Quattro F4 8" Carbon Tube

[Stargazer_00]

Quick question.

Does anyone have the Carbon Tube version of the Quattro F4 8" by Skywatcher?

Interested to see how much they weigh. Wondering if it would hang on a AZ4

[Stargazer_00]

managed to go two pages without an answer. something no one knows!

[bingevader]

Seems totally bizarre seeing as it's a fairly major selling point!

Found this, but it only refers to a shipping weight of 1.09kg!

That can't be right?

Depending on how interested you are, you could ring one of the suppliers and ask them to pop it on the scales!

Cheers

[PARTY MARTY]

Hi Stargazer_00I

I own the Skywatcher Quattro 8s (steel tube) as my main CCD imaging scope, I get fantastic views from the Quattro, However I cannot justify the sudden £200 increase for the Carbon fibre variant and being around a 1Kg lighter than the steel tube one! Apparently the Carbon fibre is to prevent thermal flexure where sudden changes of temperature ruin CCD images! However I have never come across this problem at all with my Quattro 8S and I've been doing exposures for as long as 5min to 10mins for long periods of time! The main problem with the Quattro is you'll need to collimated the mirrors everytime you use it for astro-photography for intial set-up at the beginning of each night, Here this is done by using a lazer collimator to achieve this! To be honest with you mate I would opt for the Quattro steel tube variant, it's much cheaper than than CF and there's hardly any difference between them in size and weight??

[laser_jock99]

The CF tube variant is supposedly stiffer than the steel tube models and might be an advantage if you are planning to hang a really heavy camera set-up of the focuser. In some cases the steel tube has been noted to twist under load causing CCD orthogonality issues. Premium scopes like the Boren Simon Super Newts have CF tubes for this reason. It is a relatively easy DIY fix to strengthen the area around the focuser by adding an internal strengthening plate. Have seen this done on the Aussie forums. I haven't seen tube flex on my Newts but then I'm using lightish DSLR's combined with longer Losmandy type dovetail bars which provide better tube support anyway. Combine this with a solid top bar for the guide scope and tube flex might never be an issue for you. Unless you subject you scope to huge temperature variations in a session the optical path length won't change a lot. It always pays to cool down the scope to ambient before starting for other, optical reasons anyway.