What my friend Joe did was made his own cooling system which simply attaches to the focuser. We point the OTA upward and the fan sucks the warmer air rising up the OTA. All I could think about was splitting double stars and that's exactly what we did. Multiple star after multiple star, it just devoured them with perfect text book images only limited by atmosphere from time to time. It was really an exhilarating experience for me. I couldn't help but express how sensational it performed. Being such a rare telescope, I told my observing buddy it was like discovering a rare dinosaur bone in Arizona. Joe indicated there were only something like 30 units of the HD145's and 16 units of the HD216's in existance.
We have two HD145's and both are flawless performers. The theoretical limit is about .8 arc second resolution and it met that criteria with ease on a couple of doubles we tested. Contrast was stunning to say the least. We used a Nagler 2.5mm at almost 350x and ran out of magnification. I may have to use a barlow with a 3.5 Nagler I was scribbling notes during each observation and was continually beside myself at the quality. All the stars just snapped right into perfect focus like tiny pinballs with a couple of faint and ill-defined defraction rings. Currently I'm still making attempts to do a head to head comparison with a TEC140, so that should be a perfect match but my prediction is the HD145 will prevail because there seems to be no limit on how clear double stars are and it's fully apochromatic. I have never been a big stickler to hammer a scope just because it has some false color, but I admit than when you are pushing stars to the absolute limits, having a completely color free image is going to have an edge on double stars at some point, especially with optics as good as these HD145's. Altair for example was etched pure white.
We recently compared one of them to a particular 5" apo and everyone agreed overwhelmingly that the Caravolo had noticebly better contrast but right now all I want to do is a head to head with a TEC140 to even things up a bit. The HD145 isn't too hard to acclimate as long as the focuser is left wide open before observing but the fan helps. :o The tube rides on a G11G using a GM8 tripod at the lowest setting. The tube is easily rotated to the desired position without sliding down thanks to the help of a Telrad base that behaves like a slide on top of the tube ring and it's a sit down telescope.
! Thanks for the great report, look forewards to your head to head with the TEC.
sorry to disappoint ya! My friend had a want buy ad out for several months and he finally got lucky. Last night was the first time I was able to test his Ceravolo. The other one with the flat black finish I've been holding onto for a friend for some years now. I really love the optical design since it seems to excell in every category from flat wide field views all the way up to the central dot, more commonly known as the airy disc seen at high magnifications. Oh yes and more pics on the way.
The TEC 140 weighs 19#. The Ceravolo weighs 14#. Again, a fairly large fraction of the weight. Also, the TEC does have a couple of things going for it that the Ceravolo lacks: The TEC is readily available, cools more quickly, and never needs collimation or recoating. These factors coupled with the not dissimilar price and weight, in my view, make the Ceravolo less of an "obvious" choice than you suggest.
