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Meade Instruments: telescope brand overview
Meade Instruments Corporation was an American multinational company headquartered in Watsonville, California, that manufactured, imported and distributed telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, CCD cameras, and telescope accessories for the consumer market. It was, at one point, the world's largest manufacturer of telescopes.
Who Meade Instruments is
Meade Instruments Corporation was an American multinational company headquartered in Watsonville, California, that manufactured, imported and distributed telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, CCD cameras, and telescope accessories for the consumer market. It was, at one point, the world's largest manufacturer of telescopes.
Meade Instruments has been founded in 1972 and based in United States. It is one of the makers whose telescopes amateur astronomers meet most often, so understanding its ranges helps when you are choosing a scope or fitting accessories to one you already own.
What they are known for
Meade Instruments is known for its LX series Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, the ETX Maksutov range, and the LightBridge Dobsonians, and it long competed head to head with Celestron in the SCT market.
Ranges from a single maker often span several optical designs and both beginner and premium tiers, so two telescopes wearing the same badge can behave very differently. The important numbers for choosing an eyepiece are always the telescope's own aperture, focal length and focuser size, not the brand on the tube.
Fitting eyepieces and accessories to a Meade Instruments telescope
Whatever telescope you own from this maker, the eyepiece maths is the same: magnification is the telescope's focal length divided by the eyepiece's focal length, and the true field of view is the eyepiece's apparent field divided by that magnification. Confirm your own model's focal length and focuser barrel size, since a range can span several designs and both 1.25 inch and 2 inch fittings.
A longer focal-length scope reaches high power with ordinary eyepieces, while a short fast scope needs shorter eyepieces for the same magnification and rewards better-corrected glass. Use the Fit My Telescope tool with your exact focal length to get the magnification, true field and exit pupil for any eyepiece pairing before you buy.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Headquarters | Irvine |
| Founded | 1972 |
Structured facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Fit eyepieces to your Meade Instruments telescope
Open the Fit My Telescope toolMatch eyepieces to your Meade Instruments scope's focal lengthFind Meade Instruments telescope on eBayaffiliateRelated
Sources: Meade Instruments (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA) ยท Wikidata (CC0)