Posts Made By: Scott Mortimer

Johann - I was an original owner of this scope and had it for nearly 20 years. I thought it was an excellent scope. I initially planned to keep it until death, but I eventually decided to upgrade to one of AP's ED triplets.

I enjoyed some fantastic views through the scope. When I first got it, it was very unusual to see a 6 inch apo refractor at star parties or clubs, most people, including myself, were blown away by the views. The first time I saw Jupiter in excellent seeing was amazing. It looked like one of those 70's liquid sculpture toys, where you turn the plastic box around & the different colored oils flow around each other. You could definitely get a feeling that Jupiter was liquid, seeing all the different bands & globules flowing around each other, inside the GRS, etc.

There was slight false color on Jupiter, probably on 1st magnitude stars too, but it was never something I noticed or thought about. I used it mostly for deep sky. Usually I would see detail that was listed in observing guides as being visible only in 8-10 inch telescopes and above.

In the newer scope, the one improvement that stands out visually is planetary colors seem to be rendered a little more accurately and clearly. You'd notice it if the scopes were side-by-side, but overall I don't think it affects image quality that much. The non-ED scope is 10 times sharper than a 10 inch SCT, the newer one is 11 times sharper.

I think many of the improvements in these scopes over the years are directed at imaging users. The current AP focussers are works of mechanical art and extremely solid, but the focusser on my old scope worked smoothly for visual use, and the tube was very lightweight also. I remember looking at Hale-Bopp and seeing some astounding high-contrast views of the spinning nucleus.

So what do you think of the scope???

-Scott

PS, Joe Bergeron has some detailed writings about this scope on his website that you'll enjoy reading.

sounds great, if the clouds ever part again this spring I will definitely check it out.

I really like these eyepieces also. Many people keep saying Tele Vue should make some high quality planetary orthos - I think they don't because these BGO's and UO HD's are already doing that job very well and for a good price.

that is really funny, Bandit is a lucky dog to have such a great home. I love hounds, VERY high energy, I bet he could run for hours. I love the hound barking too, they won't hesitate to tell you what's on their mind.

I put a couple step-stools under the windows my dog likes, she learned to stand on them to look out instead of clawing the windowsills. The water-hole is challenging - maybe use some mesh fence that has 2-3 inch wide gaps???

So you found a 10.5mm Pentax XL? sounds like a great deal.

Nice! What breed of dog is he?

This is what my two german shepherds want to do! In fact they try to herd just about everything.

Looks awesome! No need to modify, thanks Canon!

Rolando Chavez said:

Can a seller use someone else's pictures without their permission to sell their telescope? If it isn't a violation of the TOS, it should be. Specially if the pics are 5 month old, the scope shipped to Germany and being sold for $1000.00 more. It would be common decency to at least ask permission to use the pictures... Mr. Ludes ad 771682.

I have done this a few times but I always ask first

looks like he updated it with the actual comparion results.

at least he actually had the eyepieces on hand, many threads are posted and generate pages of discussion when someone orders something and doesn't even have it yet!

Mark - sounds great, those are a couple nice globulars. M71 is unusual, when I was a kid it was classified as a dense OC, at some point they officially decided it's a diffuse globular. Observing a bunch of GC's in a row is fun because you see the different characteristics of each one.

This time of the year there aren't many GC's to view, but the OC's in the winter Milky Way are numerous and bright.

-Scott