Astro-Tech AT80LE 80mm ED FPL-53 Doublet Refractor Carbon Fiber Tube

Auction No.:
12758
Current Bid:
$405.00
High Bidder:
Kent Gittings
Bid History:
1 Bid
Location:
Redmond, WA - US
Seller:
Kurt Friedrich
Started:
07/05/2019 10:39AM
Ends:
07/15/2019 03:39AM
Shipping:
Buyer pays shipping
Payment:
PayPal
Hits:
749
  • 80mm f/6 fully multicoated apochromatic doublet optics using an FPL-53 ED element and Ohara glass
  • light weight/high strength carbon fiber body
  • dual-speed rotating 2" Crayford focuser with 10:1 ratio fine focusing
  • both 2" and 1.25" brass compression ring eyepiece holders
  • retractable carbon fiber lens shade/dew shield with lock knob
  • Astro-Tech 2" dielectric star diagonal
  • split mounting ringsĀ 
  • aluminum-frame shipping/storage hard case
My starting price and reserve are the same, $405.

From Astro-Tech's ad when I bought it new:
"Astro-Tech uses premium Ohara glass, including an FPL-53 element, and state-of-the-art optical multicoatings in the apochromatic ED doublet optics of the AT80LE. This results in images that are essentially totally free of the annoying halo of unfocused violet light (chromatic aberration) that mars the bright-object images in lesser FPL-51 doublet scopes. It is free of spurious color despite the fast focal ratio, and even at very high magnifications, both normally the spurious-color bane of lesser scopes.
"The Astro-Tech AT80LE has a dual speed 2" rotating Crayford focuser with a microfine 10:1 fine-focusing ratio.
"ED apochromatic doublet refractor optics: 80mm (3.1") aperture, 480mm focal length, f/6 focal ratio doublet optical system using an FPL-53 ED (Extra-low Dispersion glass) element to reduce spurious color halos and fringing to vanishingly low levels. Both lens elements are precision ground and polished under computer control from the finest quality Ohara glass. Ohara is well-known as Japan's premier manufacturer of specialized optical glass.
"Fully multicoated optics: The AT80LE doublet objective lens has the latest state-of-the-art antireflection multicoatings on all air-to-glass surfaces for high light transmission and excellent contrast. This can easily be seen by looking into the objective lens of the scope. Virtually no reflection of your face will be seen. It's a sure sign that the high transmission coatings are doing their job, by letting virtually all the light enter the scope, rather than reflecting some light back to your eye.
"Two contrast-enhancing internal knife-edge light baffles, a glare-reducing baffle at the front of the dew shield, and a specially darkened tube interior provide truly dark sky backgrounds and high terrestrial contrast.
"The carbon fiber tube and dew shield have excellent thermal characteristics. The dew shield is oversized, with a 124mm o.d. compared to the 80mm lens diameter and 90mm tube diameter. This assures that tube currents, which typically follow the walls of a telescope tube, will be out of the scope's converging 80mm light cone for the most part and will have only a minimal effect on your images as the AT80LE cools down to ambient temperature. You can begin serious observing sooner with an AT80LE than you can with an aluminum tube 80mm with a conventional dew shield design.
"Long focuser travel: The 80mm (3.15") travel focuser drawtube helps keep the overall scope length as short as practicable for convenient travel and storage. The tube measures a compact 18" long with the dew shield retracted (and a still-short 20" long with it extended). The drawtube has a scale marked in centimeters subdivided in 1mm increments. This lets you note individual focuser positions for easy return to the correct focus when switching between visual use and photography. A knob underneath the focuser lets you adjust the tension on the drawtube to accommodate varying eyepiece/photo accessory loads, as well as firmly lock in a photographic focus.
"Astro-Tech 2" dielectric star diagonal #AT2D will give you the 99% reflectivity performance with 2" eyepieces.
"The scope comes in a locking 20" x 7.5" x 9" aluminum-frame foam-lined hard case with carry handle."

I have quite a few scopes and I have rarely used this scope. I bought it for wide field astrophotography but just never use it. On my webiste with all my photos (I can email that to you) I have only one image using this scope (That image is shown here). I have never cleaned the objective, and it does not need cleaning.