Best sub £1500 refractor.....for imaging

[jabeoo1]

What about 2nd hand ?  

[Chris]

If I was spending this much on a scope, given the option, I would spend a bit more to get it certified. But I do get the point that you shouldn't have to do this in an ideal world. 

[LightBucket]

11 minutes ago, Chris Lock said:

If I was spending this much on a scope, given the option, I would spend a bit more to get it certified. But I do get the point that you shouldn't have to do this in an ideal world. 

Yes I agree, but I am concerned that this is even required with these scopes, and at £75 when only the odd one or two have to be adjusted, i think you should not have to pay if it is faulty....and needs adjustment, otherwise where does the £75 go..?? 

[ollypenrice]

I'd be happy to go with the Esprit 100 suggestion. I'd also be inclined to see if you could spot a Takahashi FSQ106N (The N is important) at something not a mile over budget. We have two used versions here and they are, most certainly, the business. Mine came in at just under £2K after some payback from the courier for whacking the box. (Scope was fine.) I'm not sure what Tom paid for the other one. I think it very unlikely that anyone will see either of these scopes for sale while Tom and I are still alive!

Olly

[gnomus]

16 minutes ago, LightBucket said:

Yes I agree, but I am concerned that this is even required with these scopes, and at £75 when only the odd one or two have to be adjusted, i think you should not have to pay if it is faulty....and needs adjustment, otherwise where does the £75 go..?? 

I agree.  However, I had a bad experience with 3 different scopes and with one of them many nights were spent chasing down what the issue was.  This went through the: is it me; is it the mount; is it the guiding; is it the camera; is it the wheel; is it the focuser; is it the CAA; is it the telescope; and on and on and on.  This AP game is extremely hard and tests equipment to its limits.  You will find that some things do not come up to the required standard.  

I tried to buy a car at the weekend.  The salesman tried to charge me £350 for ~£50 worth of wax by adding the suffix '-cote' at the end of another noun (in this case 'Glass').  He then wanted another £350 for a type of Insurance that would allow me to have some stone chips repaired (because it would be silly to claim against my actual insurance).  And finally, he wanted another £350 for something called 'Gap' insurance which seemed to me to be required because I was paying too much for the car (my insurance company would be able to get the car for less it seems and so I should insure for the 'Gap').

You could look at the check as a form of insurance.     

[steppenwolf]

3 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

If the Esprit is the equal of higher end brands as the advert implies, then why would it be advisable to have a brand new telescope sent off for bench testing at added cost? It either works flawlessly or it doesn't, in which case it would be returned anyway.  It just appears to imply the Esprit optics lack consistency, or am I being alarmist, and at a loss as to why some observers need to have the comfort blanket of a certificate to tell them that they have a good telescope? 

I am sick and tired of being a product tester for expensive astro gear and that is not levelled at the Esprit but at a couple of rather higher end products that I spent weeks trying to find out where the fault actually lay, at times questioning my own abilities but in the end the fault has so far always been with the gear. £75.00 is a really good value insurance policy unless free time is something that you have plenty of so although I wasn't expecting issues with my Esprit 150 ED, I felt it was worth getting an expert optician like Es to look it over. Don't under any circumstances think that QA issues are the sole domain of mass produced equipment - the really top end gear is in my experience just as vulnerable!

[gnomus]

4 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

I am sick and tired of being a product tester for expensive astro gear and that is not levelled at the Esprit but at a couple of rather higher end products that I spent weeks trying to find out where the fault actually lay, at times questioning my own abilities but in the end the fault has so far always been with the gear. £75.00 is a really good value insurance policy unless free time is something that you have plenty of so although I wasn't expecting issues with my Esprit 150 ED, I felt it was worth getting an expert optician like Es to look it over. Don't under any circumstances think that QA issues are the sole domain of mass produced equipment - the really top end gear is in my experience just as vulnerable!

I couldn't agree more.

[MattJenko]

For an alternative to give a bit of a choice, how about this one. Slightly over budget, and would need flattener, as does the Esprit 100 come in slightly over:

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p6106_TS-Optics-Photoline-107mm-f-6-5-Triplet-FPL53-Apo---divisible-tube.html

The link seems to point to a linking site as opposed to the actual link...

[Alien 13]

On the basis of best £1500 refactor without the limits of aperture then the Star 71 would probably win hands down.

Alan