On TheAlienTech, we have reviewed various kinds of telescopes. Many telescopes are quite expensive, and only a few people can afford them. Anyways, How much expensive a telescope can get for your backyard astronomy?
There is no specific answer. Some telescopes cost up to $60,000. They need a special dome to store them & completely different maintenance systems. For your backyard astronomy, one of the most expensive telescopes you can buy is from MEADE. It is a Meade 16-inch telescope that costs $21000.
Meade LX600 16-inch Telescope
Why this telescope is so expensive compared with other telescopes that cost $3000-$5000? What different features do such an expensive telescope offer? We will see all the details of this telescope in this article.
This telescope is from Meade’s popular series LX-600. This Meade 16-inch telescope model is the biggest and the most expensive one in this series. This is the most expensive telescope you can buy for your backyard astronomy. Meade sells this telescope in two different ways. One is with a tripod, which means you get optical tube assembly, fork mount, and tripod. This will cost you around $21000.
If you already have another reliable stable system of a tripod or any other custom-made support system for this telescope. Then you can buy this telescope without a tripod. This means you get optical tube assembly and fork mount, this will cost you around $18500.
Mount
The double fork mount is the motorized alt-azimuth mount. It comes with an in-built GPS receiver and time chip. The moment you turn it on, it determines its location, date, and time. The mount has 11 gears which ensure smooth movement and accurate star location. The mount has an accuracy of 1 arc second.
Audio-Star technology
The brain of this mount is Meade’s Audio-Star technology. It has a database of 145,000 celestial objects. It ranges from the moon to planets to different constellations. The Audio-Star technology has very high precision. It can calculate future events like sunrises and meteor showers. It will also predict solar and lunar eclipses for the next 100 years.
As you set up the telescope, the Audio-Star will guide you around the celestial objects you are viewing. This is very helpful when you find some new object in the sky. While observing the Audio-Star tells you everything about the object. This improves your stargazing experience. The Audio-Star can take you on guided tours of the moon where the Apollo landings happened. It will tell you about all the features of the craters and the mountains on the moon.
Star-lock technology
Combined with the Audio-Star, the telescope has Star-lock technology. Meade’s Star-lock technology makes guiding and locking on celestial objects completely automatic.
The Star-lock is a different small telescope that sits on the top of your main Optical tube assembly. This is a small refractor telescope with an 80mm aperture. Its focal ratio is 5. It has two cameras built into the telescope. These cameras take wide-field photos of the night sky. After that, it compares them to an internal database to automatically align the scope.
During long exposures, the Star-Lock system continuously checks its orientation and tracking. It then adjusts as needed. It sends the data to the smart mount and smart drive systems. This helps the telescope to center your target perfectly in the field of view all the time. The Audio-Star and Star-Lock work together to improve the tracking accuracy over time.
Optical Tube Assembly
The telescope’s optical tube has an aperture of 16-inch (406mm). It has a focal length of 3251mm & a focal ratio of 8. The telescope has an Advanced Coma-Free optical system with Ultra-High Transmission Coatings. As this is a Cassegrain-type telescope. It uses both corrector plates and mirrors. All these mirrors and corrector plates are fully multi-coated. Multiple layers of aluminum oxide, titanium dioxide, and magnesium fluoride coat the corrector plates. Which makes them more effective.
The mirrors have a coating of Aluminum with multi-layer coatings of titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide. It helps in the reflection of the light rays. As the telescope uses Advanced coma-free technology, it is free from spherical and coma aberrations. Because of this, it produces flat, distortion-free images across the field of view. Especially at the edges, with reduced astigmatism for sharper images.
Why so expensive?
This telescope has the biggest aperture you can buy for your backyard astronomy. This telescope is made for professional astronomical observation. Which provides unprecedented sharp detailed images.
As we all know, as the aperture size of the telescope increases the price of the telescope also increases. All the parts of such a big telescope need to be of good quality and designed for the long term.
Also, the telescope is huge. So it should be able to last long with minimal maintenance. So, to design such a telescope is difficult and costly. If you consider all these parameters. It does get very costly to manufacture such a telescope. That is the reason the telescope is quite expensive and costs $21000.
We hope you learned something new about this super professional and expensive telescope. But, if you are a beginner or advanced beginner in astronomy. Then you don’t need a very expensive telescope. All you need is a decent size telescope with some features.
Do check out reviews of other beginners to intermediate-level telescopes Here.
