3 Mini Reviews of Vintage Meades!
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
- How to collimate a Schmidt-Newtonian: www.weasner.com/lxd/techtips/k...
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I had forgotten about the MTS series, and always wondered why the Schmidt-Newtonians never became more popular. Now I know. I'm also nostalgic for those super-slick Meade ads that were in the magazines from the mid-80s to the early 90s, where probably close to half their catalog was showcased at either the front or back section of S&T and Astronomy. Whoever did their product photography did an incredible job.
As for the old refractors and the missing spreader/accessory tray, I'm guessing whoever previously owned them, like me, despised those things and always took them off to make storing and transporting the tripod a lot simpler. Plus, leaving your eyepieces exposed to dew was always a puzzling feature to me.
Pains me to hear you call vintage what was current when I was a kid. I definitely remember these.
The music of my childhood now gets played on Oldies stations.
Ed I have to thank you for your video's. I recently bought an Orion SkyQuest XT6 which is far better then my previous Powerseeker (I know). All you helpful information has been a blessing for me.
Love these vintage scope videos
And I'm sure the Schmidt-Newt is a piece of crap, but I think it looks AWESOME lol
I'd love to see a video on the Meade SN6 f/3.6 Comet Tracker
The word "comet" in any telescope is an almost sure sign of junk.
I agree,with the exception for Vixen made, Cometron telescopes from the 1980's sold by Celestron. I have the CO 100 (3.9" reflector on Vixen Polaris EQ mount,and the Cometron C0-62 62mm rich field refractor 300mm FL very good Vixen optics and super portable tiny refractor.
It takes me forever to get through these videos. You keep sending me down different rabbit holes.
Ah but some of these rabbit holes are so much fun, aren't they??
They're all fun. That's why I keep coming back for more! @@edting
Love seeing the vintage scopes. NEAF has some great vintage scopes on display. Hope to see you next year at NEAF Ed.
Thanks, Ed. I always enjoy your videos.
Ed, there is hope for the brass scope’s optics. If the scope is suffering from spherical aberration, the crown and flint lenses can just be respaced. For under correction I believe the lenses need to have a closer spacing, or possibly be oiled together using mineral oil depending how bad the aberration is. Spacing the lenses closer will change the color correction more toward the blue end and reduce the violet fringe which is good for deep sky objects. The red will be more out of focus though, but can be brought back in with old ramsden or Huygens eyepieces. I also like prism diagonals on achromatic refractors too. Just some food for thought.
I had the #312 back in the late 90's. It had a remarkable lens with great resolution... I could see moon's eclipse shadows on the planet's cloud surface.
Nicel, Interesting Ed 🔭....Thanks, you always go that extra mile
Similar shout out as goofyhayden. Your videos helped us tremendously to figure out what to buy! I was leaning towards a Schmidt cassegrain but being a first scope I went with your advice instead.
My boys and I found a used 8 inch dobsonian and bought that instead of the sct to learn and play with. It won't be as heart breaking if we drop it and crack the mirror on a $400 scope vs a $1300+ haha
I was a little worried about moving the scope totally by hand versus a computer geared system would be difficult to find things but we tried it last night and it's surprisingly easy. Targeted a few stars, easy peasy!
The moon looks amazing, can't wait to see the planets!
The planets can absolutely take your breath away. Have you looked yet?
I picked up an old 4 1/2” short tube Orion just to tinker with it. The tube was full of spider webs. I took it all apart and cleaned everything up real nice. When I put it back together I could not get anything to line up at all. I took the focuser off and found another lense in the focuser tube. I took it out and everything pooped into place. I plan on using it a little and then donate it to some kid that can’t afford a scope. It did teach me a lot, and thank you for getting me back into star gazing after 30 years.
Those Bird-Jones designs are always bad. See my review of the PowerSeeker 127.
I watched your review on the power seeker 127. Well maybe I won’t give it to some kid wanting to get into astronomy. It did teach me a lot though, I’m still glad I picked it up at $35. It was worth that. Thank you.
Patrick Moore said the minimum aperture was 3in for a refractor. I have a Celestron Firstscope 80.
If anyone's wondering, the purpose of the Schmidt corrector plate is to compensate for the fact that the primary mirror in a Schmidt Newtonian telescope is SPHERICAL. (Same as in a Schmidt-Cassegrain) In manufacturing, making a spherical primary mirror is vastly simpler (and cheaper) than a parabolic mirror, especially when it comes to a fast mirror like an F5. Ed presented is as though the Schmidt corrector was to improve coma, and in doing so seems to have implied that a coma corrector could do job of the Schmidt corrector, but that's not the case here. You couldn't just remove the corrector plate and substitute a coma corrector. That's not to say that a coma corrector wouldn't improve the edge sharpness in this system... but without that Schmidt corrector compensating for the spherical primary mirror, no coma corrector is going to make it usable.
Thanks for the clarification. I sometimes wonder if it would be better if they'd just leave it a spherical mirror (ATMs do it) instead of playing optical tricks. Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
@@edting Technically they did leave it a spherical mirror, which is why they added a corrector to compensate. A 6" mirror needs to be at least F-8.2 to F-12.1 (Depending on who you ask and what criteria you're trying to satisfy) before you can get away without parabolization. At F-5 a spherical 6" mirror would be pretty horrible.
I did some modeling in ZEMAX of a notional 8-inch f/4 Schmidt-Newtonian reflector and it turned out that the Schmidt-Newt removed about half the coma. It seemed that these things were punched out around the time of Halley's comet (remember Celestron's Comet Catcher?) and they were made quickly with not a great deal of quality control. Schmidt-Newts, and even more so, Wright-Newts, can be excellent photography instruments, but they need to be made well.
Thanks Ed.
I have the SN6 -- it's quirky and a bit dim, but it's optically good. Throw a JMI Mototrak III or later with an autoguider and even the AC drive will take reasonable pictures. But even the setting circles and dec slow motion weren't standard. The mount is also a PITA to transport (three legs on in the back of the car or out the back door makes it an awkward caltrop, two or one is still awkward, and fully disassembling is annoying in the dark). Mine collects dust as my fork-mount SCT on a field tripod goes out.
Thanks for that. Wow, another SN6 owner!
Look back "reviews" like this show that we do seem to be in a Golden Age of amateur astronomy telescopes. Glad I was a later bloomer! Thank you!
Oh boy. Guy I know just bought an MTS-SN6 the other day. First telescope. At least his is on a CG4 mount.
Good reviews! I hate to call my lx200 10" emc vintage, but I drooled over it and its brothers when it came out! (along with the c8's in the 70's...) I guess that means I'm vintage too. Where did the time go? 🤔🙄
I've never seen any refractor from that era, even the cheapies from department stores, that made that bad an image as the brass Meade. Almost surely the objective is in backward, or the front element is flipped. Disassemble it and check. To find out which side is the shallower on the convex element, hold it up so that a window or a lamp is reflected in it. Ignore the upside down reflection coming from the back. The shallower curved side will have larger right-sde up reflection. That's the side that goes toward the sky. Of course the concave element goes in back when you reassemble it.
There should be some markings on the edges of the elements that indicate which are the two interior faces. If a previous owner took the lens apart to clean it and thought the front element was equiconvex they could have reassembled it the wrong way round. If the radii are in fact different that could easily introduce a wave or two of spherical aberration.
@@ceejay0137 Yes and color error. And the whole stack might be in backward which would be worse.
Nice review. A couple. Of months ago I stumbled on a Towa 339 (80mm x 1200mm achromat) in original plywood case with all the accessories. Price was about the same as dinner for two at a teriyaki joint. It uses .695 on the drawtube but fortunately the OD of the tube was 1.254 in. so making a slip on adapter for 1.25 out of a section of aluminum tubing was fairly easy.
The OTA is a beast! Not too heavy at 6.5 lbs. with saddle, but it’s just over 4 ft. long and hard to get high enough for a comfortable eyepiece position. But I sure don’t want to give up on it. Still figuring out how I’m going to rig up a more convenient mount.
Those Towas are very nice and have a cult following.
Most of these old scopes use M36.4P1 (sometimes M36.4P0.75) threads on the back. You can replace the 0.965"/24.5mm eyepiece adapter with a 1.25" replacement. You can even use 2" accessories (e.g. M36.4P1->M42P0.75->2" holder). You don't get use of the the full 2", but can use e.g. a Pentax XW30 with no vignetting.
love your visdeos ed i wanted to ask if you have ever tried a rc scope and if you could maybe talk about them in a video
The issue with any RC is the collimation, and I don't have enough experience to feel comfortable talking about it...yet.
Ed, Great job, as usual. Have you tried the Ronchi test for a rough evaluation of the optical figure? It is simple to perform, and interpreting the results is much easier than the overly critical star test. My acceptance criteria for lower-end telescopes are based on the K.I.S.S. principle. One, does the image quickly snap into focus? Two, are the stars free of on-axis astigmatism? And three, are there straight bands across the objective in the Ronchi grating? If the telescope passes these tests, there is no need to go any further.
Some EAA folks are enamored with those SN OTAs.
Can you do a chapter on setting circles 👌🇺🇸
Hmmm...I think it's very obvious which photo was taken with the brass telescope, because it looks much softer and somewhat, but noticeably, less detailed.
I had an opportunity to get one of those brass jobs, but we were in the middle of scrambling to find a new place.....
Would love to see a review of the Explore Scientific Comet Hunter, a 152mm Maksutov Newtonian. I know it has "Comet" in the name!
The David Levy Comet edition Mak-Newt was superb.
Like! An 80 mm APO costs just as much as a Bresser 127/1200 mm achromat. I wonder which one is overall better for normal use (not astrophotography). I guess the 127/1200 mm achromat schould be better since the difference in aperture is so big. I would really apreciate your opinion on this :). Thank you!
Ed, have you ever used an 80mm F15 Towa 339 telescope? Do you think it is a good scope?
Those vintage scopes are decent and collectible. However, they are dated. The .965" eyepieces are tough to deal with.
@@edting thanks Ed!
ed have you ever used an APM scope, I'm wondering if it is a good buy to get the 140 mm refactor by APM
The APMs are wonderful, right up there with the best. I tend to forget mentioning them because we seem to have less access to them in the US. If you are buying the 140, be sure you have a sturdy mount for it.
Would a fully multi-coated, motorized MTS-SN6 change the purchase decision? Does the corrector reduce coma?
The coatings wouldn't change anything for me. Dealing with the helical focuser and the fork mount are the opposite of fun. In theory the mirror/corrector plate system works together to deliver a sharp image. In practice, the results are mixed depending on the sample you get. This one was decent.
It was a strange (marketing?) decision to pair an advanced optical design with inferior parts. A fast high quality Schmidt-Newt could be a good scope for photography. Thanks for another great video. Back in 1970 while in high school I ground a 6" reflector using a kit from Edmunds. Recently, after watching some of your videos I got back into the hobby by buying an 8" dob (which I promptly modded with a DobsonDream from Astro-Gadget).@@edting
Did the later Meade SN (LXD 55,75) have coatings on their optics?
In my experience, yes. But the LXD55/75 series had lots of other problems. They came from Meade's unfortunate "Blue Steel" era. The focusers were awful. You can put a Moonlite on it but the focuser can cost more than the scope.
@edting i already bought one.A SN 10" . It has a rack and pinion focuser, but also came with US made rotating rings. Just need to buy a mount to chuck it on. I did spend a night looking through it and was happy. He had it on Eqpro6, that handled it fine for visual.
"... and the 80-mms were usually, but not always, 80-mm refractors." Seems reasonable.
It's a real shame about the brass one, that the optics didn't match the performance of the exterior aesthetics. 😮
light pollution is becoming really horrible in most places . Why municipalities feel it's necessary to keep every streetlight on during the ENTIRE night is beyond me
Hi Ed. I own a Meade Astronomical Telescope D=80 mm F=1200 mm Japan from around 1976ish. It is an amazing little achromatic. I'm thinking about piggy-backing it on my C-11 (already have the rings).
It was given to me by a woman who was clearing out her deceased uncle's house. I had no idea what it was but saw the word free so scooted down the hill to grab it. Very glad I did because I love that scope.
I am hearing way too much of this lately. Our club has been getting a steady stream of donations from estates these past few years. Most of them are junk, but every once in a while we get one that makes us think, Hmmm...that looks interesting.
How many scopes do you own???
See my State of the Collection video. Someone counted 40. It's changed since then. This is not a big collection. Some club members have scope counts in the hundreds.
@@edting oh just 40 lol. Not much? Lol
@@edting I'm at 15 or 16 scopes right now. My best deal to date was a Celestron C-11 on a Losmandy G-11 with the 492 control system (I have been given a few scopes as well). I got it for $500CDN from quite a rich guy who had developed glaucoma. He told me he knew he was letting go it for nothing.
I have 5 telescopes set up in the livingroom as I write this. I'm out of control.
My wife is such a sport.
P.S. Ed, can you please tell me if you have an opinion on either the EQStarPro or the OnStep (from instein) after market computer control systems for the Losmandy G-11? They are about 7x cheaper than the Gemini 2.
@@edting I told my wife that you had said that there are people in your astronomy club with more than a hundred scopes and her answer was, "No!" LOL!