Quote:
Originally Posted by jamespierce
(........) a 14 or 16 inch dob doesn't have to be too heavy. Once you go much past that though, unless you use lots of exotic materials and are prepared for a very stripped back experience it's extremely hard to not end up with a heavy scope,
just the mirror box alone will be heavy and hard to handle(......)
The mirror ends up being the most significant weight anyway.
If money were no object - a big CDK (or similar design) on an alt/az fork or L style mount in a dome would be the most comfortable experience
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Thanks very much for your contribution, James.
You might (conceivably) be right that the ultimate limits of usability and practicality for apertures of 16 inches And Over have already been reached by telescope designers, due to factors such as the great weight of a big primary mirror. In other words, it is conceivable that we are already near to the optimum telescope design (for usability and practicality of Large Aperture telecopes) in terms of the parameters such as weight and tube length;
for instance with the short-tube R.-C./Cassegrain/CDK/Schmidt-Cassegrain designs, and with the Compact "evolved Dobson"/"Children of Dobson" designs such as the "Obsession Ultra Compact" and the uncommonly beautiful and very manageable 18 inch Newtonian of 'Rainmaker' which was shown in this thread.
But still......
"the person who said that they can't have a Huge Telescope must have said it with a broken heart", so I still think it worthwhile to open up this thread to see if there is some possibility of finding a New Way Forward towards our personal ownership of huge apertures!!