Main technical features
Geared for the intermediate-level stargazer, the Meade Instruments 216006 Polaris 130 provides a complete setup for viewing the different celestial objects. It has an aperture of 130mm, a focal length of 650mm and a focal ratio of f/5.0. It comes with three eyepieces with a variety of magnifications to support your viewing applications. For low power, there’s a 26mm eyepiece. For medium power, the 9mm is ready for use, and for high power viewing, the 6.3mm objective is on hand, all giving you different options for any viewing situation.
This telescope also ships with other highly useful accessories that should make your celestial exploration and observation truly magical. It comes with a red dot viewfinder that projects what seems like a red dot against the sky for easy locating of targets. The accessory tray keeps your observing essentials within easy reach. The rack-and-pinion focuser provides a means to fine tune your views of the night sky.
The German Equatorial mount is made large and stable to ensure that it provides more than enough support for the whole telescope tube. It comes with slow motion controls and is supplemented by a stainless steel tripod, cradle mounting rings, setting circles and latitude adjustment. The scope also comes with an instructional DVD and Astronomical Software so you can enjoy optimal use of the unit.
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In-depth information
This telescope carries a Newtonian Reflector design, which, compared to lens telescopes, carries no lenses. This means there won’t be any color fringing around particularly bright objects. The high aperture ratio/focal ratio makes this telescope optically fast. As the largest telescope in the Meade Polaris series, this model offers over 5 inches of light collecting capability. Coupled with its affordable price, this telescope is a real steal. You can view the planets and deep-space objects including the stars and star clusters, galaxies and nebulae.
The three eyepieces deliver 25X, 72.2X and 103x magnifications. The 2X Barlow lens further doubles those magnifications to give you more detail as well as a broader range of observation options. The quality eyepieces boast anti-reflection multicoated optics to prevent stray light from interfering with your views so you get bright and detailed images every time. They also come with fold-down eyecups that help reduce peripheral light. This model accommodates standard 1.25-inch accessories and eyepiece filters.
The red dot viewfinder helps you aim the telescope at objects you would like to observe and explore further. This component also offers variable intensity for optimal viewing performance, helping you hone in on objects easily. You can view objects comfortably with the diagonal that provides an erect image. The accessory tray provides a means of storing your astronomy essentials within easy reach so you won’t have to rummage through a drawer or a bag just to find what you need. The 1.25-inch rack-and-pinion focuser enables you to finetune your views till you obtain the clearest and the brightest for fantastic observing experience.
The large and stable German Equatorial mount comes with flex arm slow motion controls with large knurled knobs that make tracking of celestial objects in motion simple and smooth. The precise Right Ascension and Declination indicators make it easy to find target objects using their known coordinates.
Once the object is found after proper northern/southern hemisphere alignment, it can be easily tracked through slight adjustments to the RA dial. The stainless steel tripod offers a means of adjusting the height of the scope from a minimum of 39.5 inches to a maximum of 54 inches. The latitude control with scale helps you position the scope properly. The included AutoStar Suite Astronomer Software for Windows helps you plan your observing sessions by showing more than 10,000 celestial objects, with printable star charts for field use.
Known issues
Once fully assembled and setup, the scope can be quite cumbersome to move around, as you would have to either raise and lower the legs of the tripod or loosen the screws and rotate the tube. This is not a huge issue when you are just viewing targets that are close together. The assembly of the scope can be quite tricky for customers to figure out, especially for first-time telescope users.
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Meade Brand
The company Meade Instruments is recognized as being one of the most dynamic and innovative businesses in the telescope market. This company has come up with multiple improvements in the past decades and made amateur astronomy more enjoyable and much easier. Meade is known for its original telescopic designs all over the world.
In 1972, John Diebel founded Meade Instruments, and it began as a one-man mail-order business that supplied refracting telescopes. In July 1972, the first Meade advertisement appeared in the Sky and Telescope magazines. In a short time, the business grew and started to offer all sorts of accessories such as eyepieces, focusers, filters, and adapters.
John Diebel’s vision was to offer the amateur astronomers quality products for reasonable prices, as well as exceptional customer experience. As time went by, the business flourished and entered the world of telescope manufacturing.
Meade Instruments introduced the first commercially available 8-inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with a worm drive for more accuracy in tracking. The Meade Model 2080 was released on September 1980. From this point on, the company really took off. In the decades that followed, this company came out with numerous innovations and original products in the world of astronomy for amateurs.
The LX200 line was released in 1992 and the ETX series, in 1999. These were a couple of the most important innovations introduced by Meade Instruments. Later on, in 2004, the company got the Colorado brand of solar telescopes.
The specialized hydrogen-alpha telescopes generate detailed images of solar flares and prominences and are still unmatched on the market to this day. Since it began, Meade has always developed new technologies that are intended to make astronomy fun and easy.
Moreover, the company made the best out of the telescope technology advancement which made it possible to learn about the celestial miracles of the night sky. Released in 2009, the LightSwitch series is really the first one-touch technology telescope.
Since amateur astronomy grows and the technology continues to advance, the interests divide into imaging and visual activities. The LX850 and the LX600 series were introduced in 2012, in order to cater to the superior astro imagers.
Meade Instruments has steadily built an excellent reputation for providing industry-leading and ground-breaking innovations and precision optics which are the hallmarks of the company. All of Meade’s customers enjoy the technology which is added to all of the products which are easy and fun to use.
According to the company’s own statement, they believe in offering an extraordinary experience, using technologies meant to make astronomy enjoyable and accessible to anyone no matter the level of experience in the field. Also, Meade Instruments has many fans all around the world. These trust and use its products in various applications.
In case you develop an interest in astrology, you can certainly get your products from this company, and you will find them easy to use. Furthermore, you will enjoy every experience and won’t be sorry for your purchase.
