>I am streching my budget here, but I was thinking of either the 7" Mak
or 10" SCT. My primary interest is planetary, but I would also like
something versitile enough to do deep sky and astrophotography. Does
anyone have any side by side experience with either of these? Which one
would you advise? I would appreciate any recomendations or cavets.<

I've owned a couple of 7" Maks and currently have 8" and 12" LX200s. The
Maks were both better planetary performers than either my 8" or the 12"
(there may be some exceptional 8" - 12" SCTs that perform as sharply as the
Mak though), so that would be a good scope if that was all you wanted to do
with it.

At f/15, the Mak would be all but impossible to use for productive deep-sky
photography though, so it would not fit your criteria for versatility. The
8" LX200 provides slightly (but noticeably) brighter visual deep sky images
than the 7" Mak as well.

If you intend to do film photography your best bet would be to get the 10"
f/6.3. For CCD imaging, the f/10 might be a better choice.

Visually, the f/10 and f/6.3 are going to show you the same quality image,
but at a different scale. Variations in optical quality between individual
units seem to be greater than the average optical quality differences
between a typical f/10 and f/6.3.


Emery Hildebrand

HTTP://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ehildebrand

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