Sunday, October 14, 2012

Celestron Omni XLT 150 R - Review

Last Saturday, the MS Astronomy students from RTU took the Celestron Omni XLT 150 R to Timberland Heights (15 mins away from Quezon City) for some stargazing in the mountains.

The telescope is a 6 inch (150mm) achromatic refractor mounted, via dove-tail, on a CG-4 German equatorial mount. It has good reviews for viewing deep-sky objects. It has a focal ratio of f/5 (focal length 750mm). The telescope makes use of the StarBright XLT coating which allows maximum light transmission. The finderscope attached is a 6x30 straight through achromat with a 7 degree field of view.

When viewing the Orion Nebula, the Trapezium stars are very well resolved and there is good contrast to the surrounding cloud layer. The stars of the Pleiades were also finely resolved.

In observing Jupiter, there is a violet halo resulting from chromatic aberration.

We also tried to do some prime focus imaging since the eyepiece holder has built-in T-threads, however the telescope requires a focal extender in order to put the image to focus. Neither planetary or deep sky targets can be focused by attaching the camera with the T-ring to the eyepiece holder's T-threads.


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