Telescope Reviews
Page 25
By Ed Ting
Updated 3/30/08
Click on a Telescope Below:
1) Edmund Scientific 4.25" f/10.6 Reflector (ca. 1979)
1) Edmund Scientific 4.25" f/10.6 Reflector (ca. 1979) 3/30/08
($259 withour motor drive, $279 with motor drive, NLA)
We buy telescopes for lots of reasons. Some of us are just getting started, some are trading up, adding to our
collections, and some are paring back. And increasingly, we buy them...just because. Because we're curious how
a new or different scope will perform.
Back in my misspent youth, I'd spent an unhealthy amount of time reading catalogs. You know how most normal
teenagers will sometimes take a dirty magazine to bed at night with them? I took telescope catalogs with me. I'd
imagine myself exploring the night sky with various scopes. I did a lot of this largely because I didn't have a penny
to my name. Imagination was free.
One of the most vivid series of ads I can recall was for the red-tubed Edmund Newtonians from the mid to late 1970s.
Back then, Edmund was a serious player in the market, right alongside Meade, Celestron, and Criterion. I would have
liked to own any of those reflectors, but it was the 4.25" f/10.6 that really caught my eye. The ad in the catalog
showed a couple of kids huddled under the scope with a flashlight by the ocean, while city lights glowed in the
background. Those kids looked like they were having the time of their lives. Looking back 30 years later, that ad
probably did more to get me into the hobby than any other single factor. And to this day, that long, skinny Edmund
was one of two telescopes that I've always wanted to own (the other is the 8" f/6 Meade Research Grade Newtonian
from about the same period.)
Ad from the 1979 Edmund Scientific catalog.
Note photo of kids with scope in upper left hand corner.
Fast forward to last month. While cruising Astromart (by the way, things haven't changed much, eh? Many people surf
for porn online in their spare time, and I'm looking at Astromart!) what do I see but a pristine sample of that same
4.25" Edmund scope. You hardly ever see these for sale. The chemicals in my brain reacted and before I knew it,
I'd arranged to buy the scope. When you adjust for inflation, I'd paid next to nothing for it.
The 4.25" f/10.6 Reflector
How does the scope hold up? Well...mostly, pretty well. The red-tubed Edmunds were a step up from their older white-tubed
models from the 1960s. The mounts, in particular, were vastly improved, heavier, and more robust. My 4.25" unit replaced
the long-lived 4.25" "Palomar" scope. Ads from the time bragged that "It is so powerful that with it you can read a
newspaper headline at 1 mile." Wow! I want to do that, don't you!? And by the way, is it just me, or is "Palomar" the
coolest name ever for a 4.25" telescope? They just don't market stuff this way anymore.
Ad from the 1967 Edmund Scientific catalog, showing the 4.25" Palomar
While my 4.25" scope had many improvements, it has some issues. Some of these are serious. The secondary is a joke -
a little square mirror mounted on a single stalk at a 45 degree angle (or thereabouts) that attaches to the focuser. It
looks like the mirror your dentist uses to check your teeth. The design pretty much assures that accurate collimation
is next to impossible. It's a holdover from the 1950s and 1960s. The mount is OK, but has play on both axes. I've tried
to open it up to tigthen things up inside, but some play persists. The RA and Dec tension knobs loosen over time, no matter
what you do. If you forget to retighten them every few minutes, eventually the tube breaks loose and you'll hear a big -WHAM-
as it whacks the side of the mount. And the Rube-Goldberg strap cinching system for the tube would make any Victorian
corset manufacturer proud.
Closeup of the mount. The strap/cinching system is way too complicated and fragile.
So while Edmund had made strides, they hadn't done enough. Meade, for example, was already using secondary spiders, real
honest-to-goodness hinged OTA rings, and focusers that resembled fine jewelry. Their mounts were excellent. This was not
lost on the buying public, and the writing was on the wall for Edmund (I've said this before, but I think Meade reflectors from
the late 1970s thorugh the early 1980s -especially the Reasearch Grade models- were the best telescopes they ever made.)
Single-stalk secondary makes precise collimation next to impossible
Optically, the scope is pretty good. The mirror is spherical, so it shows some undercorrection, but it's not serious,
especially at f/10.6. Since you can't really get it colliamted very well, precise viewing is kind of a lost cause. The
scope seems to have some light-baffling issues. I'm not sure where the leaks are coming from, but I do note that the
focuser is awfully close to the front of the tube. A few more inches of tube length would go a long way. If there's
any stray light around, the entire view washes out in a sea of light brown. I tried to stay "authentic" by using the
6X30 finder and RKE eyepieces, but soon realized this was an excercise in frustration. Once I substituted a Rigel Quik
Finder and my TeleVue eyepieces, things got a lot easier. It's wintertime here, and I cruised the winter sky - M42,
M36, M37, M38, M35, M41, the Pleiades, etc. Low power views are decent if you're away from lights, but pump the power
up a bit and the views start to fall apart.
Taking its limitations into account, it's not a bad little scope. However, the 4.25" f/8 Dob I recently cobbled together
from spare parts is better, both optically and mechanically. Don't over look these vintage scopes when they show up on
the used market. They hark back to a time when telescopes were loaded with character, unlike the anonymous scopes of
today. Desirable brands include Cave, Parks, Meade, Criterion, StarLiner, Quantum, Questar, etc. And Edmunds like this
one. When I'm using it, I don't think about its awkward quirks; for a couple of hours during the night, it's 1979 again
and I am one of those kids in that ad...
End Telescope Reviews, Page 25
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