Meade LX-200 8" f/6.3 OTA Review

By: Vlad Fedosov

Intro:

In my search for the right electronically assisted astronomy(EAA) scope I came across a used Meade 8” f/6.3 OTA. Now I have use c8’s with an f/6.3 reducer on multiple occasions for EAA and I knew that that combo worked very well. I was still curious as to how a native f/6.3 optical tube assembly(OTA) would work! The particular sample that I had was the UHTC version which was one of the newer scopes in this line that Meade produced. Let’s take a look at how it performs.

Testing:

I set up the scope out in my backyard on my LXD-75 mount to just really just asses its performance with my new ASI294MC Pro camera. I will not make this too drawn out as you can clearly see the performance of the scope with a larger chip. While the center of the FOV does have very nice round stars the corners do show very significant coma. From what I know there is, unfortunately, no corrector available for these OTA’s that would correct for this. If you happen to come across one of these OTA’s and want to image with a smaller sensor such as the ASI224 I’m sure you would be very happy with the results. With a larger sensor such as the ASI294, this OTA does definitely lack in the edge performance. Visually the OTA performs just as well as any other 8” SCT that I have tried. The larger central obstruction will theoretically make this OTA not as good of a performer on the planets, however(no planets where out during the review).

Conclusion:

All in all, I had a fun time testing this OTA. If you have a smaller sensor camera and want the convenience of a small OTA that an SCT offers and do not want to mess around with focal reducers the Meade F/6.3 OTA’s are a very nice option for deep sky EAA. I still do think that an F/10 OTA with f/6.3 reducer is a better way to go as you also have a better planetary scope if you want to observe or image those.