| This aluminum eyepiece caddy and assembly guide for Meade LX90 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes serves a triple purpose. First, it keeps as many as twelve 1.25" eyepieces, seven 2" eyepieces, and your AutoStar computer hand control close at hand so you can find them easily in the dark. Second, it helps you level your tripod when setting it up so that your computer can find celestial objects more accurately. Third, it has nylon-clad guide posts that automatically center your telescope on your tripod to take the guesswork out of assembling your scope in the dark. The LX90 caddy works with all 8", 10", and 12" LX90 scopes in the altazimuth mode. It can also be used with an 8" LX90 in the equatorial mode, using an optional LX90 8" wedge. Mounting a Meade LX90 on a tripod can be a little tricky in the dark if you are doing it by yourself, particularly with the 10" and 12" aperture scopes. You have to lift the scope onto the tripod and line up a hole you can’t see in the bottom of the telescope drive base with a second hole you can’t see in the top of the tripod so you can thread a large rod up through the tripod into the drive base to hold the scope in place. You hold the scope steady with one hand to keep it from falling off the tripod, slide the scope around on the tripod to get the holes lined up with your second hand, and use your third hand to thread to rod into the drive base at the same time. Easy . . . if you’re from Mars. The LX90 caddy makes the task of lining up the scope on the tripod in the dark a lot easier for earthlings . . . and safer. The LX90 caddy mounts directly to the top of the Meade standard field tripod using three supplied flat head machine screws that register it precisely in place. It is usually left in place once installed on the tripod. Built into the caddy is a precision bubble level for leveling the tripod prior to mounting the telescope by adjusting the length of the tripod legs. The LX90 caddy has three nylon covered registration guideposts bolted to the top of the plate to simplify mounting your telescope in the normal altazimuth configuration. All you have to do is place your LX90 on the caddy and slide it the rounded side of the drive base back against the guideposts. The posts guide the scope into place to line it up perfectly with the head of the tripod, allowing one-hand tightening of the threaded connecting rod through a hole in the caddy. Lining up the scope on the tripod can be done in less than 5 seconds! The caddy has twelve 1.25" holes and seven 2" holes to hold eyepieces. There are also four cutouts to hold your AutoStar hand control, so that a hand control holder is readily available no matter which side of the tripod you stand at to observe. The three pound caddy is made of heavy duty 2.3mm (0.09") thick aluminum plate with a powder-coated and baked-on black finish that will last for years with no worries about corrosion. The aluminum caddy is non-magnetic so that it will not affect the electronic compass accuracy in an LX90 scope with LNT (Level North Technology).
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