Received this the day before Christmas after being on backorder for about a month. If you’re into astronomy or trying to start these days, you’ll know that just about everything is on backorder due to the supply chain being an absolute train wreck right now.
I got this particular type of telescope for planet killing. High focal length and high magnification are what it takes for viewing our solar system’s planets in any kind of detail.
The aperture is 180mm or 7.1 inches for good light gathering and the 2700mm focal length will get you up close and personal with your favorite planet.
For comparison, my Celestron RASA 8 has a focal length of 400mm. The Orion Mak also has a focal ratio of f/15.0 which is considerably slower than the RASA’s f/2.0 ratio and as such would require much longer exposures on deep sky objects to get similar results like the RASA.
It also mounts fine on my existing Celestron CGX which has both types of popular saddles.
First light images coming soon!