Bresser Messier NT-150S/750

[pharscape]

I should say up front that this review is more about how I didn't do enough research before buying and the resulting journey to getting the results I wanted.

The NT_150 is advertised as suitable for both visual and astrophotography use. It is a very good scope for the money (about the same price as others in its class, and I prefer white paint).

 

I am impressed with the light robust design, the hexafoc focuser is very smooth and takes the weight of a DSLR easily. The only con; the finder is very budget and wobbly which not what you want for alignment.

I teamed it with the Skywatcher 0.9 coma corrector and my 550d. (A 50mm finder guider was bolted on the handle). It's a good match to the mount, the combination is light weight giving good tracking/guiding results all the time. 

First light was very encouraging:

until you look at the stars closely and see the pacman shapes. The coma corrector which reduces the scope's F5 to F4.8 pushes the focuser closer to the secondary. I spoke with the retailer and their advice was to buy an alternative that cost more then the scope! 

With budget constraints and a lockdown summer I decided on a drastic plan...

When in focus the focuser tube is like this:

The protrusion was about 18mm. Not having all my nerve I hacksawed off just 16mm of the focuser!

It was only this weekend that I could test out my mod and the initial results look encouraging with nice round stars and and sharp spikes:

(a cropped single 5-min  image at ISO 800).  I'm very happy with the outcome and have many more targets and hours planned for this scope. 

 

Perhaps an alternative coma corrector  (Baader MPCC perhaps) would have been a better match.

[MarkAR]

Good review, sounds daft having to either fork out another stupid amount of take a hacksaw to it. Glad it worked.