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Product Review Part II: Svbony SA405 85mm ED Spotting Scope: Eyepieces & Imaging Capabilities. (1 Viewer)

Hi Neal, nice pic’s just read the review. I was wondering which spotter would produce better images visually , this SA405 or the SA401 from Svbony ? Also based on each scopes spec’s and construction which is actually the more high end scope with the better glass ? I do not glass with a spotter anymore but I am tempted to purchase the SA401, just to see what different high end eyepieces will produce the best images visually. Amazon is offering the SA401 at a very appealing price.
 
Evening all: hauled the gear up to another one of my local patches where Buzzards often roam. Conditions this evening were sunny but windy. Captured this pic using an ordinary photo tripod but was worried the images wouldn't come out OK. This is one image I took of a Buzzard at ~85m distance:
IMG_A00A41E766BD-4 (1).JPEG
A little CA creeping in but quite pleased overall.

Regards,

Neil.
 
Hi Poli,

Thanks for the feedback. It's a very decent astro scope. Max true field is around 3 degrees with a field stop of ~16mm. I've only had it up to 67x but I've got a 4mm Plossl eyepiece coming, so hope to coax 121x out of it for observing the Moon, double stars and planets. I did see Venus about ten days back like a tiny first quarter moon. With Baader Astrosolar material, a homemade solar filter gives excellent white light solar images. That said, a 45 degree eyepiece tilt is not nearly as comfortable or as convenient as a 90 degree standard dagonal.

Regards,
Neil.
 
Hello gcole,

Thank you for the feedback also.

I've not tested the SA401 unfortunately, so can't offer an opinion based on a side by side comparison. The SA401 has a 4-element, double ED objective(the SA405 is a triplet with one ED element) so should give even crisper images with less CA at the highest powers. If the price is right, I'd go for the SA401. That said, the SA405 is very good indeed IMO and might suit most people not requiring the more aggressive control of CA.

Cheers,
Neil
 
The 4mm Plossl arrived and I was able to boost the magnification to 121x. Daytime images remain crisp and sharply focused with a little more CA creeping in. Star testing the 4mm ocular on the SA405 on Vega revealed, nice concentric Fraunhofer diffraction rings either side of focus. In focus, the Airy disk is white with a faint first diffraction ring and a little more secondary spectrum than that reported at 67x.

IMG_7154.jpg
IMG_7153.jpg

I was able to conduct some double star testing at 121x yesterday evening in the summer twilight:

Epsilon 1 & 2 Lyrae: the famous Double Double easily resolved into four white components.

Epsilon Bootis(Izar): Beautiful colour contrast double, orange primary and bluish secondary close in.

Iota Cassiopeiae: Triple system, with all three components well resolved.
 

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