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Ultra Light 16" For £1500


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Hmmm,

2295 USD + 450 S&H plus 20% VAT at $1.55 / £ comes to £2125, £2670 at the non-offer price. More if there's 5% import duty on top.

I'd want to see some user reviews and tests first.

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Damn it, my C925 and C6 are now trembling in fear.

I planned on getting a big Lightbridge when I finish my PhD next year as a graduation present to myself and I'm now saving towards it, but this have to come up now. For an additional £200 this dob appears to be a much better scope and can be stored in a space roughly the same size as my C925. A 16" Strehl 0.92 mirror set alone will cost £1.74k from a UK supplier, not to mention the ultra light dob structure.

This is agonising, should I or should I not order it when they have this introductory offer, especially I'll need to sell my C6se and fairly new C925 to help fund it.

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I'd be very interested to see a good selection of reviews once these have been around for a little while.

I'd be particularly interested in how rigid the truss is, and how the mirror responds to being supported on only 6 points. I would have thought that it would need more.

Rob

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The biggest issue here is price, at £2k, this 16" UL dob is competing against mass produced dobs with 1/4 wave mirrors, like Meade 16" Lightbridge (£1.8-1.9k) and SW 400p (£1.75k) rather then premium dob from the like of David Lukehurst or Obsession (£3k+)

Could this be worse than the standard offering from Synta and GSO? The 6 point mirror cell is a worry, but they might get away with it due to the lighter sandwich mirror

I need to do more reading on this subject and hopefully convince myself not to take the risk of being an early adopter.

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No it's the scope with mirror, which is what made this deal very attractive.

The structure is $1295 USD

I've done a bit more research on this and I'm surprise there are almost no mention of Hubble Optics in any astronomy forum in Hong Kong except a thread where people were being extremely surprise to hear there are stuff originate from Hong Kong. After watching the NEAF video, I'd guess the scope and optics were made in Mainland China and then sent to HK for international distribution.

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but the Astromart review shows a cell with 18 points? It would be an easy fix to add six triangles to make 18 points plus they might offer it as an option for a few more quid.

Yes, the Astromart review is disappointing as it's only a review of the mechanical bits of the telescope - the author provided his own optics. Since the review doesn't address the most important factors of a telescope it's only of limited use. Even so, the author made a few tweaks to get around "less than optimal" design features :kiss: . Plus it appears that even if you do get the full metalwork+mirrors package from the supplier, you still have to glue the secondary mirror on, yourself.

I still want to see some reviews of the whole telescope before I form an opinion.

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I thought the problems with the sandwich mirrors were associated with the polish and figuring and the manufacturers overrate the wave front error.

May be a blank can be purchase and then have the mirror figured in the UK.

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If different parts of a sandwich mirror have different thermal expansion properties, that would be a serious problem. If the properties are the same, this suggests the use of the same material for different parts (difficult to achieve otherwise), why have a sandwich, rather than the "cast honeycomb" solution of the Hale mirror (not easy either!)

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  • 2 years later...

This is a fairly old thread but if anyone is still monitoring it...

I've got one and it has been quite a saga getting things how I want them.  The problems have mostly been to do with the Goto system which has not been properly thought through.  Fortunately I have access to tools.

On the plus side, the optical quality seems good and it really is a 16" telescope that is light enough for one man to manhandle unlike other inexpensive 16" Dobs out there where the ones I have noticed all have at least one very heavy part.

If people are interested, I could do a post about my experiences.

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