Quote:
Originally Posted by Paduan
thanks guys i am a member of a club that has a 16" reflector but have never looked through a refractor. ALL of the images here seem to come from refractors ED 80's or TAK's so i believed that they were the norm for "fuzzies". cost is an option to a small extent but i would rather spend $2500 on the correct thing than $5000 and finding out that it was wrong and having to do the job twice. i have no interest in selling my trusty SCT as we go bush lots and the SCT is unbeatable as far as transportability for aperture (photon collecting) is concerned. just never looked through a refractor. i know i am never going to see the wonderful colours of Carina or Orion with my eye, however i would like to see Centarus A bigger than a smear of monochrome in my 4mm ep
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Imagers like a Tak refractor because they can get a wonderful flat and relatively wide prime focus image covering their CCD chip. The focal length and shortish focal ratio is again great for a CCD. The human eye is much smaller of course so you don't need that wide flat circle of light. Getting as much light as possible is what counts, therefore a large dob is very hard to beat for View/$ spent. One possible exception is lunar or planetary work where there is already plenty of light to see, however then you need to consider the value of a big aperture with a central obstruction versus the crisp easy to focus clarify of a refractor. You usually need at least 1.5x the aperture in a reflector to match a quality refractor because of those obstruction issues.
You still really need to have a gander down some eyepieces as well as suss out the size of these beasts.