SOLD: Saxon ED80, 80mm apo refactor; price reduction

janoskiss (Steve H) · #1 12-12-2005, 01:23 AM

I have one Saxon ED 80 telescope for sale for $450 delivered anywhere in Australia.

This is the same much-talked-about telescope as the Orion ED 80 and several other brand ED 80s with a two-element apochromatic objective lens and a smooth Crayford focuser. It outperforms significantly bigger achromats and Newtonians. It performs a long way above what I would have expected from an 80mm telescope.

The telescope is like new. I bought it in August 2005. I never had the dew shield off and never touched or cleaned the objective lens.

I found no false colour with this telescope even at high magnifications on planets. It will take 240x comfortably without image breakdown (well beyond the old 50-60x per inch of aperture rule of thumb). It is superb for daytime viewing too, and you can mount it on any standard photo tripod that can take the weight. You can get close-ups of insects near tops of tall trees 100+m away, or birdwatch from kilometres away.

I have attached a few photos of the telescope, but you can check out more of them here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~janosk/ed80/index.html.

A 2" diagonal and an 8x50 straight through finder are also available if required.

janoskiss (Steve H) · #2 19-12-2005, 08:14 PM

I have reduced the asking price for the ED80, and I'm keeping the EQ5 for now for use with another scope. (I've also posted a summary of my replies to prior enquiries about the scope.)

Rodstar (Rod) · #3 22-12-2005, 10:30 PM

Time to mow the lawn Steve.

What changed your mind about the Saxon ED80?

I'd snap it up at that price if I had the spare cash.

Starkler (Geoff) · #4 22-12-2005, 10:40 PM

Damn i was seriously considering the eq5 too

cventer · #5 22-12-2005, 10:55 PM

I cant beleive this has not sold. This is such a bargain for this scope. If I did not allready own one I would buy this in a heartbeat.

Anyone interested in Astrophotography should be buying this right now!!!!!

Maybe I should buy it and turn it into a bino viewer with my other ed80.

Regards
Chris

janoskiss (Steve H) · #6 23-12-2005, 12:41 AM

Rod, These shots were taken the week before I put together my version of the enviro-mower. Re the scope, it's not really that I changed my mind, but it's time to move on. For light-polluted backyard observing it's planets mainly, which needs power + apeture. My newly beefed up fan powered Dob will do nicely for the time being. Then maybe another ED refractor. (But I'll wait till they bring out 5 & 6" versions.)

Must be Xmas, Chris. People are too scared to buy themselves presents, especially conspicuous ones like a telescope.

Geoff, the EQ5 will be up for sale at some point in the near future, but I have two scopes I use it with at the moment.

I took the ED80 & the EQ5 along to a party tonight. I showed people Mars at around 85x. Not many were impressed. I could see surface features easily, but "It's just a dot" people kept saying. But then I swung over to the Orion Neb. That got a few oohs and aahs with the 19mm Panoptic + DGM NBP filter (this is in a fairly light polluted Melbourne suburb), and some wows through the Stratus 13mm with no filter. Sparked quite a bit of interest in astronomy.