Posts Made By: David Pope

I would recommend the William's Optics diagonal. For $99.00 you can't beat it with a stick! Solid construction and has brass compression ring for those expensive eyepieces. I loved the William's diagonal, I compared it to my TV everbrite and I saw no visual difference.

Clear Skies,
David Pope

HERB!!! WE NEED WATER THROWN ON THIS FIRE!!

Hi David,

I've installed the EZ Focus Kit on my 12" LX200 with no problems. It's fast and easy, but as the instructions tell you. It's designed to remove back lash from the focuser NOT IMAGE SHIFT. If you're having trouble with image shift then go with the Crayford focuser which is the only easy cure for this problem on a SCT.

Clear Skies,
David Pope

Hi Alex,

Speaking from personal experience, YES! I’ve always done observations from light polluted skies around my home and thought that I was getting decent views. Then I went to the Black Forest Star Party in PA where they advertise magnitude 7 skies. Well, the first night I was there was astonishing, I spent the better half of an hour just sitting in my observing chair looking up. And then I looked through my little 8” dob that I decided to take instead of my 12” LX200 and I was blown away. The same objects that I viewed from home just looked entirely different. Words can’t describe the views and not one time did I get up during the night to go look through someone else’s scope. All the fancy equipment can’t do what dark skies can. If only Al Nagler could produce an eyepiece that could reproduce the views of dark skies he would make another million $.

My advise to you is FIND SOME DARK SKIES!

Some clear skies would help also ;-)
David Pope

Hi Ken,

Well, in my opinion the Orion 6” or 8” is tough to beat for the money. I have a couple of expensive scopes (Obsession, Tele-vue, etc) but I wanted a little “kick around scope”, something I didn’t have to worry about if other people wanted to view through it. So, I ended up buying the 8XT before it went to the Intelliscope. Man was I pleasantly surprised at how good the scope performed for $350.00. In fact, it did so well that I hardly ever got my 12” LX200 out any more. I highly recommend these scopes for anyone just starting out in astronomy. And Orion is a pretty good company to deal with also;-).

Clear Skies,
David

Thanks to all for their input on this discussion. Although the math and physics are a little over my head, I do believe that it has helped me to understand the term a little better.

I’m in the market for a secondary scope to travel with and on nights in which I don’t have much time to bring out the 15” Obsession. And I was noting some ads in which scopes that are selling for $500 advertising Diffraction Limited Optics. Now, I'm a bit of a tinker with mechanical issues and don’t mind modification here and there. But the promise of quality optics in a scope for that price has me raising my eyebrows. I just wanted to clarify the term before jumping on such a “deal”.

Dave