I am making my first telescope, an 8" f/6 or f/7 Newtonian, where I would like to purchase finished optics. Can any one recommend any Australian (or South Australian) suppliers of quality mirrors for such a telescope.
Do you want just "good", or do you want to spend enough to arguably get "great" optics? If you want "good" just go to Andrews or Bintel - they sell GSO-quality mirrors in this range for a few hundred dollars. If you want to go to a higher level then have talk to Mark Suchting of Deep Sky Optics (DSO). He's a member here and makes excellent telescope optics professionally. He really knows his stuff. Top bloke too.
I found Mark's Deep Sky Optics website yesterday, and sent him an email. He has a 10" f6 mirror available, but unfortunately this is a bit big for my current needs. I was impressed by the promptness of Mark's reply, and if I was building a bigger instrument I would definitely look him up.
Thanks guys for the Andrews, Bintel & Telescopes-Austronomy references.
GSO is a major Chinese supplier of mass produced scopes and generally their products are great, for the price. They will not compare with a high quality one off mirror set but for the price they are great. Its all a matter of balancing your budget with what you want.
Another point is that if you are not really experienced then you would probably not get the value out of a custon mirror set.
