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Orion Apex 102mm (4") Maksutov-Cassegrain |
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| Preamble - We bought our Orion Apex 102mm as we wanted a good quality travel scope that could easily be carried on and off a plane along with the Orion Min-EQ™ this makes for a highly portable setup. One of the other considerations for a travel setup is that you might not want something that costs the earth and have it bounced about in trains planes and automobiles! | ||||||||||
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As always with these reviews, we obtained our scope though normal channels. Whilst it may be presumed therefore that ours is a representative sample there is no guarantee of this. We
ordered our Apex from SCS astro for £270; the price included - the Apex
102mm, 25mm Sirius Plössl eyepiece, 45° diagonal that provides a
correctly-oriented field of view, 6x26
The Apex OTA is identical to the Orion Starmax 102mm, which comes with an equatorial mount and a right angle star diagonal. We also have it on good authority that the Skymax 102mm from Sky-Watcher also employs the same OTA but in a sky blue finish. Review - The telescope arrived well packed and unscathed, always a relief when you first open the box. The carry case is nice quality and serves very well as permanent storage for the OTA and finder, with enough pockets for the diagonal and a handful of accessories. The case comes with a shoulder strap making it ideal for travel. The OTA is well made, largely constructed from metal and nicely finished in red and dark grey/black. I have to say that I really like the Orion red, although it is a little prone to show finger marks. One minor complaint is that the main lens cap on ours is too loose, in contrast the small cap at the other end is a bit too tight - somewhere in between for both would have been just right! The finder is a little on the small side at only 26mm aperture, but adequate for brighter objects. The finder bracket is the quick release type, which is advertised as a 'feature' but one I would rather not have! I find that it requires realignment to some degree every time the scope is used.
As mentioned earlier the Apex comes
with a
45° diagonal that provides a correctly-oriented field of view. Whilst
this is useful for terrestrial use and good enough for that purpose One major problem in my opinion is that our Instruction Manual (IN 161 Rev. B) makes no mention of collimation; an important omission in the case of our scope as initial star testing showed considerable coma as a result of misalignment. I estimate that the amount of error was sufficient to reduce the performance our scope to that of a 50mm scope. If you own one of the scopes I strongly advise star testing and downloading IN 183 Rev A (or later) from the Orion website - this document fully explains the collimation procedure. Once the scope had been re-collimated, finely tweaking it on a test star, it finally produced near perfect 'star test' images - allowing of course for the central obstruction. Optically the scope is superb and I can't really fault it in that respect. There is however a problem with internal baffling or rather lack of it. This is only noticeable when observing close to bright objects such as the moon, but it must inevitably reduce contrast. The source of the problem is off axis light reflecting off the side of the baffle tube - a common problem with all types of Cassegrain and by no means unique to this scope. This scope is not perfect but then how many telescopes are? Performance - For a scope that measures just under 300mm (12") in length this a real performer. I have had some really nice views of the planets, especially Saturn which I caught on a particularly good night. It also makes a great Lunar scope. In terms of image quality it easily handles 200x magnification on a good night. The limiting factor with this scope seems to be light grasp rather than resolution. I have pushed this scope to 325x and it has still produced reasonably sharp images - it simply runs out of light long before that point. One thing I really like on this scope is the focus control, it is very smooth, ours shows no noticeable image shift and allows fine adjustments to be made with ease. It is rather refreshing to find that Orion quote a maximum useful magnification for this scope of 204x and I would agree with that assessment. Or at least I would once it has been correctly collimated! This is a 102mm telescope and performs exactly as it should for the aperture. What sets it aside for me is it's portability and that is precisely why we bought it. Overall I'm very pleased with this scope. |
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