Quote:
Originally Posted by sil
What people dont realise is its the eyepiece that does the hard work and provide the image quality not the OTA.
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That's not quite true. Take the best eyepiece that money can currently buy, put it in a telescope with poor optics, or a telescope that is not thermally stabilised, or collimated and you will still get a poor quality view.
The best eyepiece that money can currently buy happens to be the 17mm Nikon NAV HW, closely followed by the 12.5mm Nikon NAV HW and that is closely followed by the 12.5mm Docter Optics.
The overall quality of any optical system (which includes the telescope OTA, eyepiece, barlow, coma corrector, focal reducer or whatever else you might have in there) is determined by the optical quality of the weakest link. If something in the system, doesn't really matter which part, is inferior than the view will be inferior.
ie:
$10,000 telescope + $50 eyepiece = $50 view
$200 telescope + $1,200 eyepiece = $50 view
$10,000 telescope + $1,200 eyepiece = Million dollar view.
The above having been said, you can't always determine quality based on price. The mass produced Chinese / Taiwanese dobs are relatively inexpensive compared to custom made telescopes but the optical quality on them is generally pretty good and some are actually exceptional.
Similarly, the Japanese made orthoscopics (about $100) are relatively inexpensive compared to premium widefields, but within their narrow field of view and the short eye relief, the on axis view quality is the equal of anything going around excepting the likes of Zeiss orthos and Pentax XO etc.
Cheers
John B