What Scope Gave You the worst views

[Hans Tucker]

As the title says .. what scope do you remember looking through that gave you the worst visual experience.

My worst visual experience was through a orange tube C14 back in the early 90's. Target was Saturn .. soft fuzzy view .. this put me off ever purchasing a SCT.

[doug mc]

Two Synta 120mm f/8.3 refractors. Both of them horrible. Quite happy now in mak land.

[xelasnave]

Before I knew certain facts I thought I could make a Newtonian scope using an old shaving mirror ( looked very good ) ..I built the ota in balsa wood and used the small mirror you find in toy microscopes to direct light upon the slide as the secondary and an eye piece from the microscope. Looked great and I was so proud until I focused on the Moon and got seven images beside the main one..all rather sharp but I learnt why the mirrors are " back to front".

All this was before I had an interest in astronomy.

However my next scope ( a ten inch with the blank finished but not surfaced) years later was a complete success...I had to build a focuser which worked out well. AND magic views...I built a fork mount with a 1.5 mt polar disk that used car trailer bearings..ok for visual but not perfect.

Alex

[AstralTraveller]

The gimmick scope given out for free on the night we set the world record for the most number of people observing the moon at the same time. The consensus was that the views it offered were slightly inferior to naked eye. :eyepop: It now resides 'proudly' in the lounge room.

[MortonH]

Are we to assume that seeing was good, the scope was collimated and thermally stable so the poor view could be attributed solely to the scope?

[iborg]

Hi All



My worst was a small newtonian, National Geographic reflector (I think from Aldi). Absolutely terrible view with the included eyepiece. Surprisingly OK with a decent eyepiece.


Philip

[Robh]

I'll second that! There was no way you could focus them to get an even passable image.

[Hans Tucker]

It was a Public Viewing night hosted by the local Astronomy group up at their Dark site in Muchea just North of Perth WA. The scopes were setup hours before we and others turned up plus there was a 40 min intro talk. I can't recall if conditions were favourable that night. Years latter I got to look through a Meade 10" SCT .. views were better but the views were still soft and not overly sharp.

[Tulloch]

Seems a bit harsh to dismiss an entire class of telescope based on one night of poor atmospheric seeing. The C14 is used extensively for planetary imaging, Damian Peach, Christopher Go, Darryl Milika (to name a few) all use these with spectacular results.

https://www.damianpeach.com/
https://www.celestron.com/blogs/team-celestron/christopher-go
https://momilika.net/WebPages/AstroIntro.htm

Remember that planetary viewing and imaging require significantly better atmospheric seeing than your standard DSO, and the larger aperture is looking through a larger column of air than a smaller scope. When the seeing is excellent, there aren't many commercial scopes that can extract the same level of detail in the planets.

I use a Celestron C9.25" SCT for my planetary imaging, and while the images are not as detailed as what you can get with a C14, they are good enough for me.
https://www.cloudynights.com/gallery/album/10844-solar-system/

Andrew

[By.Jove]

A couple of C8's I owned... on bright stars a fuzzy "circle of least confusion" is all they showed, never saw a clear diffraction pattern in 2-3 years of visual observing. Quite disappointing considering what I spent on them. Switched to an 8" f/6 newtonian dob, which is distinctly better optically.

A mate has an old Dynamax 8"... now that is a real disappointment and he doesn't take it out often, though he hasn't the heart to swap it for something better.

I'd have to try first before considering an SCT again.

[MortonH]

Celestron did have a 'bad period' around Halley's Comet in 1986 where they were producing sub-standard optics. Maybe the C14 was one of those?

I had a 1990s C8 for a few years and it was excellent.

[Camelopardalis]

I own and use a couple of these compound type scopes and they can give excellent results when the conditions permit.

Conversely, I’ve seen pretty shockingly poor views through Dobsonians at star parties.

What this tells me is that most scopes don’t operate at their potential, and much of this is a factor of their owners knowing how to get the best out of them.

It’s not that SCTs, for example, are particularly tricky, but a badly collimated scope is only going to perform badly. And that’s before we get to thinking about atmospheric conditions for multi-metre focal length viewing.

Personally, I find refractors tend to disappoint visually, apart from while looking at a list of bright, wide field targets. But I’m not subscribing to any scope hate-fest… I love all scopes, warts and all :D

[Hans Tucker]

Yep ... I think you nailed it there.

One scope I have always wanted to try is the Celestron 9.25

[gaseous]

Have to agree here as well - those little "scopes" were awful. You still occasionally see people trying to flog them on FB Marketplace for $10-$50.

[Renato1]

The Celestron Firstscope table top unit I bought for $20 and a friend's 4.5" Galaxsee with a short tube and a corrector were the worst telescopes I've ever looked through. On both, even though collimation was good, the image of a star or planet was only any good in the exact centre of the field of view, and badly distorted everywhere else. looking at any DSO was pathetic.

I couldn't believe that the US Sky and Telescope magazine reviewed the Celestron unit and actually gave it a good review.
Regards,
Renato