Posts Made By: Greg Martin

Dave,

I have a newer MK-67 Deluxe (Delivered November, 2002), and use a 2" TeleVue Everbright diagonal. My eyepieces (Parks Super Gold 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 35mm - the same as Orion Ultrascopics) all achieve focus with & without the TeleVue 2.5x Powermate. The focuser is almost all the way racked in with the 35mm, but it does focus.

Greg

The MK 67 Deluxe will perform much better than the 6" achromat refractor - you will not have chromatic abberation, which degrades the images of the refractor more than the contrast lost from the central obstruction of the Maksutov.

I also bought an MK 67 from ITE (took almost 7 months do be delivered, partly due to the US west coast dock strike of late 2002 - ouch...the wait was worth every day) superb optics, pinpoint stars, great planetary & lunar views.

I suggest buying a premium 2" diagonal, & add a Telrad unless you are going to use a GOTO mount...the 10 X 50 finder scope has a fairly narrow field of view (I use the Telrad to get close to dim objects, and use the finder to center the scope.

The scope does take a while to temperature stabilize, but the views are worth the wait.

Additionally, I had a very good experience with ITE...Bill answered all of my questions, and was a peasure to do business with.

Greg Martin

I am wondering why you want to use an eyepiece with a 55mm focal length with such a fast telescope? Assuming the focal ratio of the Genesis is f/5, the exit pupil diameter will be about 11mm, which means you will lose almost half the light entering the telescope, which isn't very good for deep sky.
Is there some advantage over using a 35 mm TeleVue Panoptic, which will have a 7mm exit pupil diameter, and almost as wide a field of view?

Greg

Kevin,

Gee, lets tear a hole in your argument...take two telescopes:
1. Takahashi - FS-102UH 4" f/8 fluorite apo, EM-10 mount
* Relatively simple mechanical & optical design - two elements, no goto mount
* Relatively smaller glass - 4"
* Street Price - $5599

2. Meade - ETX-125AT 5" go-to Maksutov-Cassegrain, with tripod and Autostar computer
* Much more complex mechanical & optical design - moving mirror system, 2 mirrors * 1 corrector plate, goto mount
* larger glass - 5" (almost)
* Street Price - $1090

Gee, why on earth would the Tak setup cost so much more - Answer: because high quality, low production run products are much more expensive to make than mass market, relatively mediocre products, and I could talk myself into buying the Tak setup (if I had the money), and wouldn't even feel like I was being "played".

You may have a point, and I am not saying that wide angle Pentax & Nagler eyepieces are mediocre (although I would not personally use them for high power planetary viewing, I much prefer UO orthos, and am contemplating buying the TMB super monos some day).

My brother is a machinest, and he can machine a part to a tolerance of .003", or make the exact same part to a tolerance of .0002", which will increase the price of the part by a factor of 10 or more per piece.

Unless you know the actual production costs, including labor, to manufacture the eyepieces in question, you are just making uninformed wild guesses about manufacturing costs.

Greg

Chris,

The reason that looking at the sun could damage your eyes is not the visible light, but the focused infra-red radiation burning your retina...the moon reflects almost no infra-red radiation, so there is no danger.

Greg

Floyd,

since the weight of the (non split) tube is listed as 78 lbs on thier website, and the bottom half contains the mirror, mirror cell, and the altitude bearings (and also the extra joining hardware for the split), and the top half only has the focuser & secondary, common sense dictates that the bottom half has to weigh at least 60 - 65 lbs.

Greg