What is the Best Catadioptric Telescope for Portability and Versatility?

[procq]

I am in New Mexico and currently planning a telescope purchase but quite confused with all that is available. Seeking a catadioptric, 6" size and currently looking at Celestron NexStar 6 SE and Meade LS 6 ACF. I selected these for their ease of portability, as well as their convenience of use. There is a significant difference in price between them and wondering if a significant difference in quality as well. The scope I seek would have to be equally good terrestrially, both viewing and photography, as astronomically. Any advice on these two or if a better alternative is available, would be greatly appreciated. I'm new at this and want to get the right scope at the start. Thank you for any help here.

 

[Mu naught]

What you are paying for in the Meade is the "auto alignment" system. The Celestron requires you find three guide stars and enter the time and your location so the telescope computer can track and orientate it's self properly, the Meade scope has all these functions automated so you simple push a button and the scope goes through the set-up process by its self, and then you are ready to go.

IMO - the auto alignment is NOT worth it. Once you understand how to set it up, and are able to competently find your way around the night sky, the Celestron should take you two minutes to set up. If you are going to spend $1500 bucks, go for more aperture

As far as the optics, they should be about equal.

Now you mention you want a terrestrial scope out of this - you may find the computerized mount to be cumbersome and annoying to use if you want to just point the scope at a distant mountain or something along those lines. You can do it perfectly well, its just somewhat slow and can be annoying using a little paddle when you really just want to point it with your hands. I would consider getting an EQ mount for this. They are more expensive, but they offer the smoothest tracking you can get and are very nice to work with.

So if you're comfortable spending the extra cash and want the computerized mount, I'd go up to the 8 inch scope:
http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=13&ProdID=416

If you don't want to do any work and want to push 1 button, then buy the meade.

If you want to consider a more traditional EQ mount with a SCT OTA (schmidt-cassegrain optical tube assembly), I would check out some of the products offered by Orion, something along these lines:
http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...hSession=05ca56d5-e658-43e0-86d7-8ca3ffeac4b6
+
http://www.telescope.com/control/pr...hSession=05ca56d5-e658-43e0-86d7-8ca3ffeac4b6

 

[russ_watters]

Interesting - the Meade also has an integrated camera. I've never heard of that.

 

[Mu naught]

Interesting - the Meade also has an integrated camera. I've never heard of that.

its necessary for it to find the guide stars it needs. I'm not sure exactly how it knows which stars are which, but apparently it scans around until it finds some stars it recognizes and uses them as guide stars.

It might be looking for patterns of stars it recognizes. I'd be interesting to see how it does it.

 

[Chronos]

Learning how to hand locate objects is a long road. I am not saying it is a bad thing, just very time consuming.