Posts Made By: Philip Canard

I snagged a new old stock LOMO 102MN Mak-Newt for $300. It comes with tube rings (very good ones) on a dovetail base that is in a block that allows sliding the scope back and forth with no chance of falling off. It has a rotateable and removeable focuser and a cap for the focuser hole when it is removed. It has a front corrector cap and a removeable back cap for very quick cooling of the mirror. The finder is mounted concentricaly in the corrector and you rotate it 180 degrees to go from finder to main mirror. You can cradle the scope it your lap and view from any chair or set outside on the ground if you want. I use a Stellarvue M1 mount and tripod to mount the scope. This scope knocked the Nighthawk II off the mount as my favorite grab-n-go astro scope. Optics are guaranteed 1/6 wave minimum and it throws up excellent images. It split the double-double in Lyra at 62X this past summer. The NH II refractor is good, but the LOMO 102MN consistently beats it in the images it throws up. It has a very businesslike look and comes with a good 25mm Plossl EP for wide field scanning. The scope likes Siebert Optics Star Splitters and you get a sharp Airy disc across the entire FOV. Snag one if you find one, as they are a bit of a rarity and like nothing else out there due to the concentric internal finder. Where this scope really shines is as a lunar scope when the moon isn't too far above the horizon. It seems to cut through bad seeing better than my bigger scopes and I don't need a moon filter due to the 4" aperture when running mags over 200X. The scope does 300X no sweat. It's downright weird how small obstructed scopes gain contrast over a refractor at extremely high mags on lunar viewing. Crater shadows are jet black instead of very dark gray, and the shades of gray on the lunar surface exceed any other type of scope except my 6" LOMO Mak-Cass when the moon is higher in the sky and I can use it instead. Whites are really white as well as there is zero false color.

The Meade SN8 on LXD75 mount is about your only option at your price point. The SN8 will basically give you the same photo quality as an Intes MN84 at a fraction of the cost, but you need to add a JMI focuser for around $300.

You COULD buy a generic Chinese Mak on a Synta mount and when the guys with APO refractor scopes on Astro Physics mounts don't show up at your observing site you can pretend that your hotrodded gear must have scared them off just as those who own generic Asian sports cars think that the reason the Ferrari and Porsche guys don't show up at driving competition events is their cars and driving skills was too much for the Ferrari guys to handle. Such people do exist, and they will fill you full of BS on what to buy if you let them.

Then again, you could stay in realityville, buy the SN8/LXD75 outfit and just take lots of nice astrophotos.

According to Neil Young, you need to search for a "heart of gold" before you look for a 2" EP for a Dob. He says he's getting old, so I would say he's probably a grumpy old fart. Still, a lot better advice than you get from most astro geeks around here. You may still opt for the eyepiece anyway. If you buy a 34mm Siebert Observatory, you will have a lighter EP, no problems with blackouts or kidney beaning, a better EP than anybody else sells for the price, and you can get your money back if you don't like it.

I have the LOMO 150mm f/14.2 with the GEM type mount. I bought an Orion Vixen type 8" long dovetail and a machinist friend drilled and tapped it bolt to the scope mount (took about five minutes of his time). Since the LOMO dovetail is oversized relative to the Vixen dovetail, you could also mill it down to the Vixen width. Any decent machinist can fix this problem very quickly, and at a reasonable cost. This is a very minor problem for any competent machinist. My friend is accustomed to doing complex precision work for companies such as Remington Arms, so work such as scope mounts is laughably simple. Also, he can turn out better surface finish than is commonly seen in scope mounts and hardware. It really depends on what you want to pay. He builds parts for antique engines from scratch. You should have no probelm getting your work done as long as you show the machinist what you are mounting the scope to and what you expect. Any city has dozens of machinists who can do this work.

The LOMO dovetail will fit in the Stellarvue M1 mount with no modification if the sliding base is removed from the dovetail. I use my LOMO 102MN in this manner and add the sliding base with Vixen dovetail if I want to mount it on my LXD75 GoTo mount.

Another advantage of this dovetail-on-dovetail arrangement is that it gives you a longer fore and aft adjustment range when mounting very heavy equipment such as large binoviewers, eyepiece turrets, camera gear, etc. Two short dovetails can give you an adjustment range at least twice as long as a single dovetail. The LOMO dovetail and block assembly does not allow the dovetail to accidently slide out of the block, so it is worth keeping. The lack of balance adjustment is why I hate dual-arm fork mounts, besides the clearance issues at the rear. Because you can rotate the diagonal at the rear of the Mak to any position, it is really as comfortable to view from as any fork mount, and more comfortable at zenith. I use a 2" Mercury visual back with dual thumbscrews and brass compression ring. My Stellarvue 2" dielectric diagonal has a tapered groove that prevents the diagonal from backing out when it is rotated into viewing position and gravity is pulling it downward with a heavy binoviewer attached. The Mercury visual back and Stellarvue diagonal have a very snug fit with no wobble. You can get a similar well matched pair from Hands on Optics which was a major LOMO dealer and one of a very few Stellarvue dealers. The Stellarvue 2" diagonal has a very strong 1.25" to 2" adapter that supports a binoviewer quite well.

I prefer a Siebert Star Splitter to a TMB.

For only $10 more, the Baader Hyperion is a better buy than the Orion Stratus, and you have many more customizing options and gadgets to hang on it. I don't know why anybody would buy a Stratus when they could have a Hyperion with superior coatings, never mind the optional features.

Floyd, what a person needs is a heated EP tray that can get the dew off of EP's after they fog up. I may have a machinist friend make some circular holders to attach to my tripod tray, and then wrap them with my Dew-Not heater straps. When an EP fogs up, just change it out.

I have the waist case and use it to hold bino pairs of EP's. When monoviewing, I use my pockets a lot as it keeps the EP's warm and free of dew.

Of course, if you binoview or use one EP constantly, best to put a heater strap on the EP, but I suspect those with trays want to change EP's a lot, and heater straps are a pain when changing EP's a lot and a cold EP taken fronm a cold case takes about 15 minutes to heat up and clear sometimes. TMB's heat very poorly from heater straps and are best kept in a warm place until needed.

It depends on your type of target and the mags you will be running. H.R. Suiter's book has charts that proves that at high mags, approximately 2X the diameter in mm and upward to diffraction limits, a centrally obstructed scope will exceed the contrast of the best refractors. In low mag deep sky viewing, the obstructed scope will suffer by comparison. I have found this to be true in my own experiences with both my high quality LOMO Maks, a 34% obstructed 6" Mak-Cass and a 40% obstructed 4" Mak-Newt. I use the 4" Mak-Newt at 2X+ aperture mags (over 200X) on lunar viewing, and the contrast is incredible, easily better than my 80mm Stellarvue refractor. At low mags in deep sky use, the reverse is true. This is exactly what the charts in H.R. Suiter's book says it should be. At high mags on bright extended objects, a high quality Mak will NOT suffer in comparison to a refractor AFTER IT COOLS DOWN. At 6" or less aperture, the cooling of a Mak is no problem whatsoever and has almost nothing to do with the big hunk of glass in the front corrector.

Mak-Cass scopes usually suffer a bit from SKY FLOODING at very low mags, and this sometimes causes a lot of blame to be shifted to the central obstruction for contrast loss. Jack up the mag, cool your scope, use the right kind of EP, and the contrast will return.

Buy a Baader Neodymium Moon & Skyglow filter for any Mak scope you get. It sucks up much less light than a UHC filter and allows good nebular viewing with a 6" Mak while giving a very noticeable contrast boost. It doubles as an excellent lunar/planetary filter and can be left in almost all the time for astro use. I use mine as a dust blocking filter at the front of my Mak diagonal or on the nosepiece of my Baader click-lock EP holder on my 8" Schmidt-Newtonian. It performs like a 12" Newtonian with a UHC filter for brightness.

Maks with 1/8 wave or better optics should NOT be confused with SCT's with 1/4 wave optics. CO aside, the SCT's just aren't going to cut the mustard no matter what you do, especially at HIGH MAGS where the Maks get a contrast boost relative to refractors. My Maks will easily exceed mags of 3X aperture before becoming diffraction limited. Try that with your average SCT. My Maks have never needed recollimation. The F/2 mirrors of SCT's need frequent collimation. Obstructed scopes need to be run pretty well flat out as far as mags go in order to achieve their theoretical contrast boost over a refractor, and that rules them out as the best high contrast widefield scope. Any quality achromat, even cheap ones, can make a better richfield scope. A high quality Mak of the right aperture will make a lunar scope like you never saw before. Large SCT's cannot run the high mags needed to get better contrast because they first become seeing limited before getting into the mag range where contrast gain takes over relative to a refractor. So....no matter how good their optics, and they are usually quite poor, they lose contrast relative to a big refractor.

So centrally obstructed scopes are 1) Better, 2) Worse, or 3) About equal, depending on how you use the scope and the type and quality of the scope. For visual use, I would stick with an MCT or MNT over an R-C or classic Cassegrain. The scopes you are interested in are too big to run high enough mags to get into a range where they give a contrast boost relative to a refractor. Since you are mostly deep sky oriented, the biggest Mak-Newt you could afford should do you more good than an R-C or classic Cassegrain. That's because the very low central obstruction is not objectionable at low mags and will cause very little contrast loss. Dust on optics also causes contrast loss, for another vote for the sealed tube scope. I think Mark Rieck is now selling the type of scopes you should be considering if you want an obstructed scope for deep sky that is an upgrade over your SCT. It will probably be a Russian scope or a TEC with Russian glass that would do you the most good. Certainly it will cost no more than a Tak Cassegrain.

You can still buy EP's similar to the old Japanese Axioms and Ultimas by buying from University Optics and Baader Planetarium.

For shorter focal lengths, I would suggest the Siebert Star Splitters as they have better eye relief and more AFOV than the Ultimas and work much better at fast focal ratios. The 2.9mm to 7.9mm SS works great down to F/4. You have to wait a few weeks for Harry to build them. They heat much easier than Burgess TMB's and weigh half as much. They are the best EP's I have for binoviewing at high mags. At high mags, sharp Airy discs are maintained in my f/5.5 scope to the very field stop.

People harp a bit about the rather crude finish on Sieberts, but they are the only line of EP's where I have never had a loose rattling lens element. Given that my EP's are often covered with heating straps, the finish issue isn't an issue with me. You can get the Sieberts anodized black if you pay extra.

I'm avoiding any cheap Chinese EP's from now on. Something like a Baader Hyperion would probably be OK, and they aren't exactly dirt cheap. Baader runs fairly tight QC on everything I have bought from them. I have only had one Baader filter sold by Celestron that had a coating issue, and Celestron promptly replaced it under warranty.

There needs to be a bigger market of midline priced EP's. Televue and Pentax are a bit too high priced for most people, and the cheap Chinese EP's have too many QC issues, although exterior surface finish may seem nice. Harry Siebert and Baader Planetarium seem to be addressing that midline priced market with rather good EP's.

An old trick used by devious old cranks like myself to shut down HAM and CB operators that transmitted far beyond their legal power limits and interferred with TV and radio reception was to insert a straight pin with a pair of pliers into their coax transmission cable, shorting the hot central wire to the ground shield, and then nipping off the pin ends that stick out with flush cutting dykes. The small pin ends are VERY hard to spot visually, and you need an ohmmeter to verify that the not wire is shorted to ground. After several blown fuses and/or output stages in their radios, they finally get the message.

While power is off to street lights, if there are any external wires to the street light, similar shorting pins can be inserted into the wiring across hot and ground conductors, and then nipped off flush with the insulation. After several blown fuses and/or tripped breakers, and replacement of shorted wiring which far exceeds light buld replacement costs, the message may be gotten through. However, I'm not suggesting that you do this, only that the method actually works from a technical standpoint.

Metal foil placed in a crew type light socket, thus shorting out the socket, is also a possibility, but it is easily removed after taking out a light bulb and the light is back to working in no time. Shorts in wiring are MUCH harder to trace down without sophisticated tracing equipment, and you don't have to climb light poles to get to the wiring in some cases. Most metal light poles have internal wiring, so you may have to do a bit of digging at the base of the pole to get at the wiring, and it may then be in a metal conduit. Direct burial cable is subject to physical damage as it needs no sealed conduit in order to operate.

I don't understand the deal with street lights in a small rural community such as the one I live in. My Labrador/German Shepherd/Rottweiller doggie is a much better deterrent against criminals than a street light ever can be. I have a headlamp for seeing in the dark when I need to go outside, and it works much better than a street light for finding my way around and doing tasks outside. The dog is a much better companion around the telescope site, and he guards against wild animals or thugs much better than a light bulb ever could.

It's a short ride outside of town to a dark site, so no need to get radical with street light vandalism around here. Large cities are cloaked in a light dome, so taking out the closest street lights will do you little good for deep sky observation. The Baader Neodymium MSG filter may be your best bet. It works for me to an appreciable degree.