Telescope Reviews: Hot News for 2013 : 275 mm F/14 Planetary Mak

Hi Everybody,

I hope you enjoy your christmas 2013 with your family and friends, merry christmas from Germany.

Russian have christmas holidays only at begin of January, so i received today news from Russia, good news.

Phd in Astrophysics Philipp Keller from Germany, the famous creater of Autoslew for ASA Mounts and big APM Telescopes is a very very scilled opticial designer and optician. His has a long history and polished him self schmidt cameras and the famous deltagraphs.

I asked Philipp if he can design for me the optics for the new planetary Maksutov Cassegrain I am interested to produce in small numbers. Philipp is very busy with his professional job, so I have had to wait long time in the line, but finaly he got a bit time and designed a outstanding new Planetary Maksutov. The Optics we get manufactured by INTES MICRO to our specs, the mechanics by Matthias Wirth in germany, called by Roland Christen a Artist in Telescope making .

The final price of the optics we received today, now I need the quote from Matthias.

Some first infos of the Optical design:

Meniscuslens made from Russian K8 ( equal to Schott BK7 ) , melted by LZOS in high pure quality has a optical used diameter of 275 mm ( 10.82" ), all spherical surfaces, center thicknesser 23 mm

The Meniscuslens , made from zero explansion Glas-Ceramik Astro-Sital, melted by LZOS has a optical diameter of 288 mm ( 11.33"). The mirror will have a conical shape and with side polished

The Meniscuslens , made from zero expansion Glas-Ceramik Astro-Sital , mechanical diameter 33 mm, optical diameter 30 mm, means without secondary mirror baffle the central obstruction will be 12% of the diameter only , this is Refractor-Apo Like.

both mirrors are spherical with a sligh aspherical retouching on either primary or secondary, we recomment on primary, but we leave that decision to INTES MICRO who must guarantee the final system quality which is

1/10 wavefront p.t.v.
1/50 wavefront RMS
98.4% strehl
as guaranted minmum quality.

The Optimum backfocuse is 250 mm ( 10" ) from primary mirror surface.

The secondary mirror is seperated from meniscuslens.

the mirrors reflection coating is a broadband 96% reflection coating, the meniscus will have a broadband multicoating on both sides.

Regards Focusing we have 3 choices:
a, fixed mirrors, so fixed focuse , we dont like that, because Binoviewer users will have to use in any case a optical path corrector

b, primary mirror focusing system with no image shift

c, secondary rough focuse + a 2.5" short Starlight Feather Touch focuser at the end.

The production time for the Optics is 10 month from now

this means this Telescope, we ordered for first run 5 sets , will be ready before christmas 2013.

Our final price will be fixed after the mechanical fully calculated , a ball park right now for europe include our 19% VAT is Euro 20,000 ...if we take the VAT off , add estimated shipping to USA and 8% Import dutie for USA it will turn out at present exchange rate 1 Euro = $ 1.32 at about US $ 24,500.00

with such high quality and such small C.O. we expect a 10" high quality Apo Performance for less then half the cost of a 10" Apo.

your thought