OK, this my latest. I've worked with a few Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes over the years. I had a C5+ with very nice optics, and an observing buddy had a great C8. Otherwise, my experience has been uneven. But the reputation for these scopes purchased lately has been very good, and I wanted a good all-around observing scope of some size for planets, star parties, and nights when clouds come by around midnight.
I took this new C8 tube for a spin last night and formed a preliminary impression: Fantastic! If there was image shift, it was entirely buried in the shaking created by my touching the focus knob. Even slightly out of collimation the scope gave wonderful view of Saturn, complete with rings A, B, and C, and four bright moons. And a not half-bad view of Mars. After I collimated it, the star images looked pretty textbook to me at 400x (the planets had moved behind the trees by that point). Wonderful! It's a delightful scope, and very smart-looking. It came Fastar-ready, but for now it will just sit nicely on the EM-10.
Perhaps I can quit buying scopes now. Just kidding. I'm joining TA: "Hi, my name is Val, and ...."
Update: I took the C8 out to a scout camp this week. I gave a speech to about 90 young women who were camped there, and then they all looked at Saturn. I love the comments they made: "It looks like a picture!" "It looks so Saturn-y!" "It looks like a sticker." "Whoa!" You know, Saturn is the big show. The rings looked great, and moons, and the shadow of the rings on the planet. Most viewed the planet through a 15mm Orion Expanse eyepiece, at 133.3x. After everyone had looked, I pulled out the Vixen Lanthanum 5mm, and we looked at 400x. At moments of good seeing, this was a fabulous view, but I did not get to look much, as I wanted everyone else to see.
Then all the girls left, but a few leaders stayed to see a few more things. I put in the Meade SWA Series 5000 28mm, and we looked at the Ring Nebula, a random galaxy that I found in the Virgo cluster, M13, and M8. All of them looked great. Stars were pinpoint across the middle 70% of the view (the 28mm 68-degree eyepiece taxes the standard SCT just a bit, but I'm probably the only one who noticed, and I always put the thing I'm looking at in the center). With the polar aligned EM-10, everything stays right where I put it. M13 received votes for favorite object, next to Saturn, of course.
I like the scope a lot. It sits well on the EM-10, though it's about as much as I would put on that mount. I did not notice any image shift at all in this scope. Focusing snapped in at about the rate one would imagine for an f/10 scope, but, when focused, the view was very sharp, on this night limited by seeing and not by the scope.
