|
Paul, these are rather different scopes and the right one for you depends on what you want to do with it.
The Vixen VMC is f/10, quite similar to that of an 8" Meade or Celestron. From past experience with this kind of scope I would not buy an f/10 scope - it's trying to be all things to all users and frankly not great at anything. It's field of view is to small to be wide field, and its not optimal for deepsky stuff. It's not optimal for lunar and planetary, either, where its all about magnification and maximum resolution - a long focal ratio Newtonian or an f/15 Maksutov are both distinctly better than a scope at f/10 with a fat secondary. f/10 is also too slow photographically to be much use for photography.
The Orion on the other hand is a fine scope for wider field, deep sky visual use and quite a good choice for photography. It can be pushed to higher power for the moon and planets but if you are really into that you might consider a second optical tube later on specifically for that.
One other consideration is the question of the open tube of the Vixen vs the closed tube of the Orion - the Orion will last many, many years without any issues, whereas with the Vixen you will need to very careful to keep it sealed unless using it, and with moderate use will probably require cleaning the optics every 2-3 years.
One other thing to consider is that the mirror reflectivity declines slowly with age. After 2-3 years the light losses in both of these scopes reduce their transmission to being equivalent to a good 5-6" refractor and the optical resolution is much the same on most nights - for the simple reason the seeing will be the limiting factor, not the scope.
|