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Is the Skymax 180 Pro really that good?

Ags

By Ags
in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups

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dark star

dark star

Posted
Posted

Astro Baby-all I can say is I have an Intes Mk66 Mak which I love, if your telescope is half as good it might be worth giving collimation a try.

I have a reflector as well, which I have never collimated because I am useless at anything technical, and it seems fine.

I have not intention of collimating the Intes unless I have to, but I would try to figure it out if neccessary as I intend to have the telescope for the rest of my life!

Looking through the instructions for collimating a Mak (I downloaded some for the Intes Mak from the internet, just in case!)

I would find it difficult and I would have to study the instructions for about a week to understand how to do it.

I think it is quite complicated, but that I could understand it if I really needed and wanted to, despite my not very technical type brain!

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beamish

beamish

Posted
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DS in truth I found collimating the Cape (modified Newt) faaaar more difficult !

I did ,like you, study collimation of my Mak thoroughly first and sought help from members on the Mak users Yahoo group, but when necessity required it I had no choice and although appears tricky because of the "pairs" of colly screws-it was actually relatively easy :D. The beauty is once done it holds collimation like a boiled sweet to a blanket !!:eek:

Oh! ...and like you I really really think the only way I'd part company with it is when I'm 6' under feeding the worms ! A MOST BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF KIT

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  • 2 weeks later...
great_bear

great_bear

Posted
Posted
This type of scope is ideal for me, decent aperture, lightweight and rear viewing. But as I said the views were poor. I can only comment on what I see. I'm figuring optical quality is a little variable and I got unlucky :)

Wait! - I think I may be on to something here...

Was the Skymax 180 Pro that you were testing fitted with the stock diagonal?

If it was, then that may well be the source of the problem. I've upgraded my diagonal twice. Firstly from the freebie one that came with the scope to the 1.25" Carbon Fibre William Optics one. That made a bit of difference I believe. Secondly, I further upgraded (only last week) to a Revelation 2" Quartz Dielectric 99% which I used for the first time last night. That made a substantial improvement - much more than I was expecting. If the Skymax 180 you were looking through was a gold-tube one that was using the supplied 1.25" diagonal, then it doesn't surprise me if the views were not great. The gold-tube Mak 180 comes supplied with Sky-Watcher's lowest-grade 1.25" diagonal. I don't know how the quality of the black-tube 180's diagonal fares in comparison. Why they supplied the SkyMax 180 with a poor diagonal and low-grade eyepieces that offer up mushy views is beyond me.

I guess anyone who is testing out the Skymax 180 needs to check that they've got a decent diagonal fitted (and eyepieces) that are of excellent quality in order to properly judge the scope.

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great_bear

great_bear

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To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure why I get such excellent results these days. True I've got better eyepieces, and much better diagonal - but (since you mention it) these better results do co-incide with when I started putting the telescope out to cool when I get home from work instead of half-hour before I go out.

- and maybe it still has further to go even in that case - because on both of the last two sessions - where I saw stunning views of Jupiter - those views happened about 90 mins after being outside.

Either way, my recent Jupiter views have been so good it's difficult to imagine them being improved on - a position I'd never thought I'd be in.

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beamish

beamish

Posted
Posted
To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure why I get such excellent results these days. True I've got better eyepieces, and much better diagonal - but (since you mention it) these better results do co-incide with when I started putting the telescope out to cool when I get home from work instead of half-hour before I go out.

- and maybe it still has further to go even in that case - because on both of the last two sessions - where I saw stunning views of Jupiter - those views happened about 90 mins after being outside.

Either way, my recent Jupiter views have been so good it's difficult to imagine them being improved on - a position I'd never thought I'd be in.

I'm guessing who've hit the nail on the head with this one GB, The very fact that the 180 has NO fan to aid in cooling plus two great lumps of glass enclosing a tube is not going give XLNT views unless adequately cooled.

Even with the fan running I try to prepare as early as poss by simply switching it on and walking away. I noticed " baffle plumes " the first few times I viewed thru my Mak simply because it hadn't cooled-during collimation (I left that alone on that occasion BTW) BUT the point is, if I get baffle plumes after 1/2 to 3/4 hour of the fan running what are you likely to get ?? No EP no matter how good is going to rectify that- The scope has to cool !

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great_bear

great_bear

Posted
Posted

I wouldn't like to try - have you seen how thick it is? :)

However, the side-fan technique - as described in your other post might be a workable alternative - provided you can get close enough to the mirror using side-access. Of course you'd have to make sure that you cope with those occasions where you may want more mirror shift for big focal changes, such as using a binoviewer.

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Astro_Baby

Astro_Baby

Posted
Posted

You could put one in the back - its what I intend to do IF the scope performs well enough to justify the effort. I will have twin fans on the back with caps that screw into place when the fans arent being used to keep the interior of the scope clean.

YOu could also look at the lymax type fans I guess.

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  • 3 weeks later...
great_bear

great_bear

Posted
Posted

Imagine pushing a Polo mint up and down a pencil. If the Polo mint isn't an exact fit for the pencil it will flop about slightly as you change direction. If the Polo mint is the mirror in your SCT or Mak, that flop will shift the image reflection about when you change direction during focusing.

For astrophotographers, a bigger problem is that such a flop (with resulting image shift) can also happen when the scope tracks across the meridian during imaging.

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great_bear

great_bear

Posted
Posted

The problem is that the "slop" or "flop" makes focusing annoying. It means that the control-knob's "point of perfect focus" is different depending on whether you reached it by turning clockwise or anti-clockwise. Naturally when you focus normally you'll tend to overshoot and wind back - but with this problem when you wind back the point has changed, plus the object tends to shift to the side slightly. It's very frustrating.

All SCTs/Maks suffer from this to some degree.

One solution people adopt is to screw a traditional (refractor-style) focuser onto the back of the scope, and use that for fine-focusing.

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