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80mm f/6 480mm on a SE mount?

Equipment Mount Observing Refractor Visual
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#1 Star1Fun

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Posted 10 March 2025 - 09:45 PM

     Hello I currently have a 6SE I love this scope for so many reasons. It's the right size as well as it gives me all I need to seek and find things in the night skies. I bought the carry case for the scope and the bag for the legs, added a power pack to it and its pretty much my go every where portable option or great at home in the drive way for a quick night out. Optically the 6SE is awesome the best optics of any scope I have ever owned hands down. I have seen tiny galaxies, occasional nebula, stars of all kinds and sorts, I really love to find planetary nebula, the M Objects are awesome so meant so much but all around this is a great scope for deep sky stuff. The moon and planets are so awesome they leave me speech less. I have never seen Jupiter like see it in the 6SE . Over all I love what this little scope can do. 

     So 2025 I want to add another scope to the versatility of tools of the night sky. I want to get a 80mm f/6 480 mm rich field refractor for wide field views. I started to think about it and wonder if I could put this smallish 80mm scope on the SE mount and does it work?? or is too long and the diagonal bumps the base when viewing at zenith? 

     I really have been thinking about this. I have wanted a scope to scan the Milky Way as well as look for brighter star clusters that are wider than what the f/10 or reducer/corrector at f6.3 on the 6SE can do. If it does work what scopes would you suggest in the 80mm moderate expense apo refractor size range? I have no ambitions of taking photos with this set up its for purely visual use.  Any thoughts and ideas are fully welcome.

     Thank you so much I would go buy it right away but I figure somebody has to have tried this and I could save big money just to figure out it does not work??

     Again thank you so much, Clear Skies 



#2 Paul Skee

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Posted 11 March 2025 - 08:23 AM

Have you considered binoculars? The price of a good 80mm APO would go a long way towards a binocular/mount setup.

That way, you'd have use of both. I find that my Orion 16x80's on a parallelogram mount compliments the other scopes I have nicely. You mention Milky Way scan and brighter star clusters, visual only. These are the targets on which binoculars excel. Prepare to be blown away!



#3 Thrifty1

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Posted 11 March 2025 - 08:37 AM

I used a ZenithStar 61 refractor on my SE mount and it worked great. I eventually bought a used AVX mount so use that now.

 

I have a Meade tripod with the tilt plate on top and used that with the SE mount and refractor so I could do a rough polar alignment. Works great as a portable setup.

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#4 Mauikj

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Posted 18 April 2025 - 10:46 PM

I just bought a used SE6 and it's really fun to use.  But my real reason was to mount my AP Stowaway on it (92mm f6.6).  It works really well and as the scope is pushed quite a way forward and the 2" diagonal clears but the eyepiece would hit it if I went above 90 degrees.  To be safe I have the max altitude set to 80 degrees  It is really fun to slowly slew the sky with its super wide field. 

 

AP 90.jpg



#5 RTLR 12

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Posted Yesterday, 01:05 PM

I used my Celestron Onyx 80 on my SE mount for outreach events for years. It worked very well and I could go to zenith with no problem.

 

Stan

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