I've owned the Orion 150 mm Mak for over a year & am pleased with its
performance. A good scope at a good price (for that class of scope) and
very portable. Focuser is very smooth, typical of a Crayford, and is a 2
incher allowing for the bigger eyepieces if you can afford them.
Only thing I've noticed is that it doesn't have all the contrast that I
expected, there is some flare when looking at the moon and Venus, but the
other big planets look fine.
Optics are good, a star test showed good collimation straight out of the box
and not worth tweaking any further; surface roughness acceptable.
Spotter scope is a 7x50 and works reasonably well, although I've recently
replaced it with a Celestron mini red dot finder. The red dot is smaller,
weighs less and is easier to line up on finder objects. Contrary to the S&T
report, the spotter scope does have a threaded insert that allows screwing
in a lighbulb to illuminate the crosshairs.
HK
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Chadwick
Freeman
Sent: 07 October, 2000 15:26
To: Starry Night Discussion
Subject: Re: [Starry Night] Telescopes
>Thanks for all the advice from everyone. I read a long time ago that
>a good starting point for amateur telescopes was either a 4 inch
>refractor or a 6 inch reflector, and given that it seems to be a lot
>cheaper to buy a large reflector than a small refractor, I was
>investigating reflectors more. I'll check out how portable
>refractors can be.
Colin,
You might also consider looking at the Russian made 150mm Mak-Cas
that Orion carries. Sky and Telescope gave it a very favorable review
and confirmed that the optics were comparable to 4" apo refractors
which cost about 2.5x as much. It's also pretty compact and portable.
I think the scope itself is about 17" long and just shy of 10 lbs,
and with the Orion mount that you can get with it, it's about 37 lbs
total. You might be able to trim more weight off by going with a
simpler alt/az mount instead of an equatorial.
Anyway, here's the link to the Sky and Telescope review if this
sounds interesting to you...
http://www.skypub.com/resources/testreports/telescopes/9904testreport.html
Good luck. :)
Chad
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