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Old 09-05-2020, 10:42 AM
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The_bluester (Paul)
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
It is very easy to get in to paralysis mode. I bought my Evostar 72 and reducer as a toe in the water and quickly realised I enjoyed the image scale and was going to want something better, but it took the best part of a year to settle on the Stellarvue I eventually bought (Thankfully before the exchange rate really tanked during the earlier days of the COVID 19 event)

It is a bit hard to advise anyone else as everyones wants, needs, budget and pet peeves are different. But I would say from my own experience that if you consider any moderately priced doublets, really cruise Astrobin for images produced with them and a similar or the same camera that you plan to use and look for issues like blue bloat etc.

To make an example of my Evostar 72, they were originally marketed as an Apo scope, but they really are not, for the price I could forgive it (And was not expecting miracles) but being a bit of a technical wonk and perfectionist I outgrew it and while I got some pretty decent results out of it, the less than tightly focused blue did not appeal to me. Currently it is acting as a guidescope while I wait for a new and better OAG to arrive than the old Thin OAG I had before now. I will probably look to sell it and it's reducer as an intro package once my new OAG arrives and I can retire it from that duty.

I guess the TL;DR version of that is be careful about setting a tight budget on the glass. You already have a mount that should carry an imaging scope pretty well, but I think the decision on scope has to be between toe in the water (Evostar 72 in my case), a fairly solid but moderately priced scope and a maybe lifetime scope (My Stellarvue SVX80, which cost four times as much as my Evostar while only having 8mm more aperture) I did have the advantage when I realised I wanted more of being able to borrow the little brother to the SVX80 off a friend, which in some ways was a bit of a mistake, as soon as I started shooting with it I knew I wanted one like it.

I looked long and hard at a RASA 8 as well and very nearly pulled the trigger but I could not find many images from one that would have convinced me at the time. H0ughy's images in this thread would have made the decision harder again! They are even taken with my current camera. Many images you see from a RASA 8 seem to exhibit loads of reflection issues. The huge advantage of the RASA if you can tame the reflections is F2! On a good night you could shoot enough subs to produce a pretty handy image of any less than insanely dim target!
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