|
I would expect the Meade ACF optics are better than the standard Celestron ones (I use Celestron myself) and about the same quality (or maybe a bit better (?) than the Celestron HD version.
I believe Meade still has a mirror lock where Celestron don't. With Celestron you need a Feathertouch fine focuser to minimise mirror slop during fine focusing - Its really annoying until you can eliminate mirror flop / slop!
Personally I love the C9.25 carbon fibre OTA - it holds its focus during significant temperature change extremely well.
A few questions for you Jon will improve answers here:
1. How decent is the clarity and darkness of the night skies where you will be setting up?
2. Any idea what sorts of targets you will be imaging? If its small faint Dark Sky Objects (DSOs) that tells us a lot.
I'm quite suprised my Mike's advice - the 12" on a fork with a wedge and piggy backed guiding; but he would know - few of us are in the realm of experience and capability Mike has achieved. Question for you Mike - can someone new at the game set up the wedge easily and is the Meade gear that robust that piggybacked guiding won't bring differential flexures issues to ruin guiding?
I certainly don't have near your experience - I could only get guiding at 2.3 metre focal lenght working spot on when I did it off axis from the primary OTA.
Cheers all, Matt
|