Looking for 8" Meade or Celestron Telescope

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heyjojos
Posts: 93
Joined: Sun May 08, 2011 11:23 pm

Looking for 8" Meade or Celestron Telescope

Post by heyjojos »

Hi
I'm new in this community.

I have been looking for a reasonably good telescope that allows me to view nebulas, galaxies as well as allowing me to do astrophotography perhaps in the future.

I have hunt down to mainly two scopes. They are Meade 8" LXD75 Schmidt-Newtonian and Celestron 8" C8-SGT (XLT) Schmidt-Cassegrain scope. Both are equatorial mount.

May I know, of the two, which is a better scope for the given things that I want to do. I would very much like to take AP in the future and to make sure that this scope I'm buying offers me reasonably good option for that.

Appreciate your views on this. Or do you have another scope for me to review given the functions I want?

HJ
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Canopus Lim
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Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 12:46 pm
Location: Macpherson

Post by Canopus Lim »

Generally speaking in Singapore it is very hard and unsatisfying to view nebulae and galaxies with telescopes. Unless you go to Malaysia where the skies are darker. The light pollution is so bad that it washes off these objects and no matter how large the telescope, will not help.

However, if you have the interest to view open clusters, globular clusters, planetary nebula and double stars it is still doable and the views can be nice with large scopes. For planets and lunar, Singapore can be pretty good though.. and this is what I do most often.
AstroDuck
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shirox
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Post by shirox »

I had a VMC200L from Vixen. Good views with 2" visual back. can consider that also
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heyjojos
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Post by heyjojos »

shirox wrote:I had a VMC200L from Vixen. Good views with 2" visual back. can consider that also
Is that good for AP as well? I saw a Vixen R200S. Which is a better scope?

Vixen scope comes at a premium that I wonder if its really worth the extra $$. Anyone has experience with the various types to enlighten?

I agree that viewing in Spore is limited. Travelling to Malaysia is certainly an option for me : )
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shirox
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Post by shirox »

I think any scope can do AP just to how much details and clarity you want. The VMC200 definately can do AP and visuals well enough for SG skies and will perform better in MY.
A second hand VMC OTA will set you back around $1000 with shipping.
For R200S you can consult Weixing cos i think he has one. lol
**************************************************************
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Mersing finally installed some water sink!
heyjojos
Posts: 93
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Post by heyjojos »

shirox wrote:I think any scope can do AP just to how much details and clarity you want. The VMC200 definately can do AP and visuals well enough for SG skies and will perform better in MY.
A second hand VMC OTA will set you back around $1000 with shipping.
For R200S you can consult Weixing cos i think he has one. lol
Is it a better scope compared to LXD75 ?

The price certainly is much 'better' lol : D
Robin Lee
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Post by Robin Lee »

heyjojos wrote:
shirox wrote:I think any scope can do AP just to how much details and clarity you want. The VMC200 definately can do AP and visuals well enough for SG skies and will perform better in MY.
A second hand VMC OTA will set you back around $1000 with shipping.
For R200S you can consult Weixing cos i think he has one. lol
Is it a better scope compared to LXD75 ?

The price certainly is much 'better' lol : D
It depends on what you do actually. The most important factor is the optical design. For the Meade model you mentioned, it's Schmidt Newtonian which is a Newtonian with a Schmidt corrector plate added in front. VMC200 is a Field-Maksutov Cassegrain which is a bit different than other Maksutov Cassegrain which has a closed tube design.

By the way, the LXD75 refers to the model of the German equatorial mount bundled with that package.

To find out if it's a better scope or not, it's important to know your goal first. For example, if you want to do deep sky astrophotograhy on very faint objects, you need a fast scope (defined by the focal ratio, i.e. f/ #). The smaller the number, the faster the scope. For example, f/5.6 scope is two times faster than f/8. Thus, you save twice the time of getting the same "flux" or amount of light.

In between the two choices you listed, the Schmidt Newtonian (SN) has an edge over the Schmidt Cassegrain (SCT) in deep sky photography in terms of speed. The SCT, however, has a better edge over the SN in terms of planetary photography since you can easily bump up the focal length by adding a 2x or even 5x barlow lens. SCT has an inherit nature of having long focal length.

Hope it helps.
Clear skies,
Robin.

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