Takahashi Epsilon180ED
Takahashi Epislon180ED is the newest telescope in Takahashi's Epsilon series telescope. This telescope is super-fast 7" Astrograph and has a newly designed ED corrector. I bought this epsilon180ED in 2007 for taking wide field images of celestial objects.
Popular telescope for astrophotography in Japan
In Japan, a lot of people like to take a photo in the nightsky use the Epsilon180ED very much. One of the reason is Epsilon180 has fast focal ration of f/2.8. You can easily take an image with Digtal SLR camera in short exposure time. Shorter exposure times reduce tracking error of your mount.
The Takahashi Epsilon-180ED has flat field supports 35mm format. It is good at full-size CCD camera like Nikon D700. Actually, I don't have any issues to take image with my STL11000M camera. Picture below is flat frame image which I was taken with an STL11000M camera and my Epsilon 180ED.
My favorite picture taken with this scope is Comet Holmes.
Specifications for the Takahashi E-180
| Product Name | Takahashi EPSILON-180ED F/2.8 |
| Effective aperture | 180mm diameter |
| Forcal length | 500mm |
| forcal ration | 1:2.8 |
| Image circle | 44mm diameter |
| Diameter of Main tube | 232mm |
| Length | 570mm |
| Weight | 10kgs |