I’m in the market for a new telescope and open to recommendations. Here’s my situation:
I live relatively close to dark sites—20 minutes from Bortle 4 and an hour from Bortle 2—so I will drive to almost all my imaging locations.
I don’t have permanent access to a dark site for multi-night shoots, so I’m interested in a “light bucket” that will let me get plenty of good data in a few hours of imaging.
I have a full-frame mirrorless camera, so a 44mm image circle is important to me.
I don’t mind tinkering with a telescope to get excellent performance and I’m willing to learn new skills like collimation.
I’m mainly interested in comets and nebulae, so 400mm to 600mm of focal length should be fine.
My budget is about $5,000 on the upper end, though obviously I’d like to spend as little as I can. That includes the telescope and any accessories, like collimation equipment, telescope rings, etc. I already have a camera and mount that can carry 40 lbs (18 kg).
Given everything above, I think one of the Takahashi reflectors would be a good fit for me, but I have a few concerns:
Will I need to collimate before every imaging session? (Remember that I’ll be driving to dark sites with the telescope.) If so, is it uniquely difficult to collimate in the field?
I’m interested in the 1.5x extender that Takahashi offers for each of their reflectors. Does anyone have experience with these? How is the image quality?
Takahashi lists a 44mm image circle in the specs for each of these telescopes, but how good is the image really in the corners of a full frame sensor?
Is the extra 30mm of aperture diameter worth it for the 160ED? I think it’s about $1,400 more, and the 160ED isn’t in stock anywhere at the moment.
I’ve mentioned the Takahashis here because they caught my eye, but I’m open to other recommendations. My priorities are aperture and image quality. Eager to hear everyone’s thoughts.