Review on 🔭 Sky-Watcher 150mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope - Advanced Compound-Style Reflector with Large Aperture by Dre Fishburne

Since the big planets will be in the optimal position for me in the next few years, I bought this OTA (180mm/f15) as a planet killer for my venerable Celestron C5/750 f/6. It arrived just in time for Jupiter's opposition on April 7 - complete with a GRS transit plus an Io transit with a shadow. The telescope did not disappoint - my family watched all three (Io, his shadow, and the GRS marching across the face of Jupiter with great glee). Although my sample has very little chromatic aberration (causing slight green-purple fringing on Jupiter's limb), the images are sharp as nails with amazing detail (especially when used with orthoscopic eyepieces). Beast but its mini dovetail base is standard so I replaced it with a lightweight Orion rectangular finderscope. The 2" optical back is also something extra (extra weight) if you're using it as a planet killer - all my high power eyepieces are 1.25". Luckily the OTA has an SCT thread, so I use a 1 .25" Visual Back Blue Fireball compression ring and a 1.25" Orion Dielectric diagonal. I also use my low profile Blue Fireball SCT to T2 imaging attachment adapter. The OTA weight and Vixens V shaped dovetail means it will easily fit any EQ5 equivalent 20lb weight mount (Saxon EQ5, Celestron CG-4, Meade LX70, Orion SkyView Pro) On my Orion SkyView Pro there are two 7.5- for OTA lb counterweights required (the stock 7.5 + 4.0lb weighed slightly less.) For a 7" OTA, this OTA fills a nice niche (both in size and price) between crowded 6" and 8 -inch screens markets (dominated by SCT with lower contrast resolution). he size, the only options are Orion 180 and SkyWatcher. SkyWatcher's decision to use the SCT's visual back made me nervous.