The Meade Standard Equatorial Wedge is designed to allow for polar alignment of Meade 8" ACF and SC alt-azimuth telescopes, such as the LX200, LX50 or 2080, that sit atop the Standard Field Tripod and can be used with Meade LX90 telescopes with the addition of the LX90 Wedge Adapter (07389).
Equatorial alignment is required for astrophotography and imaging exposures longer than about 5 minutes. The Meade 8" Wedge is mounted between a Meade 8" alt-azimuth telescope and the standard field tripod in order to mimic an equatorially mounted telescope that is required to align the scope's axis of rotation to the Earth's axis of rotation. The resulting polar alignment eliminates field rotation, an effect which causes stars in long exposure photographs to appear as a long arc, trail or streak instead of points of light.
The Meade Standard Equatorial Wedge features heavy-duty cast aluminum construction, latitude and longitude fine adjustments, and a compass.