Founded in 1972 by John Diebel, Meade started out as a mail order seller of small refracting telescopes and telescope accessories. It soon branched out into larger reflecting telescopes, and in 1978, ventured into the Schmidt-Cassegrain that up to that time had been dominated by Celestron Corporation. And even though it had some trouble with all sorts of lawsuits with other companies over infringement of their patents, Meade continued to issue high-standard optical devices, the latest being the ETX Premier Edition telescope.

Although it won't be on display until next year's CES, Meade has already divulged a little bit of information about the ETX-LS telescope. The LS part of the product name refers to the Light Switch alignment technology that takes all the slog out of trying to find the right stars in the first place.

 

The integrated sensor module combines GPS, light sensitivity and Level North technology to find stars by recognizing your position compared to the celestial bodies to create a real time night sky map. It also houses a CCD sensor and an SD card slot so that you can take pictures of what you find.

 

Practically, this is a professional device for everyone, not only for specialists, as it actually guides on the sky map. Whatever planets, stars, or nebulae you want to see, just push a button, and the AutoStar function of this telescope will automatically point your telescope and put it right in your eyepiece.

 

If you're not decided on what you want to see one evening, it will even make suggestions for you. This way, all you have to do is go to “Tonight's Best” tour in your AutoStar and it will automatically select the best objects in the sky for that particular time and location (from its database of over 30,000 celestial objects).

 

There are even a video-out jack and a built in speaker for Meade's Astronomer-Inside Encyclopedia to give you a guided tour of the heavens. Basically, it sounds like a telescope that does it all for you. All you need to do is put your eye against it.
 

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