That's what I love about this hobby - everyone has a slightly different angle on it. Personally, I love looking
at my old Unitrons, which is why my house is decorated with them. Rarely though, do they get outside, except for lunar and solar duties. I have other scopes for looking through, because even the 8"f7 newt I knocked together as a kid in the 80s still wallops even a good 5" APO for any observing I do, and isn't much harder to live with.
But it's entirely up to the OP - for the double stars and planetary grab & go visual the new 120mm ED scopes are going to perform as well as any 5". True connoisseurs will, no doubt, easily pick the difference in contrast and aberration control between a SW and a tak 120, but I rarely want to spend the time trying to see it. There's stuff to look at up there! Then again, some people would rather spend their time star-testing telescopes than observing - but that's how they enjoy the hobby!
cheers,
Andrew.
cheers,
Andrew
Quote:
Originally Posted by Profiler
Although I fully appreciate that the hobby of astronomy is a broad church and has a following catering to many different tastes I, for one at least, have never been interested in the "appearances" of the equipment (other than to assess condition when purchasing 2nd hand). For me a 'telescope' is something I look through to see the universe - not something I look at.
In this context my own experience has always been that the images always tend to be better with the more expensive refractors. I loved my first short-tube C-80 but when I purchased a Tak FS-60 it simply outperformed the C-80 and the same trend continued thereafter with gradually larger and larger refractors. Ultimately, the single most important rule of thumb with refractors based upon actually looking through them was that quality trumps quantity. There really wasn't any emotion to these experiences other than what can be seen in the eyepiece and not what is seen when looking at the telescope.
|