Posted by Nick James at 21:31 on 2011 Jul 12
Eric,Despite Richard’s advice I wouldn’t spoil a good Celestron by putting it on a fork. Meridian flips are not a big deal with modern GEMs such as the ME and, in my humble opinion, the advantages of a GEM for imaging in terms of balance, flexibility and sky access far outweigh the minor inconvenience of a meridian flip. There is certainly no reason why flat fields should be different one side of the meridian than the other since the instrumental flat doesn’t change and any sky gradient over a narrow field wouldn’t be handled by a library flat anyway.I’m biased since I have a C11 on a CGE but I would go for the Edge-HD Celestron and the ME. Celestron have a reputation for better optics than Meade and the ME will outperform any other mount you might reasonably buy.Nick.