686 replies to this topic

[Joe G]

So I am starting this new thread about my experience with the new Askar 185mm.  I picked the scope up from Agena Astro yesterday.  It was double boxed with extra foam in its gigantic case.  The overall package was close to 100 lbs.

 

As luck had it, the skies were clear and the sunset was beautiful.  Here is a picture where the smudge over the ocean is Santa Barbara Island about 50 miles away.

 

 

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[Joe G]

While the transparency was good the seeing according to Meteoblue was supposed to be about 1.5 arc secs.  I'd say the seeing was about average from my location a couple blocks from the ocean.

 

 

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[Joe G]

A picture of the Askar in the case.  The case has wheels and fits the scope with the rings and dovetail attached.  It seems very well built.

 

 

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[Joe G]

Here is a comparison between the carbon fiber Esprit 150mm and the Askar with the dew shield and focuser retracted.  The Askar is roughly 5 pounds heavier with rings and dovetail attached at about 38 pounds.

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[Joe G]

A picture with the focusers and dew shields fully extended.

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Edited by Joe G, 30 January 2024 - 05:08 PM.

[Joe G]

The business end of both scopes.  The lens coatings are very similar.  The difference in this picture is due to camera angle.

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[Joe G]

The two scopes set up for the evening.  The Askar is mounted on a CEM60 and tri-pier.  That was fairly stable.  Pointed up I had to sit on the ground to view things.  The iOptron tri-pier has a bit more room to raise the scope, but I likely need some taller solution for visual.  The SW 150 is on a Pegasus NYX-101 strain wave mount with the supplied Pegasus carbon fiber tripod.  This is a squirrely setup.  The tripod isn't robust enough for this kind of weight, at least for visual.  The mount itself can handle the weight with either scope though.

 

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[Joe G]

Before I post the DPAC results here is my first impression that I posted to the looong Askar 185 thread that has been ongoing for the last few months.

 

Late.

 

Seeing was okay.  Average by coastal California standards.

 

So I picked the scope up from Agena about 11:00 AM.  They moved to a bigger warehouse.  Lots of stuff in there.  I think I was the first customer to take delivery of the Askar 185.

 

The thing is boxed like crazy.  Double boxes with lots of foam.  Then the case.  The case must weigh forty plus pounds.  The total weight of the boxes, the case and the scope was close to 100 lbs.  Two guys loaded it into my SUV.

 

Then I had to dolly it to my backyard.  Cut open the boxes and take the scope out of the case.  Wow, the scope by itself is manageable.

 

I mounted it onto my iOptron tripier with an extension.  Still the eyepiece height was too low. I can likely get it a few more inches higher but I will likely need a bigger tripod/pier/whatever.  I mounted it on a CEM 60.  The CEM 60 was okay.  Jiggles were manageable.  But I was on my knees and butt most of the time.

 

I have a Pegasus NYX-101 and a CEM 70.  I think both those mounts are sufficient.  I didn't put the CEM 70 on the iOptron tripier because it has an adapter for another tripod hooked up to it.  These mounts can handle the Askar 185.  But the tripod/pier needs work, at least in my setup.

 

The build quality of this scope seems great.  The tube is robust.  The machined rings are awesome.  The focuser seems solid, including the captains wheel extension.  It seems so very nice.  My gripes with Chinese scopes has been the anodization which fades with exposure to the sun.

 

I have had this issue with almost every Chinese scope/equipment whether ES, SW, WO, etc.  I would hope this holds up here, but time will tell.

 

Shining a flashlight down the tube was amazing.  Hardly any dust.  If any.  That is unusual.

 

So I set both the Askar 185mm up and my carbon fiber 150mm Quantum which has the Esprit lens.  It has always been an awesome scope for me.  It is an FPL 53 triplet.  I DPACed that scope.  The optics IMHO are top notch.

 

Looked at Jupiter through both scopes and my friend had his newly acquired Orion 85mm ED-X2 set up too.  Jupiter could only take about 150-185x.  Sorry Chas, it was not going to take 300-600x tonight.  I didn't seem to see any false color.  Belts were clear.  The SW 150 seemed the same.

 

Looking at M42, it was clear that the increased aperture of the Askar 185mm showed more nebulosity.  Stars were equally sharp.  But the extra aperture was nice.

 

Looked at M35 and some other clusters.  The Askar 185 was great.

 

Magnified Rigel and Sirius.  Again, didn't see any false color that was objectionable.  The seeing wasn't perfect.  But the scope seems to perform very well.

 

Need much more use to further evaluate it.  Tomorrow I will DPAC it.

 

But, jeez, for $5000 or so with tax.  Seems to be pretty nice.

 

Honestly I was hopeful this would be a very nice large aperture refractor.  I was skeptical about a non-FPL53 or equivalent triplet.

 

The glass is undisclosed.  But I was pleasantly surprised.

 

Needs more testing, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

I will start another thread tomorrow.

 

Joe

[Astroman007]

Interesting.

[Joe G]

Now to the DPAC test results.  I am not a DPAC expert by any means.  I can set the equipment up and take a picture and look at the results. 

 

As far as visual use goes I need to use the scope under better seeing conditions.  I really didn't notice much difference in chromatic aberration, sharpness, etc between the two scopes.  What was noticeable is the Askar 185 showed much more nebulosity on say, M42, than the SW 150 which it should given its 52% more aperture.

 

I have tested the SW 150 with DPAC and the results are very nice, maybe excellent.  The DPAC results for the Askar 185 are not nearly as good.  I will let others chime in, but it reminds me a bit of Paul Leuba's test of another 7" scope. 

 

Whether this impacts visual performance I don't really know.  I will point out that the Askar ia about one quarter the price of other refractors in this size range.

 

The Askar in the dining room test area.  I moved it here because Scott in NC's wife appreciated the dining room being converted into a test lab.

 

 

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[Joe G]

So here we go, in green:

 

 

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[Joe G]

Red:

 

 

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[Joe G]

Blue:

 

 

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[Joe G]

And white:

 

 

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[Ben the Ignorant]

The business end of both scopes.  The lens coatings are very similar.  The difference in this picture is due to camera angle.

Yes, and light color, too. When I first checked the coatings on the 140, they were darker than those on the TS 115. But later they were not. Uh?

 

The reason is, the first check was at night with a red light. The coatings being greenish, they couldn't reflect much red. So I did a side-by-side with three other fracs in daylight, but with a white flashlight covered by filters in red, green and blue.

 

The 80mm apo was quite dark overall, it seems to have the Baader Phantom coatings. The 80mm semi-apo seemed darker still, its coatings are mostly dark blue on all surfaces. With the 115, it depends on what lens you look at, and same for the 140, although overall it's a bit less dark. But under red light the Askar is the darkest of all, and by a serious margin.

Edited by Ben the Ignorant, 30 January 2024 - 05:31 PM.

[Cbaxter]

Well that looks best corrected in red. Interesting. Overall to me that actually looks pretty bad in blue and green and not great in red. After much anticipation, I won't be purchasing this scope.

[Ben the Ignorant]

Have you allowed enough cooldown? Such a large mass of glass could take longer than usual. On one occasion the Ronchi (10 lines/mm, 254 lines/inch) seemed to show shrinking lines near the edge for my 140 but it had had no cooldown at all. On several other nights the lines were straight and sharp all along.

[Mbenj2405]

Thanks for the testing so far, pretty amazing to have a first user actually have a blank and the skill to DPAC it. Hopefully it will be a good visual scope.

[Kitfox]

I am betting a poor attempt at aspherizing.  Yeah, I know, I'm only betting one dollar US.  But it sure does look similar to a good start to a figure on a mirror's parabolic surface and an initial Foucault...there may be something really cool going on here.  More than just a zone.  Or it is really bad, per your allusion to an infamous Leuba test. 

 

All the colors synch (unlike the alluded scope's), note the similar shapes of the curvature between colors, both inside and outside focus.  The correction is similar across the colors.  Note my final observation:

 

It is really cool how color-free the white-light ronchigram is...something is very RIGHT about that.  I sure would love to know the glass formula.  

 

And this is all moot and I grab my dollar off the table if the scope was not fully acclimated 

Edited by Kitfox, 30 January 2024 - 06:20 PM.

[Dave Novoselsky]

Pier height can be a problem with the larger/longer refractors.  Given the length of these scopes to get enough clearance under the focuser to point it up anywhere near the zenith the saddle ends up in the stratosphere! Someone posted a picture of my giant Royce f15 here recently and you can see you needed a tall ladder to mount it.  With that one and my 203 TMB it took two of us to get it up there.  And climbing up in the dark was a challenge to say the least.  You may want to consider a pier that can be extended in height once the scope is mounted.  I ended up buying one from Pier Tech that worked fine and that may prevent having to sit on the ground while you observe.

Edited by Dave Novoselsky, 30 January 2024 - 06:32 PM.

[Joe G]

The scope was in the house where the temperature was regulated.

 

I dunno.  Could the scope have been figured in red as another famous scope.  The white light Ronchi's seem okay as far as color.

 

I'll let the expert tea readers cast their judgement.

 

I am going to keep the scope regardless.  There is something about refractor like views and the extra aperture does help.

 

I have a lot of experience in steady seeing with the SW 150 and know it puts up great views under the best conditions. 

 

But last night they were about equal.  I looked at Jupiter with a few 7mm eyepieces (Nagler and the newer AT) giving 185x.  The image at higher powers broke down going to a 5mm eyepiece.  That was the seeing.

 

At lower powers the trapezium was equally sharp in both scopes.  What was noticeable was there was much more visible nebulosity in the Askar.  My house is suburbia, maybe Bortle 7.  M35 looked really nice in the Askar.  Castor showed the two headlights.  Rigel was split but a little fuzzy because of the seeing.  The Trapezium E star was twinkling in and out.

 

Edit: Looking at Sirius it wasn't like their was purple everywhere.  It was mostly color free.  What color I saw I attributed to the atmosphere.

 

So I dunno maybe just diffraction limited?

Edited by Joe G, 30 January 2024 - 06:40 PM.

[CHASLX200]

I see some bending of the jail bars. I need this thing on my dead still nites.  If it is as good as my SW150ED i guess i would be happy with it. But 5k is still a lot of money and then buying a monster mount to hold it is gonna cost many K. I don't see it working on my CI-700.  I gotta ask myself.  Is this scope gonna give a view better than my freaky sharp Meade 826 that cost $120????????????????????.

Edited by CHASLX200, 30 January 2024 - 07:36 PM.

[SandyHouTex]

The scope was in the house where the temperature was regulated.

 

I dunno.  Could the scope have been figured in red as another famous scope.  The white light Ronchi's seem okay as far as color.

 

I'll let the expert tea readers cast their judgement.

 

I am going to keep the scope regardless.  There is something about refractor like views and the extra aperture does help.

 

I have a lot of experience in steady seeing with the SW 150 and know it puts up great views under the best conditions. 

 

But last night they were about equal.  I looked at Jupiter with a few 7mm eyepieces (Nagler and the newer AT) giving 185x.  The image at higher powers broke down going to a 5mm eyepiece.  That was the seeing.

 

At lower powers the trapezium was equally sharp in both scopes.  What was noticeable was there was much more visible nebulosity in the Askar.  My house is suburbia, maybe Bortle 7.  M35 looked really nice in the Askar.  Castor showed the two headlights.  Rigel was split but a little fuzzy because of the seeing.  The Trapezium E star was twinkling in and out.

 

Edit: Looking at Sirius it wasn't like their was purple everywhere.  It was mostly color free.  What color I saw I attributed to the atmosphere.

 

So I dunno maybe just diffraction limited?

It's important to remember that DPAC shows an error that is twice what is really there.

[dryfly]

Well, the DPAC is a bit disappointing, but the proof will still be in the observing, when you are able to get it out under better conditions.  I still look forward to hearing about your further adventures with this telescope!

 

Mike

[CHASLX200]

I can see fine detail on Jupiter to be mooted out some with bent bars like that.