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🤣 I haven't received any formal complain or so sofar, but sure they must be nervous every time I deploy the big gun 😁 Seriously I do most of my observations from the rooftop, but sometimes I am bit lazy and try to catch up some doubles and the planets behind the buildings from my tiny balcony. Then you see all neighbours shutting their windows up at once 🤷‍♂️🤣 Enjoy your new scope, a double star cracker!

... ut one you go long you get hooked, here my Japan made Carton F13 before restoration.. 😁 same tripod and mount

Wow that's exactly my same scope/tripod combination. Only my alt az is a Giro Ercole. Great taste Solar B!

Thanks Don, too much to learn and digest from your posts. I just bought myself the HRCC and am waiting for a clear night to test It.

Will do, and I will keep on going trying to improve my collimation skills, etc. I am pretty new to Newtonians. Perhaps an autocollimator will do? any experiences? I was looking at one of these https://www.firstlightoptics.com/catseye-collimation-tools/catseye-infinity-xlkp-autocollimator.html Are those better than the typical Cheshire/SightTube than I am currently using?

I see what you mean but still I am surprised that all these factors put together can defeat an advantage of 27% more aperture in the reflector. This is 62% more light grasp, and the smaller 4" scope still not only matches the larger but defeat it. I am surprise that nobody else seem to be surprised by this observation.

Well It seems that the large CO (35%) of the 130mm is enough to impact the image as to obviously show less stars in a similar FOV, magnification and exit pupil than a 102 mm refractor despite of the 3cm of more aperture of the former. Lesson learnt.

That would mean that a 6" F8 refractor and 6"F8 Newtonian are expected to perform around the same, I guess. To pickup just an example of the top of my head..

I see this in the practice indeed but how's that from the theoretical point of view? What about the "aperture is King" tenet in astronomy then? "Aperture is King" for "seeing finer detail", but also for "seeing deeper". This is what is repeated ad nauseam in every astro forum since I know of.

For an 8" @ F5 to have a fully illuminated field one is looking more to 30-32% of CO, i.e a secondary of 60-63mm.

So all that said I can confirm that a reflector to be able to compete with a refractor, the former has to be at least 27-30% larger in apertura. The myth becomes truth.

As the title says. My 102mm F11 achromat is showing fainter stars at 46.7X than my new 130mm F5 Newtonian does at 40.6X. I' m aware the effect magnification has on seing fantier point light sources, but according my math 6X more should not overcome 3cm of larger apertura of the reflector. On the contrary, my math tell me that the reflector should see around 0.1 magnitude deeper than the frac does... I have check mi collimation to the best of my current abilities. Clear skies C

That's right, estimates down to .1 mag are expected. And yes, field of view should be fully illuminated or at least symmetrically illuminated.

You guys think it makes not sense because maybe not worthy to buy a coma corrector costing more than twice than the Chinese scope needed to be corrected? I have seen some folks with eyepiece collections costing many times more than the scopes they are used on. But again, I am not sure that this would be like buying the latest generation low noise cold camera to shot mag 14 carbon stars with your ShortTube 80. On the other hand, I have heard this 130PDS is used by some guys here for AP, and I guess some of them plug a CC into this scope for this application.. why wouldn't one plug a CC for visual then? I'm not interested now in obtaining an larger/more worthy Newtonian for the kind of observation I pursue at the moment (visual observation of brighter variable stars ). Probably some day I will get something like am 8" but I don't think that would happen any time soon. Maybe I should consider a fast refractor, but I would be struggling with CA instead of coma (not enough money for an APO). However I m not sure what would be worst (or less bad) for visual variables, coma of the fast reflector or false color (and field curvature) of a fast refractor.

Great info here Don, thanks. I have the SW 130PDS which has a 2" focuser. Which ES and TV eypieces you would recommend then at F5? As you say, probably I wouldn't need perfect astigmatism correction right at the edge! I am happy with the level of correction my Fujinons 10x50 provides (or my F11 refractor for that matter). Also, in the practice what does offer the Paracorr over the ES HRCC? Thanks, C