Let me first start by saying that I’m new to astronomy but it was obvious to me that the Meade LightBridge is an excellent telescope. I absolutely love it. The views are sharp and beautiful, the scope itself looks very impressive, the build quality is excellent, and the optics are exceptional.

The telescope arrived in 2 well-packed boxes, the instructions were easy to follow and I had it set up in about 20 minutes.

We have a Ford Escape and I wanted a telescope that I can take everywhere with me easily with my wife and daughter in the car – this one has truss-tubes so it will break down and it’s fairly easily portable, although somewhat heavy.

I had never seen a 10″ dobsonian telescope in person before, and hadn’t realized just how big these instruments really are. They are much bigger than you might expect, and you should take this into consideration before buying one.

I had considered other 10″ options, most notably, the Orion XT10 and the Zhumell Z10, but the problem with those two is that they both have a single, solid tube:

As you can see from the picture, the OTA (Optical Tube Assembly) on this one doesn’t break down at all, so it was out of the question for me. I did note during my research that the XT10 (picture above) seems to be an excellent telescope and everyone who buys one says they love it, but again I needed more mobility than that one would provide.

Tech Specs Of The Meade LightBridge

Aperture: 10″
Focal Length: 1270mm
Focal Ratio: f/5
Focuser: 2″ Crayford style focuser with 1.25″ adapter
Red Dot Viewfinder: 4-reticle Red Dot ViewFinder
Secondary Housing Weight: 6 lbs.
Trusses Weight: 2 lbs.
OTA Primary Housing Weight: 30 lbs.
Assembled OTA Weight: 38 lbs.
Assembled Mount Weight: 27 lbs.
Total Net Telescope Weight (assembled): 65 lbs.
OTA Length: 47″
Mount Dimensions: 23″x23″x18″
Cooling fan on the primary mirror.

When you want to move it around, you can move the OTA, and then the mount separately, but note that the OTA is 38lbs by itself.

My First Light

I was lucky enough to be able to see Saturn the first night I had the telescope, it was spectacular through the 2″ wide angel eyepiece that comes with the Meade LightBridge. Saturn looked tiny but I could see it very clearly with it’s rings and a nice background of stars.

I also saw Mars, I could see the rich red color of it but it was also fairly small, and the viewing conditions weren’t ideal where I was at the time.

I also purchased the Zhumell eyepiece and filter kit with my Meade LightBridge, so I got to see these planets even bigger and brighter in my scope. Saturn was really nice at around 400x…

Final Thoughts

I love this telescope and I couldn’t be happier with it, however, if you are a beginner and want a good first telescope, I might suggest that you choose a 6″ because it will be much easier to move around. I would also suggest that it might be easier to learn to find objects on a 6″ that it is on a 10″, simply because you can move the 6″ around a lot easier and you will get to use it more often.

All in all, you won’t forget the first time you see the moon and planets through this telescope…

Clear skies.