What to buy, suggestions anyone

[AlexN]

I have a WO 102 F/7 and its lovely, The orion looks to me to be the same scope re-badged..

With regards to the 6" F/8 achro. I had one, I sold it. Spew. It would be a waste of time to image with it, the correction was horrible, massive CA issues.. cheapo focuser was rather useless...

The 102mm APO + guide scope should keep you happy for a while.. And by happy, i mean, crying in your milk that you sold a 14" SCT, but glad to be out imaging "happy"

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Hi Shawn,

may be too late but you could get an 8" newt SW reflector from Andrews (OTA only) for $399 and then whack a SW ProED100 refractor on it (FPL53 glass) for only $1199.

You get the finder, rings, case etc with the ProED and its now better glass than before.

Not sure about the F9 focal ratio though if this makes it too narrow for AP?

But then again, the 200mm newt is an F5 so maybe use that instead for fairly wide field shots?

Cheers

Chris

[AlexN]

Originally Posted by Screwdriverone

Hi Shawn,

may be too late but you could get an 8" newt SW reflector from Andrews (OTA only) for $399 and then whack a SW ProED100 refractor on it (FPL53 glass) for only $1199.

You get the finder, rings, case etc with the ProED and its now better glass than before.

Not sure about the F9 focal ratio though if this makes it too narrow for AP?

But then again, the 200mm newt is an F5 so maybe use that instead for fairly wide field shots?

Cheers

Chris

200mm F/5 scope has a Narrower field of view than a 100 F/9. The 200 F/5 is faster, but narrower.. (100 F/9 = 900mm focal length, 200 F/5 = 1000mm focal length)

That said, A good point, a relatively cheap newtonian reflector + a decent quality APO is a great trade off.. you get a moderate narrow field from a 8" F/5 or F/6 newt, and a wide field from a ED80, and use them for alternating tasks of guiding and imaging depending on the target.

[gregbradley]

To get really good images you don't necessarily need massive aperture for APO imaging. There are literally thousands of excellent images on the net from 106mm and smaller scopes.

The term APO gets thrown around in the marketing world. For practical purposes APO is really a triplet or quadruplet (like the Tak FSQ or TV NP101). Doublets vary from highend semi APO like Tak FS series to lower end semiAPO. Then you go lower from there. I have not seen decent images from Achros and would advise you see actual good images before you buy.
More likely you would get images where the stars have heavy blue halos around them or worse.

There seems to be a lot of choice in the 102mm bracket now and it is heavily competitive. I haven't used one but I would be interested in the Stellarvue 102mm or the Orion Eon 102mm. The Orion EON is made by Pern Lang (spelling) from Taiwan. Most known for the scopes it made for William Optics so these EONs should look familiar.

Also others would know better than me, but there is a 127mm triplet being used by I believe Hughy which may be pretty nice. Aperture rules ultimately but not at the cost of out of focus semi-APO optics.

14 inch SCT with super long focal length is great for visual but really that sort of focal length requires a high end mount to make it work. You will be severely limited by the mount and I have rarely seen people get on top of it although there have been exceptions.

Long focal imaging is an upper step best done after mastering shorter focal length imaging which is less demanding and more likely to result in an excellent image.

The choice in this price and aperture range has really opened up in the last few years so you are lucky.

I'd also have my doubts (others could correct me) about an EQ6 handling a 6 inch APO. Same problem. Imaging starts with the mount. A poor mount with an AP scope on it will produce lousy images!

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I want to avoid exposed to atmosphere mirrors, the trouble I had to go to protect the 14ers coatings up here.. the Obs was sealed with dehudifier running 24/7 .. are any of these larger cheaper 6" refractors any chop or is the CA unacceptable for semi serious imaging... I was thinking along the lines of a couple of small WO,s if this is the case..that is if the larger cheaper refractors are crap. . Im open to any suggestion really,

I had a William Optics 80mm triplet. I didn't like it. It had bad coma (collimation wasn't even vaguely accurate thanks to crappy rotatable focuser poorly machined). Focuser lock didn't work, visual back was too large with only 2 screws meaning cameras would pivot slightly. 5 out of 10 mate.

It looked good though. It was better once I fixed it up myself but then I paid for someone else to do their job and they didn't.

Greg.