Jan. 3rd Announcement

If you go to the Meade site, it says they are going to announce something that will "change the face of astronomy".

Anybody care to speculate? DR

Let the rumor-mongering begin:

1) Celestron and Orion have demonstrated that China can produce high quality APO optics. Skywatcher (Synta) is rumored to be readying 5-6" aperture semi-APOs and petzval astrographs. Burgess, etc. are talking about asian 7" triplets. I'd like to see Meade do the same with larger apertures to replace the discontinued line.

2) Some sort of large, I mean computer-monitor-sized flat screen, touch-screen-type display, with an integrated computer both for starmap and for image-display purposes. Bolted directly to the mount of your big brawny SCT. All this stuff is becoming so cheap now.

3) Over on the s.a.a. speculation includes a computerized solar telescope

I am thinking that they will be introducing affordable Go-To Dobs.
Let's see if I am right or wrong. It has been said for a while that this is coming.
Floyd

"change the face of astronomy"

Sounds like a new diet advertisement! Like so much other advertising "puffery" it's probably well overblown.

Get everybody hyped up and then introduce a new finder. God knows they could use one.

Darrell

Ok, my take on this announcement...


1- Meade will announce that they will actually have a Customer Service Center, not a customer disservice Center! This means that 90% of their staff will actually know what the heck they are talking about (not the < 5% it now has).
1a- Quality Control will now be done.
1b- Quality Control will now be done by humans, not Chimps...
2- The Customer Service Dept. and the Hardware Returns Dept. will actually talk to one another.
3- Meade will announce that they are buying out Celestron (egads!)
4- Meade will announce that they will produce a 20" SCT on LX200 Super Mount- to counter the rumoured Celestron offering.
5- Meade will announce that they have found the lost city of Atlantis...what? It could happen!!!!

Thanks for reading my silliness.

Jean D.
Ottawa, ON
Canada

My guess is that they'll formally announce the acquistion of Coronado. That's big news for Meade as it opens an entire market up for them.

Chapter 11

What they said is that they "will do it again"
That means they are not going to do anything new and they are just repeating themselves. So I think they will get out the old ads for the lx200 and repost them all.

Meade coming out with a RC telescope, 12" and 10" size on the LX200 fork mount.
12" is all most $7000.
Julius