Ceravolo

I’ve had the great priviledge of owning multiple examples of the venerable Ceravolo HD145 and HD216 Mak/Newts! These are absolutely some of the highest quality optics created for the amature astronomy market. Indeed, Peter Ceravolo is credited with assisting Roland Christen in the use of inteferometer testing of lenses, he designs mirrors for satellites and is well known and well respected in the optical community.

The “HD” in the naming of these scopes stands for “High Definition”, and they are true to their name. Smooth optics, unbelievable clarity and contrast for DSO’s, the planets and the moon. Both sizes featured a helical focuser which were excellent, once you got used to working with them…

HD216

The HD216 , you guessed it features 216mm in aperture, with a very small central obstruction of less that 20%. For all practicle purposes, the views are refractorlike. From my experice, this Mak/Newt put up similar views of Jupiter as my TEC-180 refractor. One of the advantages of a Mak/Newt is that the secondary is fused to a corrector plate, so there are no spider veigns to obscure the view and zero collimation needed – ever. These are exceedingly rarew, with 24 ever being created. I believe two were destroyed in shipping accdents – a real shame.

HD145

The HD145 behaves just like a lightweight 6″ refractor. There is an extensive comaprison of the HD145 with a TEC-140 on Cloudynights – you should check that out. This scope served as my grab and go scope and my just plain go-to scope for quite a while, unitl I got bit by the Zeiss bug. I highly recommend you grab one of these if you get the chance – about 30 ever made.

Here is a unique site – my HD145 sitting next to my Astro-Physics 180 Fastmax Mak/Newt for size comparison…