Posts Made By: Roberto Abraham

I recently bought a nice Takahashi MT-130 on Astromart. I have no real need for a 5.1" Newtonian, but curiosity got to me, since I'd never seen a Tak Newtonian in real life before, and figured I'd give it a try. So far I'm really enjoying it. It's fairly heavy but rides well on my EM-11. The mechanical construction is impressive... collimation is amazingly solid. After being shipped to me I assumed collimation would need a tweak, but before doing anything I decided I'd test it first, so got it up to 500x with my artificial star and the on-axis textbook airy pattern was perfect. Evidently collimation held fine while it was in transit. Mounted on the EM-11 it's quite a nice double star scope, with no trouble on fairly challenging stars like zeta Cnc. Planetary views seem impressive, although I've only had a chance to look at Saturn so far. At this point I'd say planetary performance is in between my old FS-78 and FC-100, which is about what I'd expect from the obstruction.

Anyway, since one doesn't see these very often, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of this telescope in case anybody is curious about these Tak Newtonians. It's a shame they're no longer in production.

Bob

Hi Carl,

I'm very sorry, this is Bob Abraham, and I'm the person you've been trying to get hold of! Firstly, I'm very sorry that you've been inconvenienced here --- I'm afraid I did NOT get a bill from FedEx for anything! As far as I'm aware they've never sent a bill, phoned, emailed or anything. The first I found out that any money was due to FedEx was literally 5 mins ago when I found a personal message from you on the astromart message system (which I'm afraid I've never used before and don't routinely check --- I haven't received any email from you), and in fact I just found this thread by clicking on your name to try to find you to sort this out once I got your message. Please send me an email with any particulars you have (i.e. whom do I contact at fedex and whatever the tracking number is) and I'll phone them up RIGHT NOW and pay whatever is owing. If you've lost my email I've just sent you a PM message with it. Anyway, a thousand apologies for any inconvenience --- I'm really horrified!

Again, sincere apologies... this has come as a complete surprise to me, totally out of the blue!

Cheers,

Bob Abraham

Focuser view.

I have a Mewlon 180 and have compared it fairly extensively to 5.5" and 4" apochromats. My personal impression is that the Mewlon 180 is going to offer roughly equivalent performance on Jupiter to your FS-128. This is pretty much what one would expect from the usual rule-of-thumb for such things (equivalent aperture for low contrast features = primary aperture - secondary aperture). On the whole I find the rule of thumb is a pretty good guideline (assuming equivalently good optics).

The Mewlon 180 is my favorite portable planetary scope on account of its small size, mount-friendliness and resistance to dewing up. However, I personally would not consider it a step up from an FS-128 for planetary viewing (more a step sideways).

Bob

Interesting. You can add me to the list of people waiting for some stuff from her purchased in mid-November. I hope she is OK.

Wow, this is spectacular! Well done!

Bob