Posts Made By: Joanne Smith

I so wish now that they are shipping, the company would expand the line. (bigger, much bigger, two piece big)

That is a bit of a rough budget.

I am 5'3" and really cannot use a 6" Dob comfortable at all even sitting down. An 8" sitting down is pretty good, I use a 12.5" F/4.8 Dob standing up just fine.

Watch the ads here, and I would bet you could get a full goto LXD55 and 6" newt for not to much more than your budget if your patient.

25x100 binoculars

Well the H-Alpha for your luminance channel is good. I think this would be so cool in RGBL though.... Enough that you should persue getting some on loan or even renting them.

I don't think I have ever seen an RGBL star trail image. I think it would be way way cool though to see how it comes out.

Thanks for the link. Our private observatory gives away lots of scopes and astro equipment. This is just to cool for school.

If Kathy at S&S checked it out, that is good enough for me on it.

You will like the extra focal length on the SCT for planets. You will probably not like the extra focal length when it comes to DSO's. Now as to which will have the better views? usually comes down to the best thermally acclimated, best optically aligned, and best optics. Many will say the newt, I say there are to many factors involved and the SCT just may surprise you on any given night.



The LX200 Classics were pretty reliable scopes with totally reliables goto's in my experiences with them, I'd bank your goto's will be perfect once aligned.

Interesting take on it.
I have always elected for more field illumination over minimizing the secondary at all myself, and never thought to much about it beyond that.

Even though they say you can't detect light fall off visually with a smaller than 100% illuminated field, I think you would be surprised by just how much overall brighter the view in the eye piece is with a larger obstruction / secondary mirror. This goes against convetnional logic some, as you would think more obstruction would mean a dimmer overall view from reduced light, but that is not how it works in reality.

Good thoughts on it and a great post though for sure. Certainly more food for thought on it.