Skywatcher Skymax 150 PRO vs Skywatcher Evostar 80ED DS-Pro

[starscy]

What will be the best choice between the above two options and why? I am looking for a general purpose 'grab-and-go' OTA.

[John]

Difficult to say as these scopes are very different in design and specifciation - one being a long focal length 6" maksutov and the other a shortish focal length ED refractor of much less aperture. Of the 2 I think the 80ED would make the better "grab and go" because it needs less of a mount and it's more or less ready to use straight from the house wheras the mak will need quite a lot of time to cool down.

It's a bit like comparing "apples and pears" to be honest !.

John

[PaulG]

I am looking for a general purpose 'grab-and-go' OTA.

These two are like chalk & cheese really.

I would lean towards the 80ED for "grab & Go".

Mainly because of weight and cool down.

Paul

[starscy]

What about optical performance? Will the Skymax 150 Pro be a better scope in all cases?

[John]

What about optical performance? Will the Skymax 150 Pro be a better scope in all cases?

It's not really fair to even start to compare them because of the large aperture and focal ratio difference. The ED80 will enable wider fields of view but in all other areas the extra aperture will win.

A better all-round scope might be a 5 or 6 inch schmidt-cassegrain such as the Celestrons. I've used a C5 on an alt-azimuth mount and it was a very nice "grab and go" combination. You can always use a F/6.3 focal reducer then as well to get lower power, wider fields of view.

John

[skywatcher2]

hi john here spotting scopes any good for terestrial

[Whippy]

As has been said before, comparing these two scopes isn't really do-able but if it was for visual I'd have the skymax 150 everytime, it's not that heavy so you can mount it on a lightwieght(ish) mount, cool down time isn't the huge issue that a lot of people claim. I've owned two 6" Mak-Casses including a skymax 150 and they're norally ready to go for low/medium power viewing in a short space of time although you'll need to get it properly thermally equalised to ramp up the magnification. Depending on where you store it, this could take as little as 30 minutes in my experience. The downsides are that you'll almost certainly need a dew shield or strap (or even both!) and reducers (which you can add to Mak-Casses as well) add to the cost.

The ED80 is a great scope and it's great for those wide power views and big open clusters, not so great for everything else though.

As an alternative, why not consider a 5" reflector like the explorer 130? Small and light enough for grab & go, enough aperture for nice views on a whole host of objects, no cooldown issues and a dew shield would suffice so no electrics to worry about.

Tony..