Mak/Newt vs. Refractor

Looking through a 6" Chinese refractor this year at the Oregon Star Party I was able to see for myself the image quality of a MN66...was what a step up in resolution.. the Mak/Newt won hands down.. this was not a high end AP0 it was up against, but I was surprised at the rasor sharp brightness the MN66 displayed.. JM

I have an MN66, and I am amazed at the pinpoint sharpness against a very dark sky. The internal baffling of the MN66 does a very good job of cutting down the stray light. As an example of the sharpness of the MN66, the attached photo of Saturn is through an MN66 with a DSLR camera (Canon EOS 20D). This was a quick and dirty shot (just playing with the camera), single exposure with no processing other than adj. of brightness and contrast and cropping the picture.

Attached Image:

I've also been very impressed by images in Mak/Newts.
I think the lack of chromatic aberration in the Mak/Newt
largely makes up for the small loss in contrast from
the obstruction, placing them very close in performance.
(Most of these have <20% obstruction.) And the sealed
tube borrows some of the refractor advantages (less
tube currents, etc.).

That said, side-by-side comparison of a 6" Mak/Newt and
a 6" high-end APO will show slightly brighter images
in the APO, at least in my experience. I attribute this
to mirror coatings (maybe 10% - 20% system loss) vs.
few % for multicoated refractor. The differnece is
probably moot for planetary, but is more noticable on
deep sky.