The Rich Field Telescope

My rich field telescope is a 500 mm f/5.6 Maksutov tele photo lens that comes with an adapter to take eyepieces with 1¼" barrels. This lens was sold by Celestron as a 500 mm spotting scope. It is made somewhere in Taiwan and is offered under various brands. The optical quality is worse than that of Celestron's SCTs, but it was of course much cheaper and faster as a C90. I wanted to use it primarily as a tele photo lens. A Shapley lens that shortens the focal length to 350 mm at f/4 was available, and I purchased that, too. The Shapley lens can only be used photographically or with my eyepiece adapter.

This small telescope is a wonderful travel scope or an incredible 14 x 90 finder scope for the C9. With a 26 mm Plössl eyepiece in my eyepiece adapter attached to that lens I get a magnification of 14X and an exit pupil of 6.5 mm diameter. This is an ideal size.

Even hybrid 2" eyepieces that sport an additional 1¼" barrel such as my 9 mm Nagler can be used. The exit pupil is in this case of course smaller than with a 26 mm Plössl eyepiece but the field of view is enormous.

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