Re: 102 vs 102 ED

billy moss said:

I have a vintage vixen/celestron black tube C102, made in Japan. It is mint. The optics are excellent, the FL is 9.8. The images are very sharp and clear. Has anyone compared these vintage scopes to the 102 ED models sold by skywatcher, orion, and vixen, with the shorter FL of 8.8. What difference would there be, it seems that the 102 may be sharper than the ED, since it has a longer FL. I have never compared them, would there be any better image quality in the ED.
Billy

No, it's no sharper; the opposite is true. The difference is that the color is less in the ED, and generally images just look a littler better. Not that the C102 doesn't do a nice job. I have one of the later models, a Synta made one, that throws up a near perfect star test, and I really love the scope. An ED, however? No. The ED will display slightly better contrast, and high power images will just be much better.

Let me add that I had the C102 out looking at the Moon, a nice, bright crescent, last night. Yes, there was some color. A thin purple-blue line on the limb, and a slight purplish tinge to shadows at some magnifications. The image was basically spectacular despite the Moon's relatively low altitude this time of year. At 300x, I was seeing plenty of Cool Stuff.