Konus 200mm reflector - worth persisting?

[Louiseb2790]

Hi all,

Complete newbie here so excuse the long post.

I bought a Konus Konusky 200mm Newtonian reflector scope with equatorial mount around 20 years ago in the US with the intention of bringing it home and exploring the night skies. Totally new to scopes but this one was recommended to me by the sales people at the time and reviews were pretty good. I was living in a pretty urban area in the US so didn't have much luck looking at anything except the moon.

Fast forward to today and I have dug the old scope out of storage as I'm finally living somewhere non-urban. And boy am I having trouble.

I have spent hours and hours following all the instructions online about setting up in the day time to align the finder scope, etc, and have collimated the mirrors. But nothing seems to 'stick'. As soon as I move the scope to a different location alignment seems to be gone and disappointment follows. Nothing lines up, I can see the spider mount in the view, everything is really shaky even with a big eyepiece :(

I am not sure where to go from here. Could it be that the scope has been damaged in some way in transit or storage for such a long time? Could the mount be to blame? As you can probably tell I'm clutching at straws here as I really don't know what I'm doing. I've looked into local clubs but nothing is happening due to COVID so its hard to get advice.

Any suggestions or advice very welcome,
Louise.

[N1]

Check out this thread. (https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/45492-konus-8-newt-how-to-tell-if-it-has-synta/)

There's likely something loose around the bottom end/mirror cell, or the secondary holder, or screws/bolts missing altogether, but you had better rule out the mount for any/all of the shakiness by resting the tube somewhere solid and seeing if the alignment (collimation) still changes when you rotate the tube. Check for movement of any part of the tube and optics. And if the mirror cleans up OK (instructions can be found on IIS also), and the optics are of good origin as per the linked thread, then it's worth fixing. Also the spider is what you should see when looking down the focuser without an eyepiece in it.

You could always chuck it on a dob mount and have a pretty capable allrounder.


Oh, and :welcome: to IIS!!

[dannat]

Which state you in, can u take it to a local state astro club night for advice

[Louiseb2790]

Thanks Mirko.

I read through the thread and checked - I have the 1793+ model :( No spring loaded finder and thick spider veins. So I think its a dud. The mounts sold with this model also sound like they're pretty crapola, so I really hit the jackpot all round!

I feel like I'm better off cutting my losses and starting from scratch instead of trying to retrofit this tube with new bits. I don't have the experience to do that anyway.

For a complete newbie who just wants to look at larger things like planets, would you go with a refractor? They seem to have a lot less complexity, but then that could be my inexperience showing :)

[Louiseb2790]

Hi Daniel,

I'm in rural NSW. There is a club about an hour or so from me but they've shut down all club activities due to COVID. Hopefully they might start up again in the new year.

Louise.

[N1]

I would but that's just me, and most prople probably wouldn't find that a very cost-efficient way to get started and to stay interested. I'd say if you have the room, get a pre-used 6-8" dob for what you want to do. It's the standard recommendation but it's sound.