RCOS Lives??

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Anyone else notice this announcment? DSI has purchased all the IP of RC Optical Systems and is now offering the entire line of RCOS scopes.

Deep Sky Instruments

Worth watching perhaps?

Cheers, Marcus

[jase (Jason)]

Old news dude. I had better blow the dust of my 2005 spec 12.5" F/9 soon.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Doh!! Always the last to know!

[Bassnut (Fred)]

I had an email exchange with Right Ascension LLC http://ra-limited.com/ about support on the legacy items such as the TCC (they took over that). He was very responsive and keen to help, sounded promising and gives confidence on continuing to use RCOS scopes. Many users sold their RCOS scopes when they died worried about a lack of support.

[Peter Ward]

Seems logical that Deep Sky would acquire the IP.... Paul Jones was making RCOS' mirrors prior to the windup, it will be interesting to see if the prices change.

[glend (Glen)]

What percentage of the RC market would DSI and RCOS attract? Seems like most of RC related threads these days are about GSO RCs - admittedly budget items in comparison but they have opened up the RC world to many previously constrained by the cost factor which has to be a good thing.

[jase (Jason)]

For sure, GSO RC related forum threads are plentiful these days. More people have them as they are financially within the budget of many which as you point out can only be a good thing. You could also read it another way that the quantity of threads are related to people having issues with them. Dodgy factory focuser etc.

The term RC doesn't mean much these days. No different to any other optical instrument type such as refractor and reflector, there are varying degrees of build and optical quality. GSO isn't operating at the high end market so DSI/RCOS, OS, Alluna, Keller/ASA, etc, will continue to exist. I've not heard of any university or military ordering a GSO RC of late. If there was a manufacturer that was having an impact on high end RC sales, it would be Planewave.