215 replies to this topic

[StefanBemmerl]

Hello dear astro friends,
I have a good 12 inch planetary Newton that I am very happy with. However, for ergonomic reasons I'm looking for a telescope to look into the back again.
My C11 never gave me the same picture of the planet as my Newton and the endless cooling time always annoyed me.
Now there is an almost unique chance that I could purchase an Intes 12 inch M1212 Deluxe with Sitall mirror.
According to the dealer, the condition is 1A. I could also test it but would have to drive very far to do so.
Since I have never owned an Intes, I wanted to ask if anyone here has experience with this exact telescope? Thank you and best regards, Steve

[db2005]

Welcome to the forum!

 

You may be able to give your C11 another try. Try searching for thread on insulation of SCTs. Many observers report excellent results by insulating their SCTs with light-weight Reflectix-style material, so much that the SCTs can be used as grab-and-go telescopes.

 

I can go from a 22 C living room to 2 C outdoor and observe with virtually no waiting time with my C8.

[StefanBemmerl]

Hello and thank you very much. I no longer own the C11. I had isolated it. I'm really interested in experiences with an Intes 12 inch Deluxe. But thank you very much. Best regards

[luxo II]

Hi Stefan, I very much doubt you will be disappointed by an M1212 deluxe if you have a good location for it.

[rolo]

Hello dear astro friends,
I have a good 12 inch planetary Newton that I am very happy with. However, for ergonomic reasons I'm looking for a telescope to look into the back again.
My C11 never gave me the same picture of the planet as my Newton and the endless cooling time always annoyed me.
Now there is an almost unique chance that I could purchase an Intes 12 inch M1212 Deluxe with Sitall mirror.
According to the dealer, the condition is 1A. I could also test it but would have to drive very far to do so.
Since I have never owned an Intes, I wanted to ask if anyone here has experience with this exact telescope? Thank you and best regards, Steve

Hi Steve, Not the 12" but I've had two 10" f/12.5 Maks one by Intes and another by APM with Intes Deluxe optics. Both were superb optically but required long cooling time due to the thick meniscus. Once cooled the views were amazing and with a slightly higher contrast than my 12.5" f/6 Newtonian. The trick is to store the scope in as close to outside temp environment as possible. I recall viewing Mars at opposition in 2003 at 750x, a view i will never forget.  

 

CPC-1100, 12.5" f/6 Cave, Intes 10" f/12 Rumak Maksutov

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Edited by rolo, 19 January 2024 - 01:43 AM.

[rolo]

Intes Deluxe 10" f/12.5 Rumak Maksutov

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Edited by rolo, 19 January 2024 - 01:42 AM.

[rolo]

Jupiter images with this scope

 

click on image for full size view.

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Edited by rolo, 19 January 2024 - 01:34 AM.

[StefanBemmerl]

Thank you kindly for the answers. You get a much warmer welcome here than in the German forums, wow! I have to say that I have an observatory. So the Intes would always be outside. With so much money, I just don't want to make a mistake and then regret it. As I said, I have a very good 12 inch Newtonian, I mainly observe planets, moons and globular clusters. The uncomfortable observation on the ladder and constantly looking into the light of a passing car bothers me massively. Now there is just this Intes, which is really extremely rare.

[thebonz]

Rotating rings make all the difference with a big newtonian allowing for a much more user friendly eyepiece position. Do you use rotating rings?

[deSitter]

Intes Deluxe 10" f/12.5 Rumak Maksutov

Wow would I love to look through that! Planetary nebulae!

 

-drl

[CHASLX200]

Not many can afford a 12" Mak and gonna need a big boat to hold it.

[starman876]

Intes Deluxe 10" f/12.5 Rumak Maksutov

beautiful scope

[maroubra_boy]

"Long cooling period for a Mak"...

Only if you don't insulate the scope.

Insulating the scope means NO waiting period. Instead you are observing at the highest magnification seeing allows, not what the scope allows. And for a 12" Mak, the cooling period would be very long, so with this new way of dealing with a Mak, you would need to be living under a rock to insist on waiting for a cooling period. Same goes for an SCT.

Quality costs money. If you didn't think so you wouldn't be contemplating this Mak over the C11. And now with insulation of such closed tube scopes meaning no cooling period & being able to use such a scope straight away, what once was a weak point for such scopes now puts them ahead of every other scope design as all other scope designs still have a cooling wait period.

I need to ask, why are you still waiting on a cooling period?

I've been insulating my SCTs & now my Maks for many years now. Silly really not to, especially if the time available to you to use a scope is limited. I am using my 9" Santel Mak straight away because it is insulated. I only have two or three hours to use this scope, and two to three hours is the minimum time I would be waiting for such a scope to cool. A 12" Mak even longer. A C11 no less time. Time, that with a simple solution could actually be practical used time, not time lost waiting.

Of course not letting the scope get warm to begin with is also a big advantage from the start. This s is something many scope owners don't consider, regardless of what scope they have, how to reduce the amount of heat their scope is subjected to during the day. How you keep your scope during the day is critical for all thermal management, insulation of the OTA or not. If you have a personal observatory, to start with don't paint it any colour other than white - keep the heat out from the very start!!! This at a very minimum. Insulating the obs is next to keep heat out. And then air conditioning is the next & ultimate step and one that may be most difficult to implement for practical or financial reasons.

"Ventilation" is the one way that is least understood & most often entirely inappropriately implemented. Leaving poor obs design aside, many people use a totally inappropriate wee little fan in what is ultimately a futile & pathetic attempt at heat exchange. Little thought is given to how much heat is entering the obs, how hot the structure, the air inside the structure & how hot everything inside the structure is getting & that simple ventilation is just not doing what you think it is supposed to be doing. A little fan is not doing anything in a real practical way, especially if the structure design, build & colour is not helping to begin with.

Thermal management of a scope, regardless of scope design, begins with how you keep your gear cool. ALL your gear.

Professional obs are not painted white as some sort of universal identifier. They are white, insulated & air conditioned because this keeps their scopes cool for the coming evening - if such scopes are allowed to get warm during the day there won't be enough hours in the night for such scopes to cool sufficiently. Oh, and the most contemporary of professional obs designs also see the structure open up so the entire structure, inside & out is thermally uncompromised during the night. The mistake we amateurs make is think that it is the professional astronomers that design & build their scopes and obs, and that somehow this then qualifies us as competent obs designers. Professional astronomers have nothing to do with the actual design & build of the scope & obs. They submit their wishlist to a team of engineers & technicians & just take the keys once the scope & obs is finished. It is the team of engineers & technicians that understand material science, fluid dynamics thermo dynamics that then goes into the design of said scope & obs, things few of us amateurs have any training in & on the most part have no handle on, but think we do.

Keep the heat out of your gear to begin with, at least reduce how much heat is allowed to get into it. It's all part of thermal management.

Alex.

Edited by maroubra_boy, 19 January 2024 - 10:26 AM.

[StefanBemmerl]

First of all, thank you for explaining how important isolation is. As I said, I had isolated my C11 but that is history and no longer relevant. It's exactly my concern that this behavior will be exactly the same with the 12 inch Intes, although I was told that it's not that bad thanks to the ventilation holes and the fan. On the other hand, when do you get to something like that? It's a big investment after all, I'm currently negotiating whether I could return it within a certain period of time. I really hope to find another experience report from someone who owns the exact M1212 Dekuxe.

[StefanBemmerl]

If I purchase it, I will definitely get back to you. Maybe you can then describe in more detail how you would insulate the telescope

[rolo]

Thank you kindly for the answers. You get a much warmer welcome here than in the German forums, wow! I have to say that I have an observatory. So the Intes would always be outside. With so much money, I just don't want to make a mistake and then regret it. As I said, I have a very good 12 inch Newtonian, I mainly observe planets, moons and globular clusters. The uncomfortable observation on the ladder and constantly looking into the light of a passing car bothers me massively. Now there is just this Intes, which is really extremely rare.

As far as performance difference between your 12" planetary Newtonian and the 12" Mak I can say that neither one will show more than the other in a significant way. Maybe a little better contrast or a little more detail in certain objects but probably not enough to justify such an expense. However, The  Mak was much more comfortable viewing while sitting down at the eyepiece, specially with bino-viewers. To beat a 12" planetary Newtonian you'll need significantly more aperture and money. But then again, you only live once and you can't take it with you!  

[maroubra_boy]

I recall an article from the 1980's reviewing the Questar 7.  I came across this article a year or two ago & I cannot find it now.  However, what really stuck in my mind about the article was the great difficultly they had with the thermal situation of the scope.

 

The scope also happened to be set up in an observatory, amateur, that was not insulated - it got hot during the day.  So when they wanted to use the scope at night, that scope had no chance in hell of acclimating in any reasonable amount of time.  I was most surprised that this most basic aspect, just don't let the inside of the obs get hot, just did not come to their mind.  Insulation of an SCT or Mak was still at least 30 years away from happening, so not something that can be frowned upon the author's management of the instrument.  But that they let the scope get hot and how they struggled to get the scope to give them a decent image in any reasonable amount of time, well, that should have been obvious to them back then.  And not just the scope but EVERYTHING inside the obs because this too impacts on the thermal performance of the scope looking out of the obs.

 

The lessons about thermal management of our gear have been on display for a very long time, but much of this is just not sinking in.  Insulation has been a wonderful innovation for closed tube instruments, but even this can only do so much if everything is allowed to get warm/hot.  It isn't just the scope, but the mount too.  And how you store the scope when it's not in use, in your house, in a garage, mancave or obs, thermal management starts HERE, not when you want to use the blasted thing regardless of the design of your scope.

[Kitfox]

I hope you buy it, it has been tempting me for a long time.  I would hate to ship it all the way to North Carolina, risky AND expensive. 

 

Do as your guts tell you, though, go look at it.  Some of these were treated very roughly in their lifetime, and I would definitely want my eyes on it before I spent that kind of money if it were an option.  And you are right, this is an observatory scope, it would not be fun to set up very often. 

 

If its the one I am thinking of (I am sure it is, they are so rare), I bought a 7" f/10 STF from the same vendor; one of my better scopes for sure...

 

 

If I purchase it, I will definitely get back to you. Maybe you can then describe in more detail how you would insulate the telescope

[luxo II]

 However, The  Mak was much more comfortable viewing while sitting down at the eyepiece, specially with bino-viewers.

And you can put a turret on the back. I'll also detail how I insulate mine.

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[StefanBemmerl]

Hello guys,

to keep you up to date...

Since the M1212 Deluxe is so rare to get, I decided to buy it.

However, I was able to agree to return it within a certain period of time if I didn't like it.

This makes me feel a little calmer and I will definitely report back.

Best regards, Steve

[deSitter]

Hello guys,

to keep you up to date...

Since the M1212 Deluxe is so rare to get, I decided to buy it.

However, I was able to agree to return it within a certain period of time if I didn't like it.

This makes me feel a little calmer and I will definitely report back.

Best regards, Steve

Not the envious type here but - envious! Enjoy! First target - Ganymede!!!

 

-drl

[deSitter]

Hello guys,

to keep you up to date...

Since the M1212 Deluxe is so rare to get, I decided to buy it.

However, I was able to agree to return it within a certain period of time if I didn't like it.

This makes me feel a little calmer and I will definitely report back.

Best regards, Steve

Don't know if this has been mentioned but RC himself, maker of the $22k 10" Mak of dreams, owns a 12" Intes. That's pretty high praise.

 

-drl

Edited by deSitter, 21 January 2024 - 11:00 AM.

[rolo]

Hello guys,

to keep you up to date...

Since the M1212 Deluxe is so rare to get, I decided to buy it.

However, I was able to agree to return it within a certain period of time if I didn't like it.

This makes me feel a little calmer and I will definitely report back.

Best regards, Steve

Can't go wrong with that deal   

[oldmanastro]

Intes Deluxe 10" f/12.5 Rumak Maksutov

Impressive telescope. With the Rumak design I guess that spherical correction will be almost perfect. I like Maks as much as I like classic refractors.

[luxo II]

Not the envious type here but - envious!

…  well, if you’re keen there is another M1212 Deluxe for sale, if you have the home for it. If I won Lotto though I’d go all the way - the Santel 20” f/8.5. 

 

Mine is similar to rolo’s glass - the last set of 10” deluxe quartz optics from Intes-Micro courtesy of Markus Ludes, but assembled by Matthias Wirth - Markus acquired the last of the big sets from I-M as they closed down. Having had a Santel MK91 and thinking of imaging I went with fixed mirrors and external focuser rather than the moving mirror setup.

 

It is indeed superb visually and imaging with it is a dream, it covers the ASI2600 DUO and its guide camera - perfectly and then some, with no vignetting, no detectable field curvature, and the integrated guide camera likewise has perfect stars.

 

Imaging at 3000mm is challenging - especially with a portable setup - and it has taken a while to get it all working as it should (and 3 mounts) but I finally have a mount that does it justice. Still learning how to get the best out of it.

Edited by luxo II, 22 January 2024 - 05:46 AM.