CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: Orion StarMax 102's

Wow! Glen, you've given me a LOT to chew on!

You write that portability is one of the driving decisions for the scope. Is this for airline or car mobility? This matters a LOT. The StarMax 102 is highly portable and would easily fit in the upper bin of an airline cargo bay (or beneath your feet as carry on). The EQ-2 is a bit larger, and will have to be checked in using some kind of duffle bag/potato sack to make it 'shipable' In the car, of course, none of this matters. It simply needs to be small enough, and this scope certainly is that.

Eyepieces are a whole different story. Telescope design and Focal Length CANNOT be made up for completely by an eyepiece. But you can find out all about it here ...
http://www.davidpaulgreen.com/tec.html
Put in values and it will tell you the cold hard truth. Try the AstroView 100's values to the Apex 102's to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

For eyepieces, you will get the Orion 25mm Sirius Plossl whenever you order any Orion telescope. Might get the 10mm, too. It’s not as good in my experience, but it’s okay. As a general rule, the Sirius Plossl line are excellent performers in the 20mm and higher focal lengths. Below this, they get a bit soft when compared to TeleVue Plossls or even University Optics Orthoscopics.

And speaking of cold hard truths. Sounds to me like your telescope must almost certainly have a spherical mirror. This changes things somewhat.

I think you may want to seriously consider something like the AstroView 100. It comes with a very sturdy mount (the EQ-3 handles this scope quite well). This telescope should outperform your reflector on most things, and should be pretty easy to find things in. Also, for power views, you can buy a good quality barlow at some point and get that taken care of.

The AV100 is not nearly as portable as the StarMax 102, but it's somewhat more portable than your 114mm. Like the StarMax, it shouldn't need collimation if treated well. But you can find things in it MUCH easier than the StarMax. So if portability is mostly a car-thing, and not an airplane-thing, I'd get the AV100 if I were in your shoes (it's actually $15 LESS than the SM102, BTW).

I like having both. I think that, ultimately, you might end up selling your 114mm reflector OTA. Then, assuming you could afix it to your mount, you could buy the Apex 102. This would be a better course, to me. Glen, you'll get the experience you need with the wide field refractor, then you can transfer this to the StarMax 102.

Indispensible items, regardless of what scopes you get, are the 6x30 RA finderscope and the EZ-Finder II. One may also be able to get by with the Giant Mars Red Eye Finder from Apogee (aka Stellarvue red dot finder). I have all three of them and LOVE them. The Stellarvue doesn't work well in my AV100 (it's not specifically designed for the Synta/Vixen dovetail shoe, but it works in my Apex 102 base and not my AV100's, go figure?) Don't pay retail for them, though. Orion has 'accessory' sales from time to time and puts them on sale for more reasonable prices. Also, lots of these can be found at places like AstroMart used or brand new from Astronomics under the Celestron name, often for less. Still, Orion's stuff is nice in this regard. I like my EZ Finder II and my RA finder.

Many will scream that you need the 50mm RA finder. It costs, as you will notice, a good deal more. For large dobs, it is certainly better to go after the super faint fuzzies they can conquer. Sorry, you're not in their league here. These scopes do better with the smaller, 30mm RA finder first because of balance (the larger finder makes the tube weight diplacement to heavy at the eyepiece -- especially for the Apex style scopes), and relevancy (as noted above). Orion's supplied finders are good, but they're backbreaking to use. Get these and forget it!

One more thing. The focal length of the StarMax is definitely LONGER than the advertised 1300mm. Having compared it directly to my AV 100 (a fixed 600mm straight tube refractor whose numbers cannot be fudged), the Apex 102 has a focal length between 1360 and 1375. I'm not certain exactly where it lies in here. I would figure around 1370 for an accurate guess. I am positive of this by comparing it to my AstroView 100 at different powers on the moon. You can tell when one eyepiece is of a higher power than another, so you can verify this yourself. I'm sure DD has noticed this, too, if he's scientifically compared his Mak 102 to a scope with a fixed, non-folded light path.

Mak's work in a fascinating way. Read here for a very interesting history of Maksutov himself ...
http://tec.idcomm.com/tec_us/company/DmitriMaksutov.html
What Maksutov did was use the errors of spherical aberration against itself via the corrector plate and aspherical, painted secondary. Light magic, really. And darn good engineering if you ask me!

The irony is that Mak's use a primary spherical that is REALLY fast, like F/3, but the aspherical painted secondary reflects the light back down the tube in a VERY long cone, like F/14 in the Apex 102's case. Really quite neato! Another thing to consider is that the actual light being used is probably a little less than the full 102mm aperture of the corrector plate. If you look carefully in the diagrams of how Mak's work, the corrector plate actually diffuses the light out, defocusing it slightly. Since the corrector plate is 102mm, the primary probably loses a bit of that original light, so the primary is honestly more like a 98mm in terms of the amount of light actually striking the front of the tube. See Gary Seronik's review of the 127mm Orion Mak in the March 2002 Sky & Telescope to get an idea of what I'm talking about with the 102 version. I think his observations apply, just scaled down to the 102. I am certain the focal length is longer than 1300mm, so I believe the rest of his observations are probably on the mark, too.

As for eyepieces to buy, this depends in large measure what scope you buy. I know all beginners want to put the most powerful eyepiece they can in the scope, but you REALLY need to resist this temptation. High power is usually not very effective on any given night, and can only be used to its real potential on nights of exceptional seeing. So, with the Apex 102, get the Sirius Plossl 32mm eyepiece. You can probably get a good one from Celestron or maybe even Pro Optic. I have purchased a few cheapo eyepieces from Surplus Shed, but the quality has been hit or miss with these kinds of folks. To be fair, Orion is more consistent, in my opinion (though even they ship some less than adequate stuff from time to time). I would resist inexpensive zoom eyepieces and inexpensive wide field ones, too. Stick to Plossls and Orthoscopics. For your higher power eyepieces (12.5mm, 9mm, 7mm), go with University Optics Orthoscopics ...
http://www.universityoptics.com/uoep.htm
These are inexpensive and GOOD. Much better than Orion’s Plossls in the shorter focal lengths, and for a price I think you’ll find agreeable. Don’t bother with a Barlow for the Apex 102, but the AV 100 can handle the Shorty-Plus Barlow quite well. You’ll need to get the Celestron Baader Contrast Booster for the AV100 (less necessary for the Apex 102). This filter will help make Jupiter less purple, but also help to split double stars in the AV 100. The Apex 102 excels in double star splitting and doesn’t have any chromatic aberration to suffer through, so it’s less useful for this scope.

Regarding the funky springs of the EQ-2: the EQ-2 uses a rotating ring for fine motor coordination. This ring is on a flat and when it gets to the end, you can’t go in that direction any more! You have to unwind it back. The AstroView mount and the SVP use worm gears. They’re circular so they never get to an end. They keep on turning and won’t quit on you. Better.

Cool down time is exactly as you surmised. Remember looking at a parked car from far away over a vacant parking lot this summer? You’ll see the car, but it appears to ripple. This is caused by heat waves radiating off the very hot asphalt parking lot. Same thing with your telescope when you take it outside on a cold winter’s night. This is compounded by higher power. Less troublesome (in fact, in my experience, a non-issue) at lowest magnification. But I live in relatively warm West Texas -- though we’ve had SOOO much rain this year it’s like I’m back in the East again.

Given the soup you live in (all of the East has relatively poor skies), you really should consider the AV100. Refractors are famous for cutting through atmospheric disturbance better than mirrored telescopes (Maks included). Again, I’m not trying to discourage you. I like my little Mak. I LOVE it’s portability, too, and that’s something that the AV100 cannot deliver. But, I still think y’all would be happier in the long run with the AV100. On any given night, it will produce better images in Pittsburgh than the StarMax 102. If you lived in Arizona, things might be a little different. As it is, refractors are simply the best kind of scope for those of you unlucky enough to have to live in the East :-) I know, I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama (where the Appalachians start, BTW), went to school in Austin, Texas, and spent five frozen years in Iowa. Climatically, these are all part of the East of the USA. The West is better. And it begins somewhere between Fort Worth and Abilene. West Texas is the best, and New Mexico is even better!

¡Buena suerte, yankees!

CDS