meade schmidt-newtonian?

[Ags]

I'm looking at an advert for a 6 inch Meade Schmidt Newtonian for 399 euros - you don't see these scopes that often... Would that be a good price? Are they comparable to the supposedly fabulous Mak Newts?

The ad is on www.te-les-koop.nl, by the way.

[John]

I've not used a schmidt-newt but I believe that the design is quite different from a mak-newt. The SN's seem to have quite large secondaries and have very fast primary mirrors - F/4 ish. I believe their strengths are wide field and imaging.

[Peter Drew]

The Schmidt Newt is to the Mak Newt as the Mak Cass is to the Mak Newt in general. In each case it's a design consideration to employ either a Scmidt corrector plate or a meniscus shell to compensate for the aberrations of a fast basically spherical primary. I made a few Schmidt Newts commercially in the 70's, to be honest, the main attribute of the system is a wider coma free field than a standard fast Newt. I wouldn't expect one to match a Mak Newt for high resolution performance, particularly in view of the necessary large secondary.

[Merlin66]

I have one of the original Cometracker Meade 6" f3.5 Schmidt-Newtonians.

A great scope! Ultra wide field and very fast for imaging.

[Peter Drew]

I seem to remember that the Celestron Comet Catcher, 5.5" F3.3(?) was a similar instrument, the whole eyepiece/secondary mount moved as a single unit for focusing.

[John]

I seem to remember that the Celestron Comet Catcher, 5.5" F3.3(?) was a similar instrument, the whole eyepiece/secondary mount moved as a single unit for focusing.

I remember that one as well - they seem to be regarded as collectable in the USA now.

At F/3.3 the view with a low cost ultra-wide eyepiece would be, er, interesting

[Ags]

They must be brilliant scopes for video astronomy - superfast.

[whirlpool5194]

I had one yonks ago, great little scope. You'll need to change the focuser if you want to use it for photograpghy. It the only thing that let's in down though.... hth

Wp