Just finished the 6" f/8 Edmund. Mirror came off eBay and it is fantastic like all Edmund mirrors. Stars are pinpoint sharp and sky background is pitch black. Hate to say it is so refractor like. People idolize lenses but quality mirrors are every bit as good.
I ve got a 6 inch f 8 mirror I bought in the late 90s...is probably an Edmund one as well (says ES and few other things on the back).
That thing REALLY performs. And this is only so so main mirror collimation, a slightly twitchy focuser made of plastic plumbing parts....the diagonal is just some run of the mill thing that I have no idea of the specs on but it was something cheap I also bought back then (or in other words not some fancy 1/30 wave thing). The spider is made of something like 1/8 RODS (or bigger!) rather than thin metal vanes. The secondary can't even be adjusted. My high power eyepieces are a oooolllld University Optics 6.8 ortho and a 10 mm 3 element Vite $10 eyepiece (with a plastic lens!).
I've been watching the Mars observation reports here. I'm seeing more detail than most people are reporting here (even when a fair number of them are seeing nothing more than the polar cap). Some photographs with signifcantly large scopes are about the only thing besting my observations. Even during the height of the dust storm I was getting large scale stuff (low contrast to be sure but definitely there).
Been doing public star gazes. Random John Q publics can often even see the large scale details with the $10 Vite !
Imagine if I did this thing up right !
I would prefer it to be more like f10 or a bit more....its too short most of the time.
I drool to think what a good 8 inch f9 ish could do.
Gawd I need to finish my 10 inch f8 1/50 wave rms scope !
Edited by starcanoe, 11 September 2018 - 03:45 PM.