Posts Made By: James Idone

I would opt to spend a little more on a fully multi coated ep with better correction at the edge of its field. Like the Koning 32 mm 11/4" or the Celestron Ultima 30 mm, both ep's are ones that you will have for whatever scope you have now or buy later. If you want a really good 24-25mm ep the Konig 24 mm, meade 24.5 swa are excellent.

Hey the RKE's are not a bad ep but to compare them to a good fully multi coated plossl is a little long in the tooth and the UO ortho's I am afraid its too hard to take. The RKE's or UO Kellners are very good ep's on a budget both well made and back in the 60ies these were top rated. But todays UO ortho's, Koning's, Vixen SW,TV Radian's, Meade and TV plossl's, Ultima's, Tak LE's, Pentax widefield's all have there place. We all have personal likes and dislikes and some ep's just match up with some scopes with better results but the RKE's are not close at all to the obove ep's. Maybe if you are using a lower end scope this might be so but it didn't look like that from what they stated were the observing tools.

The Orion just came out an F8.3 120 I think its called the pro view on a similar looking CG5 style mount which would hold the 120 much better and has an ajustable lens cell for around $599. The Widestar 127 is on a CG5 clone so there's no problem there but the cell is not adjustable so only if Apogee is willing to swap ota's in case you have a problem would be the big "if" on that purchase. The Wide satr is a faster scope and may have more false color than the Orion at F8.3 plus that lens has been in production for over 3 years so the chances of gettong a good one by know should be much better than 3 years ago. If you don't like the Orion scope they are very easy to work with if you want to return it for a refund if not satisfied. IMO I feel the Orion on the slighly better mount would be the way to go, the EQ3 mount is not sturdy enough. Good luck.

The one thing you said in your post is there anything out there better for the price or less and everyone comes back with $200 plus options, thats not giving you at all what you want. The only way you will get better and that's only going to show in some area's is spend allot more. The Koning's are very good ep's and there is nothing unless you spend 3 to 4 times the money that will do better. The Meade SWA's are good but 2 to 3 times more, the Vixen Super Wide's are very good but again 3 times as much. The Pentax's are 3 to 4 times as much and the TV's are the high priced spread and most all are 3 to 5 times as much. I think for the money you have invested your not going to do much better, what you have are IMO very decent maybe add a TV powermate or a Klee barlow to the mix and that might give you some different FL.

From what I hear from optical designers and from those that have been involved with making refractor lenses its much easier to make a really good 4" lens and that you can achieve better optical perfection with this size. Once you get into a 5" lens it get harger to optain a really good figure and when going to 6" even harder still. Its almost like were a 7 to 9 inch reflector is the best size for really good planetary if made well. MCT's and SCT's are the same way 5 to 6 inch scopes work very well but as size increases so does that optcial variant. It all boiles down to how much time a company is willing to spend on making these optics and still be profitable.

If your scope has some coma thats a problem with your optics no ep is going to correct it for you. If you want hi power views the UO ortho's like the 7 mm or 9 mm, the Koning 12 mm and the 24 mm are also very good plus the 16 mm as well. These ep's are in the reasonable price range for good glass, the edge distortion from what I have seen runs around 10% but the FOV is decent and do a much better job then the hi priced plossl's at faint star detection plus work well on the planets. I used all these ep except for the 7 mm on a discovery F5.6 dob and they work very well and are allot less than TV's Panoptics.

Hi Tom the ortho's at 2 times the price will still be better than the Ultima's. They have so much better sharpnes over the Ultima's on Planet and lunar views, contast is far better and there sharp right to the edge, buy those as fast as you can and keep em.

Nagler's are good for dob with there wide FOV but on deatailed stuff like planetary and lunar they are poor. The Radians are allot better as an all around EP and they don't break the piggy bank as hard as nagler's do. You can find great buys on astromart with Radian's for around $180 second hand.

The CR150 or 6" skywatcher is worth the price but it is not diffraction limited optics at 6" but stopped down to 112mm it is. False color is not going to be as good as a Pronto or a Vixen 4" achromat, these scopes will have much less.

THey look the same but the Konus comes with dual drives for the same price as the Orion scope without. There is an optical test review on the Konus on ITE's site which fared well at 1/5 wave optics, strehl ratio of 95%, resolution was .6 and image spot size was 15 microns. Thats not bad for a $600 scope package that would give excellent wide field views along with good planetary and lunar performance. They are both Synta scopes from what I can tell.