now that i have just about all my equipment sold off and was about to purchase an sw 120ed, an ad comes along for the 180 mewlon with reducer seriously muddying the waters . a financial stretch, but possible.
my all time favorite scope was a D+G 5" f/12. all i had to do was bring it out of my garage, but it was still a bit of an ordeal and eventually i decided to sell it. after years of trying to recapture those images with different scopes, i spent some time with an sw 120 ed and was quite pleased. my preference is for simple alt az mounts and for observing planets and brighter deep sky objects. when jupiter or saturn are well positioned emphasis is on planets. when they are not, emphasis is on deep sky. oh, and the moon is nice too! the sw seemed like a very good match. but i remember those nights with the D+G, occasionally going over to my friend's 8" f/6 Spooner newt and feeling a slight pang - hence the attraction to a little more aperture - but not too much more. i have bigger scopes in my high school astronomy program and when i've owned big scopes, they've tended to sit. one other factor - my driveway is pretty much a dark sky site, but it ain't no mountain top in arizona. vermont seeing is rarely spectacular.
i've read all i can find about the sw120ed and the 180 mewlon, but most of the characterizations of the mewlon are as a planetary scope. on the face of it, it strikes me as no more a planetary scope than an 8" sct which to me is a nice general purpose scope. according to the written word, the mewlon has the cherished jet black skies and pinpoint stars across much of the field (i can live with some coma around the outer field). the rear port and baffle appear to be larger in diameter than an 8" sct so perhaps the off axis field illumination will be a little better in wide field eyepieces (not that i've found that to be a huge problem on the sct's i've used). i'm nearly always able to plan enough in advance to get a scope sitting in the driveway an hour or two in advance of observing.
thoughts on either scope for my application? maybe it's hard to lose with either one...? thanks in advance and sorry if this post is redundant.
-glenn
my all time favorite scope was a D+G 5" f/12. all i had to do was bring it out of my garage, but it was still a bit of an ordeal and eventually i decided to sell it. after years of trying to recapture those images with different scopes, i spent some time with an sw 120 ed and was quite pleased. my preference is for simple alt az mounts and for observing planets and brighter deep sky objects. when jupiter or saturn are well positioned emphasis is on planets. when they are not, emphasis is on deep sky. oh, and the moon is nice too! the sw seemed like a very good match. but i remember those nights with the D+G, occasionally going over to my friend's 8" f/6 Spooner newt and feeling a slight pang - hence the attraction to a little more aperture - but not too much more. i have bigger scopes in my high school astronomy program and when i've owned big scopes, they've tended to sit. one other factor - my driveway is pretty much a dark sky site, but it ain't no mountain top in arizona. vermont seeing is rarely spectacular.
i've read all i can find about the sw120ed and the 180 mewlon, but most of the characterizations of the mewlon are as a planetary scope. on the face of it, it strikes me as no more a planetary scope than an 8" sct which to me is a nice general purpose scope. according to the written word, the mewlon has the cherished jet black skies and pinpoint stars across much of the field (i can live with some coma around the outer field). the rear port and baffle appear to be larger in diameter than an 8" sct so perhaps the off axis field illumination will be a little better in wide field eyepieces (not that i've found that to be a huge problem on the sct's i've used). i'm nearly always able to plan enough in advance to get a scope sitting in the driveway an hour or two in advance of observing.
thoughts on either scope for my application? maybe it's hard to lose with either one...? thanks in advance and sorry if this post is redundant.
-glenn
