Posts Made By: John Holt

Not sure if this info helps, but I own a C6 f/5. Just the OTA. Purchased from the classifieds here a few years ago. It was as new, still in the original packing. The owner had kept the eq mount. I have it on an altaz pipe head mount on tripod.

Very nice grab and go scope. Quite serviceable up to about 200x. Significantly more resolving capability than my 4" newt on all targets, as expected. Clearly goes deeper than my 5" f/11 on deep sky. Weighs about 10 pounds. Short moment of inertia helps minimize vibration times.

Mine came with a 1.25" rack and pinion focuser. This yeilds about 2 degree field with lowest power plossl. I am not motivated at all to move to a 2" focuser.

For what it's worth, I have seen supernova in another galaxy with this scope, from dark sky. And seen transitting Galilean moons (not just shadows) when the seeing permits.

At it's price point it is a great portable scope, that is pretty darn easy to mount! I very happy with it.

Though every time I'm out on a grab and go excursion and the sky is really good, I wish I'd brought a bigger scope!

I'm with Floyd and Jon.
The most valuble discussions alway include focal ratio of the scope involved. If an ep review does not, then it is of little or no use to a fast newt owner, and really should be disregarded as a guide for ep's. That's kinda the hard truth of it. I too have waded through huge threads of so called wonder ep's, only to have the reviewer finally days later actually share that the scope involved was f6 or slower. If the review doesn't specify the f ratio and one has a fast scope, then skip it.

Google: copyscope

[QUOTE]Michael Baca said:

With my Orion 130ST on the way (till I can afford my 10" Dob) I am starting to think about eye pieces and filters. I am wondering if the eye pieces that come with it will suit my needs for the time being:

Sirius Plossl 25mm
Sirius Plossl 10mm
2X Shorty Barlow

I will obviously want a 4mm, and a few others to fill in the gaps. Any suggestions on fair priced eye piece set for around $100 or less? Or perhaps singles totaling to about $100?

As for filters sometime down the road I want a solar filter. I am also looking at a filter for light pollution but I have no idea what exacly to get (This will also be used for the 10" dob later on - nebulas). And of course a moon filter. Now I don't expect to be looking at the moon every chance I get so really anything cheap, but quaility would do here. I've looked around and found that the green ones are of lower quality, is this true? I found one on telescope-warehouse.com for $10, and I think that's a fair price for something I'll be using maybe a few times a month. I'm not so sure about the other "color" type filters, but will in time be buying a set of these also.

============================



The ep's coming with the scope are a real good start.

Pass on the 4mm ep. You can barlow to 5mm.

A Baader type solar filter would be cool.
There are instructions on how to make one on the internet.

Pass on the moon filter. Simply not needed.

Pass on color filters in general. For now.
There are rather specific ones, that work very well for certain types of planetary detail.
But some of this is depends on the aperture of the scope.

Shepard some of your funds toward star charting. It's stunning what one can see, even in simple ep's
if one knows what is there in that patch of sky.

Individual tolerance for astigmatism in ep's varies from person to person.

Thermal issues vary from 10" to 12" scopes, mirror cells, active vs passive cooling and solid tube vs truss. All of this shows up in the ep.

Anybody involved using (or not using) a Paracorr?

For high end ep's, the only real comparisons in fast scope that count, are the ones in ones own scope. This means a side by side between ep's. Or the classifieds on Astromart in combo with specific repeat targets.

Floyd,
Thankyou for sharing this. What is the focal ratio of the scope sir?

It may very well be the clips. There will be a variation in the cooling rate of the mirror at those point. And they will contribute some small thermal signal to the image as well as they cool.

I have noticed the same thing in my newts.

This is late, and perhaps doesn't quite apply....

I was out at play last night visiting the usual brighter summer fuzzies and doubles, starting around M7 and wondering north up our galactic plain. The air was hot, humid and not particularly stable. Plossls 32mm and 15mm, orthos 9mm and 6mm, the Bright Star Atlas and a 6" f/5 newt. Lots of coyotes, owls(barred and screech) , bullfrogs and skeeters. At moonrise I gave up observing and compared a few ep's.


The 9mm UO ortho is very comforable to use IMO. I like it a lot. The 9mm GSO plossl I didn't use for observing this night has a bit larger fov, and is a teeny bit better corrected for astigmatism in f/5. So you get a larger usefull field. But eyerelief is not as comfortable. Still very usable, but geez I like volcano tops and ortho eye relief. The plossl had that cool color, the ortho a warm one.

I also like the 6mm ortho. The actual field of view is small, yep. But the ep is light weight, comfortable to look through and just plain fun to use. Then I compared it for the first time to another 6mm optic I've often used, a 12mm UO Konig and 2x Celestron/Vixen barlow. The fun little 6mm ortho was out done completely. The field of view difference was not what first caught my eye. It was the sharpness. Tighter doubles could be split, and clusters showed more members. Way bigger piece of sky as expected. The konig/2x barlow was not perfectly corrected all the way to the edge. But very usable out to 80 percent. I did have to get right in with the eye to take in the field. But I had not expected my used 12mm Konig and twenty year old barlow to smoke this neat little ortho. I was actually kinda dissapointed. But the 6mm ain't new. It was made in Japan for Coulter Optics who knows how long ago.


I was supprised by similar results when using this barlow with my 16mm UO Konig a year or so ago. Out performs all my other(few) ep's or combinations at or near 8mm.

If you go with a pier, then go with the pier as scope mount only. Piers are cool! And they work really well.

Skip the bird bath, bird feeder, bird house or any other application. You really don't want anything birds leave behind to be around your pier, or the insects that can associate there either.

Wilsonart maked another color of the same type/texture. I haven't looked for it in a while. It had a different name and was a kinda sandy color as I recall.