Posts Made By: Jeff Quinn

Ack! Don't buy those! Get an 8" f/6 reflector from Astromart's classifieds. If that is too big or expensive I would recommend a 6" f/8 ("dobsonian"). They are uglier than the scopes you mentioned but their images are MUCH better. They are real telescopes with real aperture (especially the 8").

You see a spike when an optic is cooling and it has rising warm air inside the telescope tube. My 12" SCT shows this when I first set it up. A broken airy ring in only one place might be a mild form of this phenominon.

I am sure it would. I have never seen a Meade Mak 7 but have seen two C9.25s and they were very good on the planets. The Mak's central obstruction is greater, cooldown is longer, and aperture is less than the C9.25. No design is superior to any other (ie. SCT vs. Mak) in practical terms for viewing the planets, other than central obstruction considerations. It all comes down to optical quality (execution of design), internal baffling, aperture, central obstruction, and cooldown properties. The 9.25 ties the Mak on the first two criteria and beats it on the last three.

I sampled a Chromacorr equipped Synta 120mm refractor and they were a good combination for color correction, like a good semi-apo (Meade ED or Vixen 102ED class color correction). Fine detail left much to be desired and was completely inferior to my 152ED. A G11 is a good mount for a light 6" refractor. Ed Ting even thinks a GM-8 is suitable.

Get a C11, Meade 12", or Celestron / Meade 14". My 152ED is spectacular on planets. But so is my 12" Meade SCT. The 12" can outdo the 152ED in good seeing by a decent margin on high contrast fine details. Low level is about the same due to the 33% central obstruction. Saturn especially shows up much clearer at 500x or higher in the SCT. I had venus at 600+ one night and saw some surface detail in the 12" SCT.


You can mount the light cup with the SCT and have both handy when observing.

It goes without saying that the 12" is totally superior to the 152ED when it comes to any kind of cluster, galaxy, or dim nebula. They both are examples of some of Meade's best optical work.

I had the ultima 2x and switched to the Tele Vue. I have not noticed a difference, though the coatings on the Tele Vue are superior to the Ultima and it has a cemented doublet (two elements, two air to glass surfaces) verses three singlets (three lenses and six air to glass surfaces). Both barlows were great, but I think I like the Tele Vue better for some reason. Something cleaner about barlowing with it, like there is no barlow being used while the ultima would dim things a little. Another one I enjoyed was the Klee 2.8x (university optics) barlow.

I wouldn't worry about older tele vue coatings. I have one of their old binoviewers and a set of old plossls from them and the coatings are better than Ultima "red" in that their reflections are darker and duller. And of course, optical performance of anything Tele Vue (other than the 8-24 zoom) is outstanding.

10" synta dob

That sucks man, now that you are a vendor you have to pay the price of propriety!!!

I think it would do fine, unless you are planning to do photography.

I had a 20mm UO super erfle and loved it. It was used in f/4.5 and f/10. It will do very very well in a 6" f/8 reflector or refractor.