STELLARVUE FOCUSER CHOICES
Sizes:
- Our 80 mm - 127 mm telescopes come with 3" focusers.
- Our 130 - 180 mm telescopes come with either a 3" Stellarvue, a 3.5" FeatherTouch or a 3.5" Moonlite Nitecrawler focuser.
Features and Comparisons 1. The Stellarvue Standard 3" dual speed, rack and pinion focuser: This is our most popular focuser. We have sold these for a decade and people who order them appreciate the smooth dual-speed action, the long focuser drawtube and the price which is substantially less than the others. These come with a threaded darwtube that accepts all our visual accessories and photographic flatteners with the exception of our new 130 - 180 reducer flatteners. Comes with 2" and 1.25" adapters, and two finderscope dovetail shoes. Installing this focuser on our smaller telescopes completely eliminates focuser-induced vignetting. The durability is very good and it can handle up to full frame cameras.
It should be noted that it works fine with our field flatteners but when used with our telescopes SVX130T-SVX180T and our new Stellarvue reducer/flattener along with a full frame or larger camera, some vignetting will occur. So, we recommend a 3.5" focuser when using these larger telescopes and our new reducer/flatteners.
2. The Starlight Instruments FeatherTouch focuser: We supply the 3.5" FeatherTouch with our 130mm - 180mm telescopes. It has 4.5" of travel and 2" and 1.25" compression ring adapters. These come with a threaded darwtube that accepts all our visual accessories and photographic flatteners. We supply these with two threaded rear adapters machined to fit any of our photographic field flatteners and reducer/flatteners.This is an American-made focuser that is as accurate as the focuser above and it is slightly smoother. It certainly is extremely stable under various conditions and can carry even heavier payloads including medium format cameras. Both Optec and Starlight Instruments make motors for these focusers and many other brands fit it as well. We recommend this focuser for both hands-on imagers and visual users. We also recommend it as the best choice for people who do both (imaging and visual use). We supply the 3.0" FeatherTouch focuser as an upgrade for our 80mm - 127mm telescopes. It is slightly smoother than the Stellarvue 3" focuser, but it costs $600 more. Most customers purchasing our smaller telescopes select the Stellarvue focuser just as most purchasing our larger telescopes choose the larger Feather Touch.
3. The Moonlite Nitecrawler Computerized focuser: We supply the 3.5" Moonlite with our 130 - 180 mm telescopes and the 3.0" Moonlite for our smaller telescopes. These come with various threaded extension tubes to meet focus with different accessories and 2" and 1.25" visual adapters. This is an advanced, electronic, computerized focuser preferred by dedicated imagers. It is the most expensive upgrade, but for those who want perfection when it comes to imaging, this is considered one of the very best. The downside is a very short focuser draw tube length which is great for imaging stability but requires various extensions when converting to visual use. Since most high-end imagers rarely or never look through their instrument, this is usually no big deal. For remote imaging this is practically a must as the focuser rotates and focuses precisely. The reason we recommend the 3.5" Feather Touch for those who do both (imaging and visual use) is that it is more difficult to focus eyepieces with this electronic focuser. There is a lag time when manually focusing that has zero impact when imaging but can make precise manual focusing more difficult. Again, this is not a concern for imagers and for remote imagers, this focuser is the "cat's meow." *Unless specified otherwise, this focuser will come in red.
