Hioptic 6" Maksutov Cassegrain NMC1900x152 Telescope Review

HiOptic 152 > First Light

FIRST LIGHT

Please excuse the quality of images on this page. They were taken using a wobbly EQ3 mount using a hand held camera in poor weather conditions and later I found the scope was out of collimation too!

TERRESTRIAL OBJECTS

After aligning the finder scope with the OTA the first object to try was a cockerel weather vane on top of a church 1km/0.6mi away. The image below was taken through a Meade 40mm Super Plossl lens. The supplied 20mm lens was tried but it was unable to come to a sharp focus. The weather couldn't decide between sun or thunder so the seeing was difficult but it may have been because it was too close. It is worrying that Hioptic doesn't provide a wider eyepiece than 20mm with this high zoom scope.

UPDATE: Having tested on a day with clearer conditions a full range of eyepieces from 40mm-6.4mm have been now been used. With the 6.4mm the beak of the bird filled the view in the eyepiece and was clear and sharp.

When it became dark, seeing was still poor, and clouds covered the night sky. However, I'm lucky to have a TV mast that can be seen on top of a hill about 8km/5miles away. Below the cloud line, the mast lights could still be seen and were used for these dark tests.


Sub 1 second exposure.	15 second exposure.

The light gathering ability was impressive for a Maksutov with a 15 second exposure looking like it was taken in day conditions. The images showed noticeable tripod wobble indicating the EQ3 would be difficult to use for even basic astro imaging.

MOON

Early in the evening the moon put in a brief appearance while darting in and out of the clouds. The views through the scope were very sharp, and where the craters cast a shadow, they were very rich in detail. It didn't appear so bright that it would require a moon filter. Using a Meade 40mm and 32mm eyepiece, the whole of the moon just about fits in view. Using the supplied 20mm eyepiece however gets you deep into the moon backing up my theory that Hioptic should supply something wider with this scope. There were no signs of of blue and red fringing around the edges using the eye but I did notice some in my camera. Sadly the seeing conditions were not good enough to try out the supplied 6.5mm eyepiece and it would not come into focus.

JUPITER

Later that night Jupiter came up above the horizon and there was just enough time between the clouds to catch a glimpse.

The view was too bright in both 40mm and 32mm eyepieces. The eye could see a big white circle (Jupiter) and 4 bright dots (it's moons). Colour fringing was obvious. I thought it might be because it was too bright, low on the horizon and in bad air conditions, but I suspect there may be a problem with the collimation.

Normally this reviewer would reduce the brightness by using more zoom with a closer lenses but these were unable to get focus due to the poor seeing conditions. It was clear that Jupiter on these wider lenses would benefit from a planet or moon filter. It was so bright any details were being washed out. The manufacturers specification suggested including sun and moon filters but none was supplied with this kit.

The image below was a single frame captured on a Casio QV-2900UX digital camera. Even on the camera the image was too bright so the cameras zoom and high shutter speed were used to reduce the glare.

The four moons in the image above may be hard to see if the reader is viewing in a bright room.

STARTEST

A few days later conditions cleared enough to do a star test on Capella. Capella is the 6th brightest star in the night sky and through this scope it was very bright indeed. It showed obvious colour finging which I later put down to collimation issues. Other less bright stars nearby just exhibited the pin sharp white dots you would expect from a Maksutov.

SUMMARY

Despite the poor conditions the views from this telescope looked very promising. It provided typical sharp Maksutov optical views on rich dark backgrounds despite the reviewers light polluted sky. There seems to be a bit of colour fringing on bright objects. I'm put this down to the objects being low on the horizon and suffering air de-fraction, but I later found the scope arrived with bad collimation.

It's been a funny year with very few opportunities to get outside under clear skys. Some might say global warming but being an astronomer I'll but it down to the Sun being in a quiet stage with no activity.

SECOND LIGHT

On a slightly clearer night a better shot of a nearly full moon was taken. There was a little colour fringing with a small amount of blue at the top and red on the bottom. The moon was still low on the horizon so we can't rule out this being the result of air de-fraction yet but starting to suspect collimation issues.

THIRD LIGHT

A few days later the moon was higher in the sky and no signs of colour fringing after collimation.

FIXED THE CROSS EYES!

Eventually figured out how to fix the bad collimation and it's like a new scope!