Visual Use

Because of this telescopes exceptional optical quality and the optimized secondary mirror holder (very thin spider vanes for minimal diffraction effects) image contrast is very high, even for planets and moon. In our opinion image sharpness is better than that of many other telescopes of equal aperture.

Its primary use is of course deep sky observations, i.e. galaxies, gas nebulae, star clusters etc. With its great aperture of 200mm the telescope offers an enormous light gathering power. At the same time it is very compact due to its short focal length. Higher magnifications can be achieved using good quality modern eyepieces.

Astro-Imaging

This is the strongest point of this wonderful telescope. With its very short focal ratio of f/4 exposure times are much shorter than with longer focal ratios (about 2/3 of that with a classical f/5 Newtonian). This makes the telescope perfectly suited for deep sky imaging. You can use strong filters to boost contrast and will nonetheless have relatively short exposure times.

Aside from the optical quality the mechanics must also be good for successful astro-imaging. With its excellent quality ultra-smooth 2" Crayford focuser this telescope offers a lot of comfort.

For deep sky astro-imaging we recommend to use a coma corrector. This will also add a few millimeters to the back-focus of this telescope to accomodate SLR cameras.

Instead of chosing exotic and incredibly expensive mirror substrates we have chosen to equip this telescope with a primary mirror cooling fan to accelerate cool-down time to ambient temperature. Until a mirror is properly cooled down it will create currents of warm air that will deteriorate the image - no matter which mirror substrate is used. Only after the mirror has cooled down this effect stops.


Parabolical Primary Mirror

The very precisely figured parabolical primary mirror of this telescope is not made of cheap float glass, but rather of BK-7 optical glass that is free of internal stress. Thermic properties are generally better than float glass. At the same time the mirror is way more affordable than more exotic primary mirror substrates that in our opinion bring hardly any advantage at all (see comments under "Primary Mirror Cooling Fan"). For easier collimation the mirrors are properly center marked.