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Subject: 4.7" reflector By: Anonymous (xxx.xxx.24.16) Date: 02/06/2003 06:09:06 pm PST I purchased the 118mm F8.3 version of the Galileo reflector from HSN. It came on a swivel style mount with two counterweights and slow motion controls. The mount, while inadequate for regular use with this optical tube, works perfectly for my portable 4.5" richfield reflector. The mount does have a lot of plastic but the plastic is the good quality kind that absorbs bumps as opposed to cracking. I'm not going to discuss the eyepiece accessories too much as they were all of low quality and needed replacing with the exception of the 25mm plossl. The optical tube seems to have been well thought out: All the metal parts are made of aluminum which equalizes with outdoor temperatures very quickly; the primary mirror cell allows for breathing; the focal plane of the scope allows for prime focus photography at least on land objects without the need to increase focal plane with a barlow; the eyepiece swivel which holds three eyepieces really works o.k.; And last but not least the optical quality is surprisingly good. I've seen 2 examples of these scopes and one was good(meaning cassini visible regularly on Saturn) and the second was very good(red spot on Jupiter easy, c-ring of Saturn easily visible with 3 moons). However, there were two modification to these two scopes. The four vane spider which is a part of the tube-end ring was filed down to a single stalk secondary holder. The inside of the tube was felt lined with 7 sheets of ($0.50 each) felt paper from Walmart. So keeping in mind these things I would have to rate this scope below Orion's slightly more expensive 130mm F8 reflector which offers better value due to higher quality accessories and a diffraction limited 3-vane spider. Saying this, my galileo optical tube is a keeper...but that may just be the luck of the draw. Page 1 of 1 | ||||||||
