Meade

See also Mead. For people named Meade, see Meade (surname).

Meade is a company based in Irvine, California, that produces telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, CCD cameras and accessories for their products.

Their most popular line of telescopes include the LX200 series of "GO-TO" ranging from eight to sixteen inch diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, the modified Ritchey-Chrétien RCX400 series 10 to 16-inch diameter introduced in 2005, as well as smaller Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes. Others include the RDX "GO-TO" German equatorial mount series, with telescopes ranging from a 6-inch refractor and reflector to an 8 and 10-inch Schmidt-Newtonian, and just recently, the "Light-Bridge" truss-tube Dobsonian telescope using a break-down metal optical tube on a sturdy wooden mount. This new Dobsonian, in eight, ten, and twelve-inch diameters, replaced the older "Starfinder" series that used a traditional "closed" tube design.

Other accessories produced by Meade include the series 5000 eyepieces that are comparable to the construction and performance of Chester, New York-based Televue Opticals "Nagler" (82-degree field of view), "Panoptic" (68-degree field of view), and "Radian" (60-degree field of view) eyepieces.

In 2004 Meade acquired Coronado, who produce an extensive range of specialty telescopes that allow views of the sun in Hydrogen-Alpha, and more recently Calcium K line wavelengths.

Meade has a long history of litigation with other companies over infringement of their patents, particularly with its once bitter rival Celestron.

External link

[Meade's website]

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