[Chaos-l] dirt cheap scope: worth antything?

[Stewart-Taylor, Jon]

>From the picture, i'd guess it's a 3" Newtonian, but it could be 4.25"
(easy enough to measure the tube diameter and subtract an inch).  Try
this link: http://www.opticsplanet.net/bush-ts-785003.html.  Is that the
beast you're looking at?

Most Bushnell labeled optics are mediocre, but not awful.  The thing at
the front end is a two-part cap: the center part is removable (maybe for
pre-observing cooling?), and the whole thing lifts out as well.

The supplied finder is trash, and should be replaced with a unit-power
finder, or even a clover-leaf sight: much less frustrating and far more
accurate.  

If it comes with a barlow, throw it out.  

If it comes with .95" eyepieces, only the lowest-power one is worth
anything. 

The mount is probably pretty sloppy, and may need some work before it
will hold objects in view.  Or you might need to replace it with a
home-made version of the same type of thing built along "mini-dob"
lines.

It's potentially a fine scope to use for casual viewing of the moon,
planets, larger star clusters, and wider double-stars.  Don't expect
much on deep-sky or high magnification.

-----Original Message-----
From: chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Hrivnak
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:22 PM
To: CHAOS
Subject: [Chaos-l] dirt cheap scope: worth antything?

http://hrivnak.org/~mhrivnak/bushnell/