My favourite affordable telescope
Hello everyone!
Jaša here, and today I'd like to share a story with you all.
So in the past few weeks, I was doing a Q&A on Instagram stories, and I got many questions: your favourite affordable scope, why you like it, etc.
I'll tell you all about it here.
So my favourite affordable telescope is an 8" RC (Ritchey Chretien) telescope.
It's an excellent telescope which needs a lot of patience and dedication. Its advantages are pretty cool to me; You can have two focal lengths, with one telescope, if you get your self a reducer.
One (primary focal length) is at 1600mm (f/8), perfect for some smaller planetary nebulae or galaxies, and the second one (with reducer) is at 1000mm (f/5), which is one of the most common focal lengths out there (8" newton is the same).
The next advantage is that you don't need any correctors/flatteners because there are two hyperbolic mirrors in the optical tube, which creates a flat field for up to APS-C sensor and smaller! And the last one (my favourite) is that it's so tiny, and it gives you so much focal length.
Imagine a 1600mm newton on your roof without an observatory.
Any wind will mess up your guiding, while the RC is a lot smaller and lighter, so wind won't have such a significant impact on your imaging rig.
And some disadvantages… Collimation.
Collimating RC is the same as giving someone who has never processed an Astro image, Pixinsight in his hand.
Literal pain. When collimating an RC, you need to collimate your focuser, your primary mirror, and your secondary mirror, one by one. Collimation tools for it are also quite expensive (Howe collimator ~ 400€).
Luckily, Teleskop service has made an excellent collimation tool for RC telescopes that do pretty much the same as the Howe collimator, just that it's cheaper and easier to use!
I'd recommend that. *PS: RCT can hold it's collimation form 6 months to one whole year, which is an advantage of it. Please see the image below, for a comparison between two of the telescopes, also made by my opinions
Clear skies,
Jaša
This blog post was originally published in our Telescope Live Community.
The Community represents Telescope Live's virtual living room, where people exchange ideas and questions around astrophotography and astronomy.
Join the conversation now to find out more about astrophotography and to improve your observation and post-processing skills!