Skywatcher 190 MN

[vlebo]

I am considering a 152 mm widefield refractor on an alt az mount for portable viewing but I do tend to drift back to the 190 MN . Do any of you learned chaps have any opinions on using the above purely for visual or is not suitable as I know it is optimised for AP ?

i remember reading a while back that a couple of members use them for visual and have heard good things  apart from collimation needing to be 100% , if that also applies for visual use.

[russ.will]

Alan! ALAN! Anybody seen Alan? 

Russell

[Ruud]

For visual use this design is just fine. It might well be an APO killer.

Some photographic instruments have hugely oversized secondary mirrors, which makes them quite bad for visual use, but a Mak-Newt generally has a rather small secondary.

Nice scopes. Good and fast!

[dweller25]

I have heard they are excellent for visual but heavy....

[Caldwell14]

I have always been tempted by a Mak Newton. Personally I would prefer a Intes micro should I go down that route. Skywatchers certainly do the job and good value they certainly are but unfortunately they do have all the joy and appeal of a toaster

[John]

Alan (Potts) really enjoys his Skywatcher 190 MN although it might be a little starved of attention now he has got his new 18" dob

I've owned an Intes 6" mak-newtonian and that was very like a good 5" apochromatic refractor in performance. The Russian Intes and Intes Micro MN's have vary small secondary mirrors, usually 18% or less the diameter of the primary and are mainly visual scopes, or at least thats how it seemed to me. The Skywatcher 190 has a 26% obstruction so I guess is aimed at imagers and visual observers ?

They are heavy scopes and take longer to cool down than their open ended newtonian cousins. The mak-newtonian design has around 30% of the coma that a newtonian of the same focal ratio would have.