a back yard or a distant dark sky observing site. A simple and time-tested design, stoutly made and fitted with precision optics, this Meade 8” LightBridge Dobsonian reflector will keep you happily observing for many years to come.

As the 8” Meade LightBridge is shipped directly to the customer from the Meade Instruments California factory, California sales tax applies to any LightBridge order shipped to a customer within the state of California.