Telescopes and OTA's

The Telescopes... OTA's!

This is list of my current scopes. It's not a review and is still under construction, but there's a few comments and recommendations and it may assist you in your purchasing decisions.

My first Scope

My first telescope. A little 3 inch Newtonian reflector brought for me by my Father Alexandr in 1986 and for sentimental reasons I'll never part with it.

As a youngster it provided me a lot of joy and added another dimension to my observation sessions. It had enough light gathering power that I could make out the moons of Jupiter and would enhance dim objects. I remember seeing Halley's Comet and Supernovae SN1987a through it. What it lacked in size it made up for in portability; and great memories.

The Orion ED80

I brought this second hand off a guy in Canberra Australia. It was listed on www.iceinscape.com.au for $350AUD and cost $35 to send to via airmail. It's a fantastic little scope producing a rich field of view with good colour correction.

To say the Orion ED80 is a fine specimen of a refractor is a real understatement and if you weigh up its price tag, the F7.5 focal length, its optical quality and its weight - just 2.58kg, Its a top performer. A truly awesome rich field imaging scope that is highly portable. If you ever get the option to purchase one second-hand, do it. But pay no more than $500-600NZD including the hard case.

Sky-Watcher 8 inch dobsonian

Another second-hand purchase off a local website.

Optically this scope is pretty darn good and having other astronomy club members look through it and say "wow" is a good indicator. As scopes go, the 8 inch dob is portable, easy to use and ideal for beginners and experienced astronomers alike. Using good quality eyepieces such as Celestron Ultima's 1.25 inch or the new Celestron Ultima LX eyepieces will reveal rich detail on all objects. A real joy to use and a great way to discover the night sky.

The Celestron Carbon Fibre C11

One of the last Carbon Fibre C11 OTA's to be built and I will never sell this OTA... Why Celestron stopped making these in carbon I don't know. (ok it was cost vs. profit margins) However if you are looking for a good size aperture without going over OTT, then the C11 is a fantastic option.

Optically, this C11 is almost perfect and using the Hartman CCD test it scored 0.1. Anything better than 0.2 is considered high quality. However since upgrading it to a hyperstar system this test result has dropped a little to 0.17 and I'm guessing I've mis-aligned the secondary mirror holder or corrector. That is concentrically the centre's of each element is a little out.

Orion ST80

Riding shotgun on the C11, this little scope is used for guiding and as cheap scopes go, it does the job.

Now I know people are going to say I should be guiding through the C11 using an Off-Axis guider guide chip. Yes, I do that too, but there are times when I prefer to use a separate guide scope and for $200 this works really well.