This scope has seen better days. It was kept full-time in an observatory and used for imaging. At some point I noticed my dew heater wasn't working and when I went to inspect the objective to see if any condensation had formed, I saw this fungus/mould you can see in the picture. My best guess is that a lack of insulation in the observatory was causing condensation to form on the objective, but who knows...
There's an obvious spot of mould/fungus towards the center of the objective and some slight "hairy stuff" towards the edge of the objective in a couple of places. I took a photo of the objective with a torch on it so it looks worse than it is, but either way it's clearly not good.
The scope comes with NO FOCUSER. I sold the stock focuser some time ago when I replaced it with a Moonlite. The Moonlite is still here but it has too many issues to bother selling.
Scope comes with its original hard case, corrector, finder scope (never used), diagonal (think I might have used it once, possibly unused), canon EOS adapter (never used). NO EYEPIECE is included, I dismantled that and used it for an experiment.
Most of the images in my Astrobin gallery were captured with this scope. It was an excellent scope, very sharp and a joy to use...
Given the condition of the scope, I'm not putting a price on it, it will be sold (or not) by offer only. Freight will be at buyer's expense, though I'd prefer a local buyer.
More photos can be taken on request.
Last edited by codemonkey; 05-04-2018 at 04:43 PM.
For anyone interested, the guys at Teleskop Austria have serviced many Esprit objectives, dismantling and remounting the lenses in the cell; might be worth contacting them to see what they'd charge to service the objective (objective alone could be posted). https://teleskop-austria.at/
Apologies for the lack of response so far, I've had a LOT of enquiries about the scope and I've been out all day. I'm now waiting to hear back from a potential buyer and will work through the list should said buyer choose to not go ahead.
Tony, thanks for your post. I actually thought some of the fungus might have been between the elements, but I wasn't sure. I sent it back to the distributors who told me it was not between the elements. I haven't removed the lens cell to personally investigate it though. I've always been wary about cleaning optics myself and would prefer to sell as-is, that way a savvy buyer with experience with such things can get a good deal and there's no chance of me making matters worse.
Attaching another photo, this one of the corrector. As you can see in the image, there's a small spot of mould/fungus on the corrector as well. There's also an area of the "thin hairy stuff" on the edge in one spot, much like what can be seen in the above photo of the telescope's objective. Basically as you might expect given they were housed in the same environment, the corrector is in about the same condition as the telescope's objective, maybe a bit better.
