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

This is a very good astrograph for its price. The field is fairly flat and distortion-free, so there is no need for field compensators or coma correctors. Also you will not get any diffraction peaks in the images as the secondary mirror is held by the corrector plate. The secondary mirror is large enough to easily cover APS-C sized sensors. The focuser is designed so that the sight can be used for both visualization and visual observation without the use of extension cords. This has the…

I am amazed at how superior this compact scope is in such a small/compact body at such an affordable price. Sharp, high-contrast images with the ability to extend zoom levels thanks to a long stack focal length and quality optics. Weighing just 5 pounds, it's an excellent scope for travel or for quick viewing of ground and astronomy imagery. It even comes with two KE eyepieces (25mm and 10mm) which give a good image with an apparent field of view of around 45 or 50 degrees. I have a set of…

I ordered this scope direct from Revain and it arrived in a badly tattered box and I thought the collimation wasn't working and it might have jammed optics. Without hesitation they sent me a brand new scope with a green dovetail rail. And having had a chance to play around with both scopes I can say the following. The "clamped" optics were actually air currents inside the tube. I didn't let the scope cool long enough to get used to the outside air. So that's the first thing you should know…

In general, I'm happy with the sight's performance. When I received the device I did a star test and it looked perfectly collimated. The focus knob is smooth with no play. It does an excellent job of separating binary stars. The Moon and Saturn were slightly clearer and sharper compared to what I saw on my Celestron Nexstar 6SE SCT. Metallic flake paint is fine. The 2 inch star is nice but I took a star off because the star diagonal is lower quality and doesn't have a compression ring to hold…

The first light for this scope was fired under adverse conditions - on a warm Texan summer evening with a full moon. Needless to say I wasn't expecting much but I was surprised! Jupiter showed excellent detail, the Great Red Spot was clearly visible, and some structure was visible at the edges of the cloud band. Saturn was also nice to see, despite being much closer to the moon. Good contrast, Cassini region is visible, cloud bands are visible on the planet. I was really impressed. The sight…

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…

I got this from Revain Warehouse Deals. It was packaged incorrectly and received terrible beatings from UPS. If the Schmidt-Cassegrain received such blows, the corrector plate could shatter. I keep it. It doesn't offer a wide field of view, but reduces it to 48x (with 56mm Plössl) or 68x (Pentax 40 XL). It's just under a degree, but it's sharp across the field, although it suffers from some vignetting. On the other hand, 450x is a sharp and useful magnification, while 386x is normal. I wear it…