Vixen VC200L f/6.4 or Orion Optics Ct8 f/4.5 ?

[konstantinos75]

Hello,

Happy New Year 2016 everyone!

I am the owner of the Vixen VC200L f/6.4 telescope which I mainly use for astrophotography of galaxies and planetary nebulae with my CCD camera SBIG ST2000XM with CFW9. After some years of usage, I am thinking to sell this scope and buy the Orion Optics Ct8 from an amateur astrophotographer. The Orion Optics comes with the well known baader steeltrack  + baader mpcc mark III corrector.

Here you can find the tech specs of the two telescopes for comparison

http://www.vixenoptics.com/Vixen-VC200L-Reflector-Telescope-p/2632.htm

http://www.orionoptics.co.uk/CT/ctspecifications.html

The image scale I have with these scopes is 1.19 arcsec/pixel with the VC200L and 1.69 arcsec/pixel with the Orion Optics Ct8.

I would like to hear some expert opinion whether to go with Orion Optics Ct8 or not.

My main concern is which telescope has the best optics for astrophotography? What are the disdvanatages of Orion Optics Ct8 compared to Vixen VC200L?

For your reference the mount I have is Skywatcher HEQ5 Synscan Pro.

Thank you

Konstantinos

[johnrt]

They are quite different scopes, the VC 200L reduced to f/6.4 is around 1260mm focal length, whereas the Orion is 900mm. Have you considered the different field of view this will give? If your interested in galaxies and planetary nebula then reducing your field of view is maybe not the right way to go?

[konstantinos75]

Hi

Thank you for your reply.

Apart from the field of view criterion will the Orion Optics provide better images compared to the Vixen VC200L?

I found these test reports about the two scopes.

http://airylab.com/contenu/mesures/astro/rapport%202012-43001-a.pdf

http://airylab.net/contenu/mesures/astro/rapport%202011-15001.pdf

It seems the  Orion Optics suffers from some astigmatism..