My VC200L Page

My VC200L Page

I expected to be impressed by this telescope and I was not disapointed.The company Vixen have noted the problems you get with other manufacturers telescopes and fixed them in this design.It is not just the innovative optical design but the other things as well such as the collimation and the built in flip mirror.Everything can be collimated including the focusser assembly which I have had to re-design and rebuild over and over again on other scopes.The advanced part about the collimation system is that it stays collimated no matter how much you handle the scope and there is no mirror flop as it is fixed in place.The scope arrived new in perfect collimation after suffering the ministrations of several carriers across the world to get to me.Even the finder telescope stays in collimation to the rest of the telescope after several removals and refits,the optical quality of the finder telescope was exceptional as well but unfortunately no illuminated graticule.The mechanical quality of the focusser and the finish of the scope were excellent.The flip mirror idea is useful because you can use two different eyepieces or do what I have and set one up as a parfocal focusser for my CCD camera which saves a lot of time and hassle on startup.Trying it first in winter showed one problem that was different from any other scope I have had and that is it needs time to temperature stabilise if you take it out of a warm house into a cold outside otherwise it will not focus properly.This takes about 15 to 30 mins to stabilise and disappear but after that does not present a problem.When you take it back inside again you have to put a hair drier blower down the tube for 30 secs or so before you go in as if you do not the mirror dews up solid on hitting the warm air of inside.This water can cause mirror stains on the coating.Up to now it has not dewed up outside even after hours of use.As it turned out there are two locations you could fit the finder bracket if you wanted.The unused one had blanking screws fitted.In the end these turned out useful for mounting my powered focusser onto the scope as described in other pages.The final piece of luck really was finding a storage case for it.This I found from the local B and Q store for £12 uk as a "tough crate" that fitted the scope to perfection with space left for the finder and accessories that had a lockable lid very much like a toolbox.Optically it does exactly as they say in the adverts for it,pinpoint star images with out any aberations across the whole field of view.It is a shame though that they did not use curved spider vanes as diffraction spikes take me back in years to my first newtonian telescope that had those.This is something that I am going to have to get used to again.Images below using the LXD75 goto mount from Meade.

This is the second picture taken using 4 five minute exposures and with the use of a focal reducer.

M42 with focal reducer VC200

The flame nebula and the horsehead are always difficult from a light polluted site as they are on the luminosity boundary of lost returns.Unless you get one of those once a year perfect nights you never get any better no matter how much you push the image on the desktop with image processing programs.

Flame plus horsehead VC200

The Jewel Box of the north or the Double Cluster in Perseus.A beutiful sight on any night in a wide field eyepiece and a good indicator of a clear sky..

VC200 double cluster