Quote:
Originally Posted by issdaol
Not sure what you mean or validity of this statement. I don't see how the price point of refractors can stunt anyone's growth as an astronomer provided they can afford it and use it to best advantage. |
Thats simple Phil - if you believe that you must own just high -end refractors you are probably never going to own anything bigger than a 6" refractor and that is going to really narrow the horizons of what you can see. ( And I have indeed been looking through all kinds of telescopes including Tak refractors for 40 years. )
I am not arguing retractors against massive reflectors in this thread - I'm saying that a good 8" to 10" scope is where the field of what you can see and how many objects blows right open and your 4" APO regardless of how much you pay for it is not going to come close in overall usefullness . Phil , I notice you have a 12" Tak Mewlon as one of your two telescopes so you are not limited to 120mm aperture ...
And other designs can do very well, in low contrast resolution of planetary detail . We once had a shoot out betwen a 10" Newtonian and an Astrophysics 7" F9 Starfire refractor under very steady skies and everyone agreed even on Jupiter the view in the 10" won hand down. W must remember that smaller scopes just cannot resolve the seeing which is usally diffraction limited at 4 to 6" aperture - any larger scope unless the seeing is really good will give the perception of a loss of sharpness earlier than one that breaks down a view into airy discs at a similar magnification in X per inch. So the smaller aperture scope has the `sales' advantage of superficially sharper images , becasue it is not capable of resolving the turbulence in the atmosphere.
Anyway I'm not sure what conclusions about improvment of a Tak vs cheaper 120ED which was the subject of the thread. My comment is that if your refractor returns a good star test and is colour free then it is going to be near perfect at the focal plane no matter how much or how little you pay for it . I would maintain as an experienced optician that a lot of the fervent chatter about Taks is due to good quality control which you pay for . Any telescope with freedom from spherical aberration and astigmatism with well polished smooth surfaces will perform brilliantly at the eyepeice- its a zing you can get with any good scope - that feeling that there is nothing in between your eye and the object you are looking at .