Orion Atlas 10 EQ

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Orion Atlas 10 EQ
I Love this scope. there are a couple of down sides. 1. the focuser has a little play in it. and 2. a little breeze will make the mount shake on high power. but the clock drive is great! it holds very steady on the object. very easy to use. the mount is heavy and not very easy to pack around. and putting the OTA onto the mount can be a little ackward. there should be a word of caution in the manual. DO NOT TRY TO MOUNT THE TUBE ONTO THE TRIPOD WITH THE DUST COVER ON. i tryed once, and nearly dropped the telescope on to the ground my first night out with it. It came off in my hand and i was left with a dust cover in one hand and the bottom of the telescope in the other. with nothing to hold the top of the tube. it fell onto the tripod and it hit one of the mounting rings. but the tube itself was undamaged.

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:10 Mount:9 Ease of Use:9 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=227244

Orion Atlas 10 EQ
i too love my atlas 10. a star test shows no scattered light off defraction rings that are perfect on both sides of focus. coma is so slight that it's hardly noticed and tracking is superb. Field set up requires alittle caution and the set up is to be exactly as the manual dictates. DO NOT TRY TO PLACE OTA ON MOUNT WITH TUBE RING ASSEMBLY ATTACHED. THE BALANCE OF THE MOUNT WITH COUNTER WEIGHT IS TOO FRAGLE. When the telescope is fully assembled and balanced it's as solid as a rock and the ota glides on the mount smooth as silk .
With the use of teleview plossls 32mm thru 15mm and a 5 and 4mm teleview raidains this scope is superb in performence and is my dream scope!!!

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:10 Mount:8 Ease of Use:8 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=553996

Orion Atlas 10 EQ
These review is only for the optical tube assembly as I got it alone and I’m using it on a homebuild dobsonian mount. I know that I’m a little late for this but since all the other reviews helped me a lot on deciding wich scope to buy next, I decided to put my grain of sand.

Last moth I purchased the Orion 245mm f/4.7 reflecto OTA from orions website as they had it on special on last president’s day for $399. The OTA is the same that comes with the Atlas mount an the XT-10 version.
I live in the Dominican Republic so it took 30 days to get to my hands and the shipment to my country was almost free, with help from a friend of mine. The scope came well packet in the box, as usual, and it was a lot bigger than I’d expected.

Id like the quality appearance of the scope, very solid and little to none plastic parts. The color is dark grey almost black, but in the website it looked brigter. The focuser is nice and smoot but the lock nut doesn’t work well, you need to tighten it very, very, very hard to do the job, so, I don’t used anyway. Other thing I notice is the secondary mirror assembly needs some grese between the screws for beter movement an less roughness wen collimating and I also recomend putting a plastic washer between the tree allen srews and the mirror body for protection. Flocking is a “must do”on this scope. Lite reflects all the way thru the tube and even passes behind the mirror cell. I use a black Cloth and rubber bands to cover the mirror cell, these improved the views a lot since my viewing site is from a lithe poluted area.

First lite.
Well, before I got tis scope I had ..a…mmm…..tasco 60mm EQ refractor I bought it almost 10 years ago that leved me screaming for a bether scope!!! I’d also had used a 80mm celestron Cassegrain but the diference in the views of the Orion and those fellas is prity dam better.
After a week building the Dob mount I finaly hay the oportunity to test the scope. I live in a small city with plenty of lite pollution and my viewing site was from a secod flor an I was surrounded by light posts. It was raining that day an the sky was covered with clouds but with some clear patches of sky. I was using the 25mm eyepiece that came with the tasco that is the same as the orions Exloper II series, but with 10 years of bad usage.
In a clear area of sky a saw the orions belt laying at 30 grades above the orizon so I pointed to M42... WOW….I wasn’t expecting so much detail an brightness under my viewing conditions. The nebula shape was clearly and even some struture was visible. The trapezium was obvious but at 48x, very tiny, next was saturn. After a long search without findercope, id finaly put it on the eyepiece. it was nice an sharp, well, comparing it with the tasco, the ring was ege on, there were 4 moons visible at 48x , then I put a 6mm plastic eyepiece and some cloud bands were visible vey nice.
In another clear patch of sky it was ursa mayor’s tail so I’d spoted M51. I saw two faint circular glow close together, one bigger than the other, then the clouds covered the sky.
After 2 hour later the sky began to show some clear spots aggain, mi next stop was M4. it was low in the sky. Thru the tasco eyepiece it was a very nice, a lot of tiny faint stars scathered towards the center. Then it was M13, it looked like a faint granular ball of ligth, it was smaller but brighter than M4, with more magnification I bet I could split it into stars but I didn’t wamt to put that little crapy plastic 6mm tasco eyepice on these objet. Last but not least was M57, I spot a little round faint glow, and could see the hole in the center with averted vission at 48x.

And that was my review for the Orion 254mm reflector till then. I cant wait to get some decent ayepieces and go to a darker site. These scope for me is a great scope and at that price I couldn’t get nothing better.

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:8 Value:10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=584706

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