Hubble Optics Dobs

[pster...@yahoo.com]

Fellow TACos,

Has anyone here owned, operated or looked through a Hubble Optics Dob?

If so, can you please share your experience with it?

A friend is looking for a medium-large Dob in the 14.5" - 16" range and found the Hubble Optics offerings.

Their 16" Dobs are lower priced than some competitors' offerings.

They employ a sandwich-mirror technology to reduce weight. The web page says their 16" weighs just 60 pounds all-in.

Clear skies,

Paul S.

[John Pierce]

SCAC member Bill S. has an 18, I believe.   was one of the first ones they shipped.  It came in multiple shipments, and it was almost 6 months before the mirror finally shipped.     he describes it as a telescope starter kit, it needed lot of tinkering to make work halfway well, and its still a little wobbly, the motor drive kit never worked right, and the encoder kit is problematic too, can't keep up with even relatively slow/smooth large motions.   the optics are OK but not great, certainly not as good as the Galaxy 20 f/5 on the club owned Obsession Classic that I use regularlly.  he could fit the whole thing along with everything he needed in his Mini Cooper (first version of the 'new' Mini. not the british classic).

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-john r pierce

  recycling used bits in santa cruz

[Paul Sterngold]

Thanks John.

Paul

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[Les Niles]

Because it’s a sandwich, the mirror sling needs to be a wide belt, so it’s not really supported at the center of gravity as is optimal.  But maybe that doesn’t matter because the sandwich mirror is lighter so presumably suffers less distortion due to imperfect support.  

The azimuth bearing is a large ring-shaped ball bearing. I’ve read that it turns too easily so needs some friction added. And I think it was Bill S who was having sticking problems at LSA — it wasn’t clear if some dirt got into the bearing (it’s not sealed), or if the ring got slightly distorted.  OTOH, replacement bearings are readily available on Amazon and fairly cheap, as they’re used for the large Lazy Susans like you see in Chinese restaurants.   (BTW, if anyone knows how those bearings are assembled, I’d really like to hear.  I stared at the thing quite a while and couldn’t figure out how the balls are inserted between the two concentric rings.)  

There’s a recent review of the Hubble 14” on Cloudy Nights: https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/user-reviews/review-of-the-hubble-optics-14-inch-f46-premium-ultra-light-dobsonian-telescope-r3262 which is similar to John’s comments.

  -Les

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