Forgive my ignorance - please. The fact is that few of us know the nomenclature of each major telescope design.
A Newtonian design is basically a parabolic or spherical primary combined with a seccondary flat.
A Schmidt Cassegrain, Maksutov Cassegrain, RC, Yolo, APO, etc is essential describing an optical path from initial incidence to resulting focal plane for an eyepiece, ccd, or other instrument. A newtonian would be a PMFM or SMFM.
When I utter the words "Ritchey" or "Schmidt", I really don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe there schould be an effort to standardize descriptions by using acronyms incorporating letters like "H" for hyperbola, "S" for spherical, "F" for flat", and so on.
Honestly - the Meade system uses a refractive element in place of more expensive reflective profiles to achieve the same end.
Armchair astronmy catches all of us using terms we don't really understand. My mouth moves, but I'm far from knowledgeable enough to speak authoritatively. Meade will have to just get over it. Maybe someday they won't have to treat customer service as a waste of their time.
A Newtonian design is basically a parabolic or spherical primary combined with a seccondary flat.
A Schmidt Cassegrain, Maksutov Cassegrain, RC, Yolo, APO, etc is essential describing an optical path from initial incidence to resulting focal plane for an eyepiece, ccd, or other instrument. A newtonian would be a PMFM or SMFM.
When I utter the words "Ritchey" or "Schmidt", I really don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe there schould be an effort to standardize descriptions by using acronyms incorporating letters like "H" for hyperbola, "S" for spherical, "F" for flat", and so on.
Honestly - the Meade system uses a refractive element in place of more expensive reflective profiles to achieve the same end.
Armchair astronmy catches all of us using terms we don't really understand. My mouth moves, but I'm far from knowledgeable enough to speak authoritatively. Meade will have to just get over it. Maybe someday they won't have to treat customer service as a waste of their time.
