In my seemingly never-ending quest to order anything and everything for the new scope (don’t want to be caught off guard), I ordered the following:

• DSLR Focus — fairly standard software for focusing your digital SLR (DSLR); in my case, I’ll be using the Canon Digital Rebel (300D) — you can get the software from dslrfocus.com
• DSUSB connection for my camera — while I can connect my Canon Digital Rebel to my PC with the USB cable that comes with the camera, you are limited to 30 seconds or less exposure (and you need more than that for deep sky objects); this USB connection allows you to connect a USB port to the camera’s remote trigger and thus allow for “bulb” exposures (as long as you want) in the camera’s manual mode.  This connection can be gotten from shoestringastronomy.com which also has some other neat products and an astrophotography gallery.
• Also ordered the Meade Cable #507 (you can get this from a host of sellers) for connecting the PC to the telescope and be able to drive the telescope from the PC using the planetarium software; I should also be able to adjust the microfocuser through DSLR Focus and therefore automate the focusing of pictures.

I’ve also looked at ImagesPlus (mlunsold.com) and MaxDSLR (cyanogen.com/products/maxdslr_main.htm) for processing images and might go down that path eventually but I’m still quite the amateur so I’m holding off for now.

Against what might have been a bit more convenient, I ordered some eyepieces from Harry Siebert (siebertoptics.com) instead of eyepieces from Meade or Televue for example.  Televue eyepieces especially look like very high quality items but the price is high quality too (you can easily spend $300 or more on one eyepiece).  Harry’s eyepieces are perhaps not as ‘pretty’ on the outside but the optics are known to be pretty good in general given their more reasonable price.  I spoke to Harry personally a few times and each time, he was very helpful and very willing to listen to the features I was looking for.  He clearly cares about customer satisfaction!  I ordered a 36mm for wide-views, a 2x barlow, and a 15mm for close-ups, all 2 inches.  I noticed a lot of posts on cloudynights.com regarding Siebert eyepieces and most people had a positive impressions of these eyepieces.  I plan to post my impressions once I get these eyepieces.

This past Saturday, I ordered the Meade LX200 10″.  I ordered the telescope from skiesunlimited.net and mostly dealt with Gary, one of the two partners there.  It’s a decent sized shop in Glenmoore, PA and is probably the closest specialy store for telescopes within 2 hours of my house in New Jersey.  Gary was helpful in narrowing down my choices based on what I want to do with this scope.  In general, I decided for a reflector with the GoTo capability since I mostly want to do observing and make it user-friendly for kids, etc. to look through the scope.  The Meade should also allow me to do novice-imaging as I go along.

The LX200 comes with GPS so the scope knows where it is located.  I was comparing it to the LX90 model which also now comes with GPS.  However, when you compare the features, the LX90 is primarily missing the microfocuser (helps you focus finely).  If you add that to the LX90 as an option, the price difference between the two works out to a few hundred bucks — so since the LX200 has a more stable mount (as I understand from some forums) and has better gearing for sky-tracking per the spec-sheet, I opted for the LX200.  Should be here in about a week…