80 ED vs 102 F5 - And the winner is . . .

. .. the Orion 80mm ED Apochromatic Refractor - but does it matter?.

Just as Clay called it in his comments on my earlier post, the 80mm ED outperforms the larger 102mm Celestron. Bottom line: Quality counts. But . . . if I were on a limited budget and looking for a nice scope for star clusters and other deep sky objects, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the 102mm at less than half the price. And I am still wondering if all this grasping for a slight edge on quality is worth it.

Advantagesof the 102? Inexpensive and at 5 pounds, a bit lighter. Obvious disadvantage of any inexpensive, fast achromatic such as this - false color fringes around moon, planets, and bright stars.

This morning I pointed both scopes at M13, the well-known globular cluster in Hercules, and the 80ED showed me a little more - which is remarkable because the 102 has 63 percent more light-gathering surface. But the faintest stars I could see in and around the cluster with the 102, I could see with the 80mm and see them easier. (Conditions were ideal - transparency was about magnitude 5.5, as good as it gets here.)

Ah, but what exactly do you gain with the 80 ED? Sharper images - I think that's why you can see as faint, or fainter stars - and no obvious color fringing on bright objects such as the moon, planets, and bright stars.

That said, I started with the 102 and toured M13 (hard to leave it - what a gorgeous morning!) - the double double (could not split in either scope, but the two stars appeared elongated), and M57. I used a 20mm Plossl in a 2X barlow to achive 60X in the 80mm ED, and I used a Speers-Waler 7.5mm to achieve 66X in the 102. (The 80mm has a 600mm focal length, the 102 a 500mm focal length.) On M57 I thought it was easier to see the central hole with the 80 ED, so add better contrast as a plus for this scope.

I'm still waiting for a Vixen zoom eyepiece to arrive. Here the issue isn't quality, but convenience. The zoom is easier to use in the way I'm observing. I have no doubt it will not equal the quality of a decent, fixed eyepiece, but . ..

. . . I have to ask if any of this emphasis on quality matters? I was perfectly happy this morning using the 102. I was really reluctant to get up and switch scopes. For that matter, I was perfectly happy using the 80mm ShortTube a week ago, a scope of comparable quality to the 102 and lighter and smaller. My disatisfaction with either of these inexpensive scopes comes only when I compare them with the 80 ED.

But what's my goal? i want to look at M13 and see it for the incredible object it is - a collection of 500,000 or so very, very old stars, gathered in splendid isolation outside the plain of our galaxy. I want to look at M57 and realize I am seeing the death throes of a star that was probably much like our own sun. I know the little doughnut-shaped cloud of gas I detect in any of this scopes is a very young and short-lived phenomena in astronomical terms. It's probably about 5,000 light years away. I want to lookat the double-double and know that beyond my sight this is a collection of I believe nine suns caught in an incredible ring-around-the-rosie dance, their grvaitational "hands" holding onto one anothr as they all swing about in a delicously complex swirl.

So is there anything in the slightly enhanced image from the 80mm ED that brings me closer to grasping these incredible realities than I can get with one of the lesser scopes? That, for me, is the real question. And the real answer is "no." You see with your brain. The role played by your eyes, aided by the telescope, is merely one of being a stimulant. In the end, you get very little information through your scope and eyes. There is a lot to be said for being there. The whole experience contributes and being out, alone, at 4 am in the 29-degree March air and slowly letting your night vision develop until you are perfectly at home in the dark - these things are important in ways I can't define. And it seems very important to me to know in that moment that i am experincing this distance object through the photons from it actually reaching my eyes. But whether those photons make the journey to my brain through a ShortTube 80, a Celestron 102, or an 80ED really doesn't matter. The slight differences get turned into a major distraction by my obsession with trying to see better in ways I can measure.

So the real answer - for me - is I need to stop obsessing over minor differences in equipment performance and focusing more on what it is I am observing. The finger - the scope - is pointing to the awe inspiring universe - and I am caught up in a minute examination of the finger! That is blindness. Here's to a sea-change in the direction of light.

So does that mean having quality optics is bad? Of course not. What's bad is expending too mcuh time and mental energy on things of little consequence.

h4>Comments? Please send them to me and I'll post them here - send them to: gregstone@verizon.net