The Watcher's Blue Telescope is a Meade LX5 10-inch SCT. An SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope) although not the cheapest way to peer into deep-space, is a design that allows my 10-inch scope with a focal length of 2500 mms. to exist in a package only 20 inches long or so. This makes it much more portable and less cumbersome. This type of scope is beyond the resources of most amateur telescope makers to whip up in the garage, so usually only commercial scopes of this type are seen.

The Watcher has led you here to let you know that he has nothing but good things to say about the folks at Meade Telescopes. Through the years, whenever he has had one of the small parts of his scope develop a problem, one phone call or e-mail message to their people has always resulted in replacement of the part AT NO CHARGE to the Watcher.

Once, the Watcher snapped off one of the plastic thumbscrews used to adjust/hold the finderscope from his owm mis-handling. A casual e-mail message to their Rep on Compuserve asking how to get a replacement resulted in a package of these screws arriving in the mail within a few days for free

Any company that supports its customers this way has the Watcher's vote!