Meade ED APO127 SW ED120 Vs Black Diamond Over the years I have often heard many tools compare to each other.
Very often these comparisons were made at a distance, that is not in the same evening in order to have the same terms, because as we all well know amateur astronomers, the sky is the key.
then I had the opportunity to compare two instruments very interesting, they are two refractors, the first one and the other Black Diamond ED120 Skywatcher Apo a Meade Series 5000 127.
Skywatcher production tool comes with a nice aluminum case foam wrapped in the space are shaped tube, a dielectric SW diagonal, 9x50 finder and a 28 mm eyepiece LET 2 inch. The cell of the instrument consists of a doublet with Shott glasses and has a focal length of 900 mm. The instrument comes standard with a 2-inch Crayford focuser with reduced 1 / 11. Looking at the lenses you immediately notice the green color of the anti-reflective coating, the inside of the tube is well opacified and there are 3 partitions that are designed to reduce internal reflections. The rings that hold the tube are well made and standard tool comes with a bar type Vixen. Meade
tool is contained in an aluminum case very nice and well done here too the well-contoured foam keeps the tube, a seeker and diagonal dielectric Meade series 5000. The cell of this Meade is a lens triplet FDC1 ED with a focal length of 952 mm. The Crayford focuser is a 2-inch reduction with 1 / 10 of the highest building and carries a scale with inches of travel, for up to 11 cm. Meade is a very interesting thing in the hood that can be retracted to shrink the tube during transport. The finishes are excellent with the ability to rotate the finder (supplied with illuminated reticle) through the ring on which it is attached that can rotate and position it so the point where it's convenient. Another very useful thing is the handle that allows you to manipulate the tube in an appropriate manner and shall be of excellent rings, standard is a bar vixen.
I tried the two telescopes together with very experienced friend and we decided to mount the two tubes in parallel on an altazimuth mount, the Skywatcher AZ-HD which has allowed us to test so well for the ability of the two.
After waiting to acclimate the natural tools we chose the double Castor to check the collimation and the separation of stars with about 100 magnifications. The collimation was now excellent in both instruments, the separation was done cleanly and the stars were perfectly Point's vision was slightly in favor of images that gave Meade a bit 'brighter and slightly more effective.
The second bulleted item was the moon, now in the first quarter. We tried to focus and have noticed that with both instruments, the operation was very precise and fluid. It was equally good and Pentax XL eyepiece with 21 mm we have tried to see if there is chromatic aberration. In Meade was absent from the picture of color, while at the Skywatcher is slightly noted the presence of reflected light blue and yellow. This aberration But not to disturb the observations.
We then did a test on how to behave tools by moving the observation point to the edge of the instrument to see if there were differences in focus. Skywatcher in moving away from the center noticed a slight out of focus, whereas Meade was not the case, a sign of great achievement.
Surprisingly, when we were doing this test in Meade we agreed to a beautiful little star that shone bright within walking distance to the Moon. We immediately looked in the SW and we noticed how the star is present, but the feeling was that if we had not seen in Meade would escape The next object was Saturn, with both instruments was excellent, but with a slight advantage Meade always good showing some of its satellites.
We also did tests on deep-sky pointing the beautiful globular cluster in Hercules, M13. In both instruments the cluster are clear and well received with his form ahead of the Meade always giving an image a little more brightness and contrast.
Conclusions Ultimately, the feedback for these two instruments is more than positive, the Meade refractor Skywatcher is slightly higher than the competitor, but he still has the best performance / price ratio . The choice between one or the other must be assessed in the general budget and finishes. We thank
Staroptics for making available the two instruments for this test. Luca
Malavolta
www.astrofedrotto.com
