I was able to perform a preliminary test under dark skies of my C90 mak, the model being:
http://www.adorama.com/CNC90N.html
First, under daylight conditions, the views were initially so so. I felt I'd probably getter better views of MT Pinos pine cones atop of trees with a pair of good binoculars. I tried different eyepieces and some views appeared a bit better with orthoscopic ones but overall, I thought the scope might be out of collimation or suffering from some other defect. Then, I thought I might try and see if I could remove the erect image diagonal supplied with the scope and place the eyepiece directly in the holder and it worked, The scope has plenty of focus travel, more than I expected and the views improved dramatically. It appears these erect image diagonals are of poor quality or I just happened to get a bad one.
I tried the scope on a cheap Walmart-purchased tripod. Jon Issacs was right: big mistake.
It was an exercise in frustration but I can tell you the scope was well-collimated out of the box. I had a concern about this because Ed Ting had a sample that was somewhat out of collimation and these scopes can not be user-collimated. I felt the focuser did fine, with little image shift. I placed my Zhumell zoom eyepiece in the scope and cranked it up to 8mm and Saturn looked splendid! Nice cloud band feature and good contrast. I've seen an example of an excellent questar at Pinos many years ago(and also a not so great one more recently as well) and the C90 wasn't up to the former on Saturn, but nevertheless quite acceptable.
Overall, a heck of a deal, jump on it if you want one of these....
http://www.adorama.com/CNC90N.html
First, under daylight conditions, the views were initially so so. I felt I'd probably getter better views of MT Pinos pine cones atop of trees with a pair of good binoculars. I tried different eyepieces and some views appeared a bit better with orthoscopic ones but overall, I thought the scope might be out of collimation or suffering from some other defect. Then, I thought I might try and see if I could remove the erect image diagonal supplied with the scope and place the eyepiece directly in the holder and it worked, The scope has plenty of focus travel, more than I expected and the views improved dramatically. It appears these erect image diagonals are of poor quality or I just happened to get a bad one.
I tried the scope on a cheap Walmart-purchased tripod. Jon Issacs was right: big mistake.
It was an exercise in frustration but I can tell you the scope was well-collimated out of the box. I had a concern about this because Ed Ting had a sample that was somewhat out of collimation and these scopes can not be user-collimated. I felt the focuser did fine, with little image shift. I placed my Zhumell zoom eyepiece in the scope and cranked it up to 8mm and Saturn looked splendid! Nice cloud band feature and good contrast. I've seen an example of an excellent questar at Pinos many years ago(and also a not so great one more recently as well) and the C90 wasn't up to the former on Saturn, but nevertheless quite acceptable.
Overall, a heck of a deal, jump on it if you want one of these....
