When I had the opportunity to operate the Meade LX200 14” at the Custer Observatory, it was just like using one of the ETX scopes. I have owned the ETX 60, ETX 80 AT, ETX 80 Observer and the ETX 125 EC with the optional Autostar 497 controller. So if you have experience with one, you can operate them all with very little adjustment. The good thing about the Autostar and Audiostar systems is that they all operate in a very similar fashion. The Autostar II handset included with the Meade LX200 series has over 140,000 objects in its database. The Audiostar handsets have over 30,000 celestial objects included in their database. Meade recently released the Audiostar system with an updated handset with a built-in speaker to play audio tracks that tell about the planets, deep space objects and stars that are being observed. The Autostar II comes with the Meade LX200 series and there are other variations of the handset for full computer control. The Autostar 495 came with the Meade DS series and the 497, previously mentioned, was for the ETX line. Popular versions of the handset include the Autostar 494 which was standard with the Meade ETX 80 Backpack Observer. Over the years, Meade has incorporated AutoStar into a variety of hand controls that have been packaged with specific Meade telescope lines. Once the telescope is put through a basic alignment sequence, so it knows where it is on planet Earth, it can find anything in the sky that is contained in its database. This is a term still used today to refer to motor-driven computer-operated telescopes. These robotic telescope systems, offered by Meade, Celestron, and others, came to be known generally as “GoTo” systems reflecting the GoTo button on the handset.
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