SUNSET: 
26The parent company of Orion and Meade telescope manufacturers has shut its California offices. Stay tuned for updates.
Update (December 1, 2024): The assets of Meade, Coronado, and Orion Telescopes & Binoculars are listed for auction with a due diligence period of November 26 through December 13.
Update (December 27, 2024): The auction is scheduled to occur Thursday, January 9, 2025. More details can be found here.
The original story appears below.
In July, we reported that Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California. Sources have told Sky & Telescope that all of the staff were let go at the end of the business day on Tuesday, July 9th, although it's unclear whether the company will pursue bankruptcy protection.
Until Tuesday, Meade operated a manufacturing plant in Tijuana, Mexico, where most of its telescopes and electronics are produced. For much of its five decades in business, Meade Instruments was one of the world's largest designers and manufacturers of telescopes and accessories for amateur astronomers, particularly with its line of Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes and variations on that design. The company had worked closely with independently owned and operated retailers that serve both casual and advanced amateur astronomers.
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars made a name for itself in the late 1990s as a source of quality gear for the budget-minded amateur astronomer. Some of its popular scopes include the ShortTube 80 and the StarBlast 4.5 Astro Reflector Telescope.
Shortly after Optronic Technologies won a 2019 antitrust lawsuit against Sunny Electronics, Meade's parent company at the time, Meade Instruments filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company was subsequently purchased by Optronic Technologies in 2021. But Optronic encountered supply-chain challenges following the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of July 12th, both Meade's and Orion's websites are still active and accepting orders. Sky & Telescope editors have reached out to senior staff members to comment; neither Meade nor Orion has issued an official announcement. We will update this story as new information become available.
On July 31, Orion's website has gone offline.
As of October 8, Meade's website is still operational, but pushes customers to their dealer's websites. The phone line for Meade gives a permanent busy signal.
About Sean Walker
S&T Senior Editor Sean Walker joined the staff of Sky Publishing in 2000 and specializes in astrophotography, solar system observing, and astronomy gear.
Comments
HdnMtnObservatory
July 12, 2024 at 4:05 pm
This is so sad. We purchased an entire telescope system, LX850 14" SCT ACF for our observatory in 2022 along with many accessories. I hope that the Meade Brand will find some way to live on as I have been a lifelong fan of Meade Instruments.
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chip-louie
July 13, 2024 at 12:29 pm
I think this news is sad. That said having nearly 50 years of experience with Meade customer service it is certainly not unexpected other than it has taken so long.
Meade has a funny way of going bankrupt, shedding it's liabilities and support obligations only to reorganize and do it all over again. This may be the end of what started as a fine vision with Meade and ironic that they ended up sinking with the other best example of poor support Orion.
If this is the end it is fitting they go out together
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Dbyte64
July 14, 2024 at 6:32 pm
I've been with Meade, and, Orion (or, they, with me), since 1980. I traded my Criterion RV-6 in, for a Meade #826 8-inch Newtonian, in 1982. That same year, I bought a nice, little, DC drive-corrector, for the 8-inch, which, I attached to my truck battery while out in the field.
I never thought I'd see a date when optical telescopes would become obsolete. In fact, I never did get to use, any, of Orion's go-to Dobonians; I had my heart set on a 12-in xxg!
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Tim
July 12, 2024 at 5:01 pm
NO-oooo!
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Shekky
July 13, 2024 at 3:33 am
This is very sad news my Orion 6" Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope is my favorite telescope to quickly setup for a viewing session.
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Andrew James
July 13, 2024 at 5:49 am
I always like Celestron since the late 70s. Copycat businesses have never been good.
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AstroApe
July 13, 2024 at 12:34 pm
Unfortunately this isn't completely out of the blue, considering all that's transpired between the big players over the last few years with lawsuits/countersuits, bankruptcy, and acquisitions.
I also believe public perception of decreasing quality and low customer support over the last few decades really hurt both companies bottom line. That's especially true now with so many vendors offering excellent quality house branded Chinese optics with full warranty/support for less money.
Still, it's a sad time for us amateurs. Meade and Orion were once giants of our hobby....
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Lawrence-Faltz
July 13, 2024 at 1:37 pm
I think this is more evidence of a fundamental change in amateur astronomy.
It’s similar to what happened to the piano business in the 1930s. With the advent of radio and phonographs people shifted from actively making music themselves to passively listening to music. Television applied the coup de grace. At the end of the 19th century there were literally a hundred piano manufacturing companies in the US. By the mid-1930s there were a couple of dozen. Now there are three (Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Charles Walters).
With astronomy, the hobby has been impacted by light pollution and the Internet. The latter’s ability to instantly deliver wonderful images, whether from observatories on Earth or from space, makes staring into an eyepiece looking at faint fuzzies a pointless activity for many people with typically restless modern sensibilities. Couple that with the inability to see anything other than a few bright objects (not counting solar system objects) unless you use a camera, and now the availability of $500 no-effort automatic telescopes that effortlessly put images on (ubiquitous) cell phones. Where were the large Dobs that used to attract attention at NEAF? They’re all gone. All the activity this year's show was at the ZWO booth, with people looking at the SeeStar. Then you can add in things like drop-shipping and the efficiency of international commerce (when it works: 2 years ago I ordered an ASIAir Plus from ZWO. It went FedEx from Shanghai to Narita (Japan) to Anchorage (Alaska) to Memphis to JFK to my house in Westchester in 43 hours.) Supply chain issues are real, but the suppliers can also be the vendors.
I was in the local pizza joint last week. I was wearing a shirt with my club's logo on it. A guy came up to me and said, “You’re an astronomer?” I said “An amateur.” He asked “How do you guys see anything with all the light pollution?” [implying, perhaps, that we were wasting our time]. So I talked to him about how people are using cameras for EAA and imaging and about the SeeStar and similar “smart” telescopes. I mentioned our club's "dark sky" star party site (40 miles northeast of Times Square, now SQM 20.0 on a good night) where we still do some visual observing, now among the SeeStars and Vaonis Vesperas.
But put simply, amateur astronomy is changing because the world is changing. "Things change, and happy those who change with them." (Sir William Osler, MD)
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cataylor
July 14, 2024 at 12:56 pm
There is still nothing like looking at something live in real-time that occurred millions of years ago. I hope we all don't become arm-chair amateur astronomers.
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Alain Maury
July 14, 2024 at 11:22 pm
You are right, but be positive. The world will keep changing. When all the gas, the coal, the oil will have been burnt (that should occur in the coming century) there will be less atmospheric pollution, and maybe also less light pollution because of intelligent lightning, turning on only when there are people around. Maybe future generations will discover the milky way again. I do astronomical tours as a living, in a pretty good place, and I have very often old people looking at the sky for the first time and saying "wow, so tha'ts the Milky Way, I had never seen it". The guy is 75 years old, and never in his life had the opportunity to see the milky way... People can look at photos of Saturn taken with telescopes like hubble, but when they see Saturn in reality in a telescope, it's another thing, it does really exist and you see it with your own eyes and it's wonderful. So there is still hope.
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emagowan
September 27, 2024 at 6:55 pm
Things have indeed changed in this hobby I've been in for 50+ years. I love the piano business comparison, very apropos.
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Rick-Scofield
July 13, 2024 at 7:50 pm
I hope MEADE can find a way to survive.
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Rick-Scofield
August 12, 2024 at 6:33 pm
The Orion Website is finally down however the Meade website is still up. I don’t think it really means anything positive.
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Exoplanets
July 14, 2024 at 12:13 pm
Rumor has it that they are closed for good. They let everybody go with no notice and did not pay anyone for their last two weeks of work, vacation accrued, etc. New owner just couldn’t get it together from day one coupled with bad business decisions—shutting down was inevitable and has been a ling time coming.
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astro-kwang
July 17, 2024 at 4:50 pm
My first scope was a 8 inch Meade SCT in 1983. I purchased it through Orion back in the days when they used to have multi-page advertisements in Astronomy or Sky&Telescope. I remember calling up support a couple times when I had issues with the fork mount or the secondary mirror. I always considered them a decent company but over the last ten years, it feels like they fell behind the times in terms of product offerings. To be blunt, I think Agena Astro has become the model of a successful astronomy vendor in the 21st century. But Orion just seemed to be plugging away thinking it was still the 1990s. I also agree with the other comments that the Meade acquisition might have hindered them in terms of pivoting toward newer product lines and any sort of possible innovation.
I tried calling them and received no answer on their sales or customer support phone lines. IF they did abruptly close shop, I feel like it's unprofessional of them to not post at least a short notice of what's going on. And also, it appears the website will allow you to place orders which may never get fulfilled. This will obviously be a headache for the dozens of customers who haven't seen this news. I mean there's not even a peep on Facebook which I would think would be an easy way for an "employee owner" to let customers know what's going on.
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quadibloc
July 18, 2024 at 8:36 am
I am sad that we've lost Orion. But surely we lost Meade back when it became possible for Orion to purchase their name? Or was Meade still making high-quality astronomical instruments?
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sabre414
July 18, 2024 at 9:21 am
I live in the UK and sent Meade Instruments my Solarmax 60 double-stack telescope for servicing mid may. Meade support informed me that service-repair times were about 6-8 weeks. Over two months have now passed and the last I heard was that the servicing had been completed. I've reached out to Meade with several emails and all I get is an automated reply that a team member will reply ASAP. Nothing received, nobody contacting me. I called and had an automated response to leave a message (which I did), no call back, no response.
This is a shocking situation for such a company to find itself in, even more shocking and frankly worrying for me, as I trusted a very expensive telescope with them to care for it and return it. I'm 6,000+ miles from them and feel so helpless with nowhere to turn!
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Sean WalkerPost Author
July 18, 2024 at 10:03 am
Situations like this is why we decided to publish this story.
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sabre414
July 19, 2024 at 5:51 am
Thanks for publishing the story Sean and for any future updates to keep the Astro community advised. If it is the case that Meade have gone under, what sort of legal standing do I have to get my Coronado Solarmax returned to me in the UK?
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[email protected]
October 12, 2024 at 7:42 pm
I am not a bankruptcy lawyer and for meaningful advice you'll need to consult one. However, when you sent Meade your telescope, you created a bailment and I believe the general rule is that bailed good's must as a legal matter be returned to their rightful owner. Here is one, potentially relevant, case you may wish to read: https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1616&context=tlr. However, small changes in fact can greatly affect legal rights. The case shared dealt with grain provided to a company for storage. As such that was a pretty straightforward bailment situation. In your case, Meade presumably performed work on the scope -- possibly replacement parts were installed. If so, Meade owned the replacement parts, which may be part of the bankrupt estate, and the work and commingling of your property and Meade's parts may take it out of the realm of a bailment. If that is how the courts see it, you could only be owed pennies on the dollar of the value of your scope. Furthermore, as a practical matter, the cost of pursuing your legal rights with the aid of a competent could well exceed the value of your scope. If you haven't done so already, you could research who the trustee in bankruptcy is that is handling Meade's affairs and right a demand letter seeking the return of your property and notifying them of their duty to safeguard your property pending return.. Meade's records could be a mess, so it could be important to include your scope's serial number. I fear that your rights are more notional than practicable in this case, but good luck.
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AstroApe
August 10, 2024 at 5:44 pm
Dude, that stinks!
Telescope Boss (telescopeboss8147 on YouTube) had just sent his XX16G to Orion for some service work about a week before they went dark. He hasn't been able to reach anyone via phone or email, and hasn't got any info on his scope since. Unfortunately it's looking as if his 16" go-to Dobsonian may be gone for good....
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Nebulous
February 14, 2025 at 2:38 pm
I don’t know what gets into the management/owners of companies like Meade/Coronado. You’ve invested in this expensive instrument, the Sun is finally in an active part of its cycle, and you’re stuck without your solar telescope, with some doubt as to whether you’ll ever see it again. I’m so sorry.
This reminds me of what happened to my wife and me once: we belonged to a health and fitness club that went under, but the owners continued to allow club management to sell new memberships right up to the morning when managers and owners arrived at the club to find the doors locked and chained with a sign that read “Permanently Closed.” Even the managers had received no hint that anything was wrong. They were out of work, we had paid dues and would never see that money again. Yes, it’s tough for the owners too, but it wouldn’t have killed them to supply just a little information other than “Out of Business.”
Personally, I feel a sort of fellowship with the vendors I deal with in the pursuit of my astronomy hobby. They care about me and I care about them. That’s one reason why it stings to best out in the cold like you’ve been.
I hope you’re able to at least get your telescope back; I’ve got one like yours and it’s enjoyable just to check in with old Sol now and then.
Courage, my friend. To quote our former President and Scoundrel-in-Chief, Bill Clinton: I feel your pain.
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RB
July 25, 2024 at 1:42 pm
It’s unfortunate. Orion does not take phone calls this week, so their operations have been suspended. I noticed they were responsive and knowledgeable with me even when not purchasing something from them. Their website was a useful one, the prices within the norms of other distributors, but Orion seemed to be less about SCT and MAC telescopes with the Orion name on it. One of the problems they had was getting items for customers in a timely way. You wonder if their suppliers undermined them or the forgot how to manage and keep track of inventory. I hope they reemerge somehow.
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Tak03
August 1, 2024 at 5:32 pm
I had placed an order in early June for one of Orion's 80mm f/5 achromats, the renowned ST80. I had purchased other from them over the years. The current order is back-ordered until mid-October. I am in the process of getting a refund, from PayPal.
If Optronic Technologies somehow makes a comeback, then I may re-order said telescope, if offered then.
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Kenneth Simmons
September 1, 2024 at 7:52 am
Tako3, I have a Orion ShortTube 80 #9948 that I do not need. Also have a case made for it. South Carolina, US
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Rick-Scofield
February 3, 2025 at 2:47 pm
After the January 10 short sale purchase of everything including the intellectual rights, there has been allot of speculation with folks wondering who purchased it all and what they might do with the intellectual rights ?
So far the firms managing the sale have been tight lipped about the buyer’s identity.
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