Our local astronomy club inherited an Obsession 20" f/5 classic, and I was the only one in the club lucky enough to have enough free garage space to store it, so I'm in a similar position as Ed as being its caretaker rather than its owner. Still, even in my Bortle 8 driveway, it can punch through the light pollution enough to bring in some faint fuzzies that my 12" can't come close to seeing, and when I show off Jupiter and Saturn with it to the neighbors, they are all blown away. The only real downside (other than it taking about 15 minutes for me to get set up and collimated) is that climbing up and down the ladder all evening makes me tire out quicker. But then again, all the step climbing will strengthen your legs ilke a runner, which gives a new meaning to doing a Messier Marathon!
I owned a 25" from Obsession. I miss that baby. The sessions with that machine were memorable for a lifetime, and every single person I ever showed the sky to with that baby remembers it. Every one. I have great memories of my mom and dad viewing with it as well. I cannot believe I let it go when we moved. I miss it a lot.
You deserve a lot more credit and recognition than you get for your work here. You're the real deal, and your passion for this hobby comes through in every video.
Thanks. One reason I haven't "grown" all that fast in the past 25 years is I don't participate in sponsorships, affiliates, and I refuse to be a spokesman. I also do little to no promotion of this channel. The people who are here want to be here!
My friend owns the Obsession 20-inch and he uses it constantly. He just recently returned from his trip to New Mexico and he has had only grumpy jester of being back home in Missouri. I am envious of his trophy telescope, but my ability to lift and move is well declined since I turned 75-yrs.🎉. Great review and thank you for your time and support of your video channel.
I had a 20" for 15 years. As I got older, I sold the 20" and moves down to an 18". The 18" is much more manageable and only loses a very small reduction of light grasp from the 20.
When I was a young man (a long time ago), I would hang out many a summer night with a friend who used this very scope. It was amazing! My young eyes picked up brilliant color (reds) in the Orion Nebula, something my much older friend could not see. Details were so vivid and brilliant! My friend has long since passed now, but those memories and vistas are seared into my brain forever.
Ed, I think that this is one of the best reviews I've seen from you, ever! The details of the scope's construction and basic operation are superb. The pace and description of the steps to put it together are also way up there, but I also like your wheelbarrow carrying cart and the plywood platform with casters, both of which are going to motivate to solve some problems on their own without having to buy everything already made, which costs money and doesn't teach you anything. Good job, Ed.
I had a 22" UC, and I eventually sold it to a friend. I just wasn't using it enough. I now use a C11 because it is ready to go in less than three minutes.
Ed, your vids are SO entertaining and useful, you are a master! I once bought an 18" Obsession, and after 2 years of getting it out so infrequently, I sold it. More recently I bought an Explore Scientific - Gen II - 12-inch, put it on a wheeled platform with 5" wheels, and I can roll that out of my garage in less than a minute. As much as I loved the quality of the Obsession, as they say, your best telescope is the one you use! Never heard of G1 before, sure glad you included that in this vid.
Under good skies, G1 is easily within range of your 12". It has a magnitude of 13.7 and it shows a little bit of size. Also, it's off the southern end of M31, so you're not trying to pick it out from the glow of the galaxy like most other M31 globulars. G1 is plotted in the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas (p. 27) and in the downloadable TriAtlas (TriAltas has three scales, the B and C atlases show G1; see pages B10, B25, and C125). For detailed finder charts, I use SkyTools and the free Cartes du Ciel. You can also search the Internet for finder charts for G1 prepared by others. I have seen G1 in my 8" SCT with effort (first time was five years ago), and I have read reports of sharper-eyed observers spotting it in a 6". G1 is easy in my 11" SCT. Most of my observations have been under Bortle Class 2 or Class 3 skies at elevations above 6000 feet in California's Sierra Nevada range (Kings Canyon National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Courtright Reservoir) or on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada (West Portal Scenic Viewpoint near June Lake, just two weeks ago, and Convict Lake). However, this summer I also spotted G1 from an elevation of only 600 feet in the Sierra foothills (Millerton Lake) under Bortle Class 4 skies. With my 11" SCT, I typically use magnifications between 70x and 350x, but I usually settle on my 13-mm TeleVue Ethos and 215x for the best view. In addition to G1, this summer I added three more M31 globulars to my life list using my 11" SCT: G76 (m14.2), G78 (m14.3), and G280 (m14.2). I will next try for G213 (m14.7) and G272 (m14.8). Both SkyTools and Cartes du Ciel nail the location of G1, but Cartes du Ciel more accurately plots G76, G78, and G280. Back to the subject at hand, I agree that's Ed's video was excellent. Personally, I don't want to own a scope that big, but I want to know people who do. 🙂 Members of my club currently have an 18" and a 20" Obsession and the club owns a 20" Dob that was built in the 1970s (IIRC) and rebuilt about ten years ago. In the past, we also had members with 24", 25", and 30" scopes.
I've only seen these 20" "beasts" on your channel and will probably never see a physical, real-life version. For that and many more reasons, I enjoy your channel content, Ed. This expands my knowledge of the telescope universe 🙂. So much to learn and enjoy here.
This is what I want to own. A 16-20" dobsonian. I wish i could afford one. I want to build a permanent structure on the top of my barn for something like this.
I actually resolved the center star in the ring nebula one night and one super clear night saw separation between arms in the andromeda galaxy with my 20” M13 never looked better! Thanks for memories of that scope. Santa Cruz Astronomy club now has my scope.
I have the 25" f/5. Can't hardly even begin to tell all the great DSOs I've seen and shared, all the good times with friends and astro classes too. It is a beast but the set-up is quite doable fo one and super eaay for two, but I'm in my sixties and may need to downsize to a 20", although I have a great 17.5" too, there really is nothing like an Obsession: such a beautiful instrument and tough enough to take to the darkest skies, for decades .
@@tarang221 Hey, that's cold.... But in fact I have imaged Jupiter and Saturn through the eyepiece, using my phone (no mean feat) but you know, the scope is neither motorized nor EQ mounted so they were ...all right. No quasars with an android. ;/
Ed , awesome mate ! , I have 2 friends down here in Darwin Australia with home built 20 and 22 inch f5's using the sweet Obsession design and the things that I have seen in these 2 scopes out at our Northern Territory dark sky sight !!! . Lost in the cluster of galaxies as you mentioned it blew me away ! yes we can see well it from 12 degrees south . Makes my C9.25 look like a finder . But it does perform very well at the observing site . Yes this is where you see things that only a handful of people have seen . Thank you for this great review as always thanks mate .
I'm only 17 but I already know that I am going to buy a gigantic telescope when i'm older and can afford it. They better not stop making such beauties! (They should also bring back the classic already, I just love seeing that telescope. Its a work of art)
Love these videos Ed! One thing I would like to see more is when you do close ups of smaller details. Loved when you showed a detailed view of the mirror cell and the way the UTA is mounted to the truss poles.
There were two giant obsession scopes and one smaller but still giant one at the Nebraska star party. I got to look through all three of them but the smaller one was the best because one of them was just focused on a random area of stars and the second was out of focus, plus I had to climb crappy ladders to use both. I was the perfect height to look through the smaller one (18”), and I saw the dumbbell nebula and the great cluster in Hercules and they were amazing. One of the giant scopes was 24” and idk what the other was but it was somewhere around there as well. It was really weird too because I brought my 12 incher and everyone I told said “oh yeah, nice little scope!”
Faboulous video Ed. I've had the pleasure of looking through this scope twice over the years, three years ago gifted the view of the pillars of creation, like it was a photo in a magazine and quite a few years before that the super nova in a spiral arm of M51. It's a beautiful instrument. However, I am the very happy owner of a Taurus T400 (16") ultra light dob - which is a work of art in its own - and just a few weeks ago an observing buddy of mine set the challenge of trying to see G1 and I was excited to give it a try. I found it myself after just about 5 minutes of slow star hopping and constatnt looking at the map print out he brought with him. Sure enough I confirmed the stars in the FoV and changed eyepiece to my 4.7mm Ethos and there it was in its splendor! Averted vision helped a lot and right between the two brighter forground stars you could see the smudgy fuzz that is G1. A genuine thrilling moment. It's these kinds of moments and experiences that bonds you to your instrument and creates an emotional connection.
@@marcpopick248 Taurus makes their own mirrors. There is professional and standard grade. I went for standard and the glass is from GSO but he does all the coatings. The professional mirror comes with a tesr cert. Collimation is outstanding and has the best collimation system I have ever seen and used. Stars are ultra sharp in my eyepieces. I have a video overview of my scope on my channel.
At 5:36 it sounds like you said "Formica, this is flooring laminate here", which actually, I believe, should have been, "This is countertop laminate here".
Hi Ed, Many thanks for the review. I got one of these 16 years ago and still going strong, I get to use it under a bortle 2-3 sky on moonless weekends when its not cloudy/raining. This might shock you but this things isn't just a DSO scope, under decent seeing it is absolutely stunning on the planets, I use a 2x powermate and a zeiss binoviewers and zeiss eps on them, and if the seeing is poor, I can stop it down to 6 or 7 inches off axis unobstructed, there is enough room in the spider arm spacing for that. If you ever tried it, I'd been keen to see what you think of the views vs what you can see in the 4" Takahashi scopes.
The only thing some people do with the Obsessions is add the Glatter sling and fans for the 2 inch thick mirror. Some people say that it never really cools at all even with boundary layers fan
@@edting I never got to meet him but people say he was a very nice person. I think his wife is still active with his products and Teeter was using his slings as standard parts. Of course now Teeter is closing up shop. There is not to much premium dob builders now. The New moon and starstructer and sdm is only men standing.
@@georgehilario3544 the fans help the mirror reach ambient temperature. If you live where the temperature drops fast and take telescope from warm house then you get bad images while mirror is cooling. This is why some people prefer borosilicate and zeroder and quartz glass (more expensive) as well as thinner mirrors because these mirror figure do not change to much. But thinner mirror means you need a better mirror cell design to hold it.
I had a privilege to be able to use 25 inch Obsession under amazing southern hemisphere skies. If you are a dedicated visual observer, you owe yourself one large aperture dob in your lifetime.
@@edting Ed, I have to say I am jealous of you guys from the States. You really do have some amazing skies. In Europe, its so hard to find great skies, as the towns and villages are so spread out, there is little "wilderness" in between. I must say however that the enjoyment I get out of the recent 12" BinoDobson I built is rivaling that of a 25 inch scope. Although the image scale is nowhere near, the immersiveness and relaxation at the eyepiece is something else, even under bortle 4 skies. The comfort at the eyepiece is second to none. If only there was a way to get it to that ranch, or the Namib desert... well one can always dream...
I have looked through 18, 20 and 25-inch Obsession Dobs, and built my own 15-inch truss-tube based on the Obsessions. I was NEVER disappointed with the views through any of them, even from light polluted sites the views are amazing. The only drawback to them is I don't like climbing tall ladders in the dark, because I have fallen off a ladder. For that reason and the fact I have to keep my Dob in the house, I opted for building a 15-inch F/4.5. I have seen most of the globular clusters visible from the northern hemisphere as well, and definitively seen one extra-galactic globular cluster, NGC-1049 which belongs to the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy.
I don't think there's THAT much of a difference when viewing between an 18" and a 25" Yet there is a BIG difference between them when it comes to price and transportability.
Hi Ed, thank you for this and all your informative reviews. However, I was just looking through my paperwork that came with my 20 inch F5 Obsession and see that you did a review of the same scope in October 1999 and even described the unboxing of the scope ( not that it was yours). Interestingly you also mentioned the 35mm Panoptic in that review. My favourite EP is a 17mm TV Ethos for Deep Sky and a 6mm Ethos for Lunar work. A couple of comments, after climbing the ladder to put on the upper truss assembly a couple of times, I thought there has to be an easier way and now install as per your demonstation of the cam lock at a standing height. The heavy mirror is an issue but a gentle lift and I tie the scope in position using the wheelbarrow fixing screws with some rope, mine have steel eyes so its an easy job and easily strong enough to counter the weight of the mirror. Second point is that its my ready to go scope as I leave the wheelbarrow on in the garage. When its clear, I roll out from the garage and take of the upper truss cover and its ready to go ( the garage is not heated so mirror cooling is minimal). Too date, I have never fallen over the handles, but suspect I will do one day. On completetion, wheel it back in and replace the upper truss cover.
😊Ed… nowadays you should mention that for that drop light you refer to, it must have a incandescent bulb in order to generate some heat. A LCD bulb won’t work. Also, give a recommendation for the wattage so it will heat the cell evenly and gently.
Lcd still generates a lot of heat, it's just at the circuitry, which is why they all have heatsinks. In any case I'd suggest a heater for heat, not a light.
As an engineer watching a video clearly being shared between the coven of astronomers and astrophysicists, I feel like an interloper watching a wonderful, if exotic (lol), ritual. Also I appreciate the bearing for its clever design and utilization of material, but something about half a bearing really shakes me to my core. It will never complete a rotation :(
My retirement scope! Absolutely jealous you have one to use. Thank you for the very informative review, Ed. One thing not mentioned was how well the collimation holds not only after assembly but also panning up and down. Has Obsession improved the cam latching mechanism?
Excellent review Ed. Very informative and interesting. You mentioned that it is okay to store this scope in a garage. Is it safe to also store a refractor in a garage year round in the Chicagoland area. Thanks and keep up the great work. Ed.
The term 'Tube in a Box' nails down the aesthetic of Dobsonians in general. I've got an Explore Scientific 10" Hybrid Truss (Serrurier), which seems to be 1/2 size version of this...would love your review of that one.
Thank you for your informative and inspiring piece on the 20" Obsession Telescope. I have the money, but I'm not sure I have the sky, or that my house here in West Virginia is suited to it.
I'm never going to buy one of these, but really would have liked to be shown a representative image of something you might see with it other than the globular cluster.
one day ... I got this house in the northern suburbs of my city that's a B4-B5 zone ... I'd love to have one of those ☺️ we seldom spend the night over there but man ... I'd find any excuse to if I had a big dob just waiting to be rolled out... oh, I should mention that I have this portion of the roof of the storage facility reinforced to support a smallish 2-3 m wide obsy ... so ... waiting for that day ... obsy on remote action and big dob on a roll in and out whenever there for the night :)
Ed: "You don't wanna be going crazy with a high power eyepiece" Me: "When this baby hits 0.88 millimeters, you're gonna see some serious shit..." If you didn't get the reference, I'm worried about you
10:48 The notion of paralytic astronomers is quite an amusing one - that must make collimation challenging, not to mention which object you focus on; the middle one, presumably?
@@edting Nice! it begs the question, 5” extra aperture makes a huge difference when we’re talking about the average scopes like refractors and SCT’s but, when comparing big light buckets like a 20 and 25” is it really noticeable? maybe I’m not making sense but I feel like there’s a point where the difference in aperture has to be larger and larger as telescopes get larger and larger.
Ed there's a jump scare in this video. Some weird whispery noise right at the top. I heard it scrolling through your videos in a quiet room and I thought a ghost was talking to me.
Hey Ed, congratulations on another outstanding video. I recently picked up one of these that was built in the 90s. I would like to upgrade the focuser. It looks like that one has a Feather touch on it. Do you know if that is the one that Obsession provides as an option or if it was purchased aftermarket? Either way, I would love to hear your opinion on it, any recommendations that you might have and the model number. Thank you Ed!
I keep toying with the idea of buying one. As an entirely visual observer, I think I would use it with some regularity. My AD 10 is my equivalent of Ed's Orion XT8 but I think for those special nights at a dark sky location, I would bring a 20+ inch truss Dob along. Now if someone will just give me the 10K!!!
@@sofjanmustopoh7232 I'm hoping to finish building a roll-top I've been slowly picking away at by the end of next summer, but it's for a MUCH smaller setup. I could just barely squeeze it in if I removed the planned coffee station and seats.😁
Absolutely sweet when talking about guilty feelings 😂 that’s true, you’re right 😘 but wow, now I have to find a viable 35 mm for my twenty inches dobson Ian 😂😂😂
Very cool. I wish I was on your list of star gazing social guests! I assume you are in Hanover area. I am in Hartford VT. I think we are B5ish. Correct? But, there are B2 areas not to far from here.
To me it is very weird that someone I'm not sure who thinks everything has to be lit up like daytime. In the dark your eyes adjust and I really think you can actually see better. I have always wondered how much better planets look in a 12 inch plus scope. A telrad with telrad charts can't be beat in my opinion. To me the holly grail of observing is Galaxies. That would be the only reason I would want a scope like this. I can see a few with my orion xt10.
I can see a few with my old C6-N, a 6" f5 Newtonian I had the primary mirror refigured and aluminized to .986 Strehl and zero knife edge test. Optical Wave Labs said they got it better because the small mirrors are easier to hit near perfect with. Takahashi quality for $500 including the used scope, kind of as it doesn't hold collimation like a Tak. $900 if you count the manual mount, tripod and Crayford. It is amazing what having near perfect focus can do with a camera zoomed in. Of course I live in New Mexico and Bortle 2 is 30 miles away next to Bortle 1 at the White Sands base helps.
@@MountainFisher I'm on the opposite end of the clear skys spectrum in Tacoma Washington. I had the mirror of my old scope, a orion xt8 recoated with the highest quality aluminum that was available at the time, 2003, and it made an amazing difference. The frist thing I looked at was Saturn and I could easily see 6 of her moons. Also I swear I could see the outer most gap in the rings.
@@JoshBreakdowns when I run into another amateur astronomer here I feel like I've struck gold. I used to go to pierce collages astronomy nights which were held every other night. I would set up my scope, weather permitting, so people who have never used one could take a look at usally planets. Some people there had high end apo ED refractors and I got a kick out of the fact that the people almost always said my humble orion xt8 dobsonian had the best views. I think its simply because I could magnify more than the largest refractors.
Obsession makes a beautiful scope but I'm not sure if I want to stand on a ladder for very long. That would be like my fourth scope and I only have one at the moment.
They make short focal ratio dobs now in the f 3.2 to f4 range... with a field flattener you should get good views and only need a stool when near the zenith.
@@tubedude54 those are pretty cool but I think it gets costly for the glass and the correction. F5 is pretty good for my explorer scientific eyes pieces. I have a 10 inch dob and one day a 16 inch might be in the works.
@@MajorBorris As I mentioned in main post I'm looking at the Webster 28". I'd prolly go with the F3.6 version. That would give an eyepiece height of 93" at zenith so a 2 step platform raising me up 28" is all I'd need... not a big ladder. If I went with their F3.3 it lowers the eyepiece 8" but the price goes higher. $18.9k vs $20.4k. The cost is all that's holding me back right now...
This telescope does not have any kind of tracking, right? So, how are you able to see anything? Any object will leave the field of view within seconds. What don’t I get?
All of what you say is true. But...it's an Obsession. The motions are buttery smooth. You can drive the thing with your index finger. It's actually fun to move around. If you must have tracking and Goto, you can install the Argo Navis unit.
@@edting The Argo Navis is the finder computer. Servo Cat is the drive system. They are different items that work together. I have just the Argo Navis on mine, I have to push to the objects .100 deg eyepieces work well to alleviate drift times.
Contemplating on a used 20", but concerned about fitting it through my sliding glass door. What are the dimensions of the widest part (rockerbox?)? Person selling says it's 26x26x25 but spec. sheet I looked at said quite a bit larger.
Is the 20" an Obsession? The dimensions depend on how you measure the side bearings. At its max, the rocker box on mine is 27" X 27" X 26". The best situation for a big Dob is to leave it in the garage assembled. Barring that leave it in the garage not assembled. I know one guy who keeps his disassembled in his car. Leaving the thing inside the house usually means it never gets used.
Yes, it's an obsession. If I buy, it's about a 4 hour trip each way. It won't fit my doorway if it's at it's max. Can I reduce it somehow such as taking off handles? I use my upstairs bedroom/veranda which would let me move it only a few yards.
Our local astronomy club inherited an Obsession 20" f/5 classic, and I was the only one in the club lucky enough to have enough free garage space to store it, so I'm in a similar position as Ed as being its caretaker rather than its owner. Still, even in my Bortle 8 driveway, it can punch through the light pollution enough to bring in some faint fuzzies that my 12" can't come close to seeing, and when I show off Jupiter and Saturn with it to the neighbors, they are all blown away. The only real downside (other than it taking about 15 minutes for me to get set up and collimated) is that climbing up and down the ladder all evening makes me tire out quicker. But then again, all the step climbing will strengthen your legs ilke a runner, which gives a new meaning to doing a Messier Marathon!
It’s come to the point that I click “like” a new video from Ed before I even watch it.
Same😂
Yes i remember waching it sometimes ago..
Same here😅
Sometimes you do that without consent of yourself and confused at the end of the video why the hell the like button was already clicked 😁
I have reached that point also
I owned a 25" from Obsession. I miss that baby. The sessions with that machine were memorable for a lifetime, and every single person I ever showed the sky to with that baby remembers it. Every one. I have great memories of my mom and dad viewing with it as well. I cannot believe I let it go when we moved. I miss it a lot.
Dude, I wish I had that!
You never let something like that go. You only have one life.
@@f4ucorsair153 Totally agree. I miss her.
You deserve a lot more credit and recognition than you get for your work here. You're the real deal, and your passion for this hobby comes through in every video.
Thanks. One reason I haven't "grown" all that fast in the past 25 years is I don't participate in sponsorships, affiliates, and I refuse to be a spokesman. I also do little to no promotion of this channel. The people who are here want to be here!
My friend owns the Obsession 20-inch and he uses it constantly. He just recently returned from his trip to New Mexico and he has had only grumpy jester of being back home in Missouri. I am envious of his trophy telescope, but my ability to lift and move is well declined since I turned 75-yrs.🎉. Great review and thank you for your time and support of your video channel.
I had a 20" for 15 years. As I got older, I sold the 20" and moves down to an 18". The 18" is much more manageable and only loses a very small reduction of light grasp from the 20.
When I was a young man (a long time ago), I would hang out many a summer night with a friend who used this very scope. It was amazing! My young eyes picked up brilliant color (reds) in the Orion Nebula, something my much older friend could not see. Details were so vivid and brilliant! My friend has long since passed now, but those memories and vistas are seared into my brain forever.
Ed, I think that this is one of the best reviews I've seen from you, ever! The details of the scope's construction and basic operation are superb. The pace and description of the steps to put it together are also way up there, but I also like your wheelbarrow carrying cart and the plywood platform with casters, both of which are going to motivate to solve some problems on their own without having to buy everything already made, which costs money and doesn't teach you anything. Good job, Ed.
I had a 22" UC, and I eventually sold it to a friend. I just wasn't using it enough. I now use a C11 because it is ready to go in less than three minutes.
I have a 20" classic and a C11.
My stomach flipped when the turnbuckle part dropped onto the mirror box cover. Yikes!
Yeah I was wondering if anyone would say anything.
@@edting And that was right after you said to leave the mirror cover on so you wouldn't drop something on the mirror...
I had a friend whose secondary mirror came unscrewed and fell on his primary, a 32". It broke ⅓
Ed, your vids are SO entertaining and useful, you are a master! I once bought an 18" Obsession, and after 2 years of getting it out so infrequently, I sold it. More recently I bought an Explore Scientific - Gen II - 12-inch, put it on a wheeled platform with 5" wheels, and I can roll that out of my garage in less than a minute. As much as I loved the quality of the Obsession, as they say, your best telescope is the one you use! Never heard of G1 before, sure glad you included that in this vid.
Under good skies, G1 is easily within range of your 12". It has a magnitude of 13.7 and it shows a little bit of size. Also, it's off the southern end of M31, so you're not trying to pick it out from the glow of the galaxy like most other M31 globulars. G1 is plotted in the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas (p. 27) and in the downloadable TriAtlas (TriAltas has three scales, the B and C atlases show G1; see pages B10, B25, and C125). For detailed finder charts, I use SkyTools and the free Cartes du Ciel. You can also search the Internet for finder charts for G1 prepared by others.
I have seen G1 in my 8" SCT with effort (first time was five years ago), and I have read reports of sharper-eyed observers spotting it in a 6". G1 is easy in my 11" SCT. Most of my observations have been under Bortle Class 2 or Class 3 skies at elevations above 6000 feet in California's Sierra Nevada range (Kings Canyon National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Courtright Reservoir) or on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada (West Portal Scenic Viewpoint near June Lake, just two weeks ago, and Convict Lake). However, this summer I also spotted G1 from an elevation of only 600 feet in the Sierra foothills (Millerton Lake) under Bortle Class 4 skies. With my 11" SCT, I typically use magnifications between 70x and 350x, but I usually settle on my 13-mm TeleVue Ethos and 215x for the best view.
In addition to G1, this summer I added three more M31 globulars to my life list using my 11" SCT: G76 (m14.2), G78 (m14.3), and G280 (m14.2). I will next try for G213 (m14.7) and G272 (m14.8). Both SkyTools and Cartes du Ciel nail the location of G1, but Cartes du Ciel more accurately plots G76, G78, and G280.
Back to the subject at hand, I agree that's Ed's video was excellent. Personally, I don't want to own a scope that big, but I want to know people who do. 🙂 Members of my club currently have an 18" and a 20" Obsession and the club owns a 20" Dob that was built in the 1970s (IIRC) and rebuilt about ten years ago. In the past, we also had members with 24", 25", and 30" scopes.
my heart stopped at 9:04 when the wind moved the ladder LOL
My ladder is awful. I need to replace it.
I've only seen these 20" "beasts" on your channel and will probably never see a physical, real-life version. For that and many more reasons, I enjoy your channel content, Ed. This expands my knowledge of the telescope universe 🙂. So much to learn and enjoy here.
I’ve got the 22UC and it’s great!
This is what I want to own. A 16-20" dobsonian. I wish i could afford one. I want to build a permanent structure on the top of my barn for something like this.
I actually resolved the center star in the ring nebula one night and one super clear night saw separation between arms in the andromeda galaxy with my 20” M13 never looked better! Thanks for memories of that scope. Santa Cruz Astronomy club now has my scope.
I've also seen G1 through a 20" telescope (a Starmaster) under Bortle 2 skies. That was definitely one of the most memorable views I've ever had.
I LOVE BIG DOBS, AND I CANNOT LIE…..
What's G1? or did you mean M1?
I have the 25" f/5. Can't hardly even begin to tell all the great DSOs I've seen and shared, all the good times with friends and astro classes too. It is a beast but the set-up is quite doable fo one and super eaay for two, but I'm in my sixties and may need to downsize to a 20", although I have a great 17.5" too, there really is nothing like an Obsession: such a beautiful instrument and tough enough to take to the darkest skies, for decades .
I want to see the images you took from your monster
@@tarang221 Hey, that's cold.... But in fact I have imaged Jupiter and Saturn through the eyepiece, using my phone (no mean feat) but you know, the scope is neither motorized nor EQ mounted so they were ...all right. No quasars with an android. ;/
@@photonjones5908 I understand I have a 127mm mak on little dobsonian mount...no eq no motor so it's tough to manually track
I owned 2. One was stolen and recovered after I purchased another replacement. I added ServoCat and Argo Navis.
Ed , awesome mate ! , I have 2 friends down here in Darwin Australia with home built 20 and 22 inch f5's using the sweet Obsession design and the things that I have seen in these 2 scopes out at our Northern Territory dark sky sight !!! . Lost in the cluster of galaxies as you mentioned it blew me away ! yes we can see well it from 12 degrees south .
Makes my C9.25 look like a finder . But it does perform very well at the observing site .
Yes this is where you see things that only a handful of people have seen .
Thank you for this great review as always thanks mate .
I love so much your videos, that I click 👍 and then I watch it, I never been disappointed, greetings from Paris 🇫🇷
13:26 A good example of why you keep the primary mirror covered!😱
Picked up my 20” f5 at Dave’s dentist office in Madison in May 1997. Love the scope!,
I'm only 17 but I already know that I am going to buy a gigantic telescope when i'm older and can afford it. They better not stop making such beauties! (They should also bring back the classic already, I just love seeing that telescope. Its a work of art)
Love these videos Ed! One thing I would like to see more is when you do close ups of smaller details. Loved when you showed a detailed view of the mirror cell and the way the UTA is mounted to the truss poles.
There were two giant obsession scopes and one smaller but still giant one at the Nebraska star party. I got to look through all three of them but the smaller one was the best because one of them was just focused on a random area of stars and the second was out of focus, plus I had to climb crappy ladders to use both. I was the perfect height to look through the smaller one (18”), and I saw the dumbbell nebula and the great cluster in Hercules and they were amazing. One of the giant scopes was 24” and idk what the other was but it was somewhere around there as well. It was really weird too because I brought my 12 incher and everyone I told said “oh yeah, nice little scope!”
24" might have been a Starmaster. I had a 22" Starmaster with Zambuto mirror and goto/tracking drive.
Still remember the day I took a look through a 36" telescope at M13. Will never forget it.
Larry Mitchell's at the TSP?
@@randallrogers6350 Not a clue who that is or what TSP is as well lol
Faboulous video Ed. I've had the pleasure of looking through this scope twice over the years, three years ago gifted the view of the pillars of creation, like it was a photo in a magazine and quite a few years before that the super nova in a spiral arm of M51. It's a beautiful instrument.
However, I am the very happy owner of a Taurus T400 (16") ultra light dob - which is a work of art in its own - and just a few weeks ago an observing buddy of mine set the challenge of trying to see G1 and I was excited to give it a try. I found it myself after just about 5 minutes of slow star hopping and constatnt looking at the map print out he brought with him. Sure enough I confirmed the stars in the FoV and changed eyepiece to my 4.7mm Ethos and there it was in its splendor! Averted vision helped a lot and right between the two brighter forground stars you could see the smudgy fuzz that is G1. A genuine thrilling moment. It's these kinds of moments and experiences that bonds you to your instrument and creates an emotional connection.
Who has making the optic? The Taurus looks nice. Does it hold collimation good. How does the star test show
@@marcpopick248 Taurus makes their own mirrors. There is professional and standard grade. I went for standard and the glass is from GSO but he does all the coatings. The professional mirror comes with a tesr cert. Collimation is outstanding and has the best collimation system I have ever seen and used.
Stars are ultra sharp in my eyepieces. I have a video overview of my scope on my channel.
Always a pleasure to watch your videos 😊🙏🏻
the humor in this video was just down my alley
The Crown Royal is consolation for those cloudy nights when clear vision isn't needed. 😂
At 5:36 it sounds like you said "Formica, this is flooring laminate here", which actually, I believe, should have been, "This is countertop laminate here".
Hi Ed, Many thanks for the review. I got one of these 16 years ago and still going strong, I get to use it under a bortle 2-3 sky on moonless weekends when its not cloudy/raining. This might shock you but this things isn't just a DSO scope, under decent seeing it is absolutely stunning on the planets, I use a 2x powermate and a zeiss binoviewers and zeiss eps on them, and if the seeing is poor, I can stop it down to 6 or 7 inches off axis unobstructed, there is enough room in the spider arm spacing for that. If you ever tried it, I'd been keen to see what you think of the views vs what you can see in the 4" Takahashi scopes.
The immediacy/intimacy of direct observation!
Wife: Your 8 inch DOB is too big for our living room.
Me: Honey, I found an interesting telescope, look at this video ❤
Get rid of the wife.....
Thank you for the effort, Ed!
Thanks Ed, great scope, great review! Viva la televue!
The only thing some people do with the Obsessions is add the Glatter sling and fans for the 2 inch thick mirror. Some people say that it never really cools at all even with boundary layers fan
I miss Howie…
Why do they need fans ? Newbie here
@@edting I never got to meet him but people say he was a very nice person. I think his wife is still active with his products and Teeter was using his slings as standard parts. Of course now Teeter is closing up shop. There is not to much premium dob builders now. The New moon and starstructer and sdm is only men standing.
@@georgehilario3544 the fans help the mirror reach ambient temperature. If you live where the temperature drops fast and take telescope from warm house then you get bad images while mirror is cooling. This is why some people prefer borosilicate and zeroder and quartz glass (more expensive) as well as thinner mirrors because these mirror figure do not change to much. But thinner mirror means you need a better mirror cell design to hold it.
I've got our club 20" Obsession and have the same Crown Royal bag on the secondary!
I had a privilege to be able to use 25 inch Obsession under amazing southern hemisphere skies.
If you are a dedicated visual observer, you owe yourself one large aperture dob in your lifetime.
I've been meaning to get to Lachlan and his ranch in Australia for some time.
@@edting Ed,
I have to say I am jealous of you guys from the States. You really do have some amazing skies. In Europe, its so hard to find great skies, as the towns and villages are so spread out, there is little "wilderness" in between.
I must say however that the enjoyment I get out of the recent 12" BinoDobson I built is rivaling that of a 25 inch scope. Although the image scale is nowhere near, the immersiveness and relaxation at the eyepiece is something else, even under bortle 4 skies. The comfort at the eyepiece is second to none.
If only there was a way to get it to that ranch, or the Namib desert... well one can always dream...
I have looked through 18, 20 and 25-inch Obsession Dobs, and built my own 15-inch truss-tube based on the Obsessions. I was NEVER disappointed with the views through any of them, even from light polluted sites the views are amazing. The only drawback to them is I don't like climbing tall ladders in the dark, because I have fallen off a ladder. For that reason and the fact I have to keep my Dob in the house, I opted for building a 15-inch F/4.5. I have seen most of the globular clusters visible from the northern hemisphere as well, and definitively seen one extra-galactic globular cluster, NGC-1049 which belongs to the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy.
I don't think there's THAT much of a difference when viewing between an 18" and a 25"
Yet there is a BIG difference between them when it comes to price and transportability.
" sugar on velvet ". I always described it as salt poured on a black table 😆
I think having a small reflector would keep a guy occupied when my photography setup is doing its thing. I’m coming around Ed, thanks for these.
That is what I do!
Hi Ed, thank you for this and all your informative reviews. However, I was just looking through my paperwork that came with my 20 inch F5 Obsession and see that you did a review of the same scope in October 1999 and even described the unboxing of the scope ( not that it was yours). Interestingly you also mentioned the 35mm Panoptic in that review. My favourite EP is a 17mm TV Ethos for Deep Sky and a 6mm Ethos for Lunar work. A couple of comments, after climbing the ladder to put on the upper truss assembly a couple of times, I thought there has to be an easier way and now install as per your demonstation of the cam lock at a standing height. The heavy mirror is an issue but a gentle lift and I tie the scope in position using the wheelbarrow fixing screws with some rope, mine have steel eyes so its an easy job and easily strong enough to counter the weight of the mirror. Second point is that its my ready to go scope as I leave the wheelbarrow on in the garage. When its clear, I roll out from the garage and take of the upper truss cover and its ready to go ( the garage is not heated so mirror cooling is minimal). Too date, I have never fallen over the handles, but suspect I will do one day. On completetion, wheel it back in and replace the upper truss cover.
Looks a lot easier to move than the solid one you had on your beginner telescopes video (10 and 12-inch Celestron).
😊Ed… nowadays you should mention that for that drop light you refer to, it must have a incandescent bulb in order to generate some heat. A LCD bulb won’t work. Also, give a recommendation for the wattage so it will heat the cell evenly and gently.
Yes, good point!
Lcd still generates a lot of heat, it's just at the circuitry, which is why they all have heatsinks. In any case I'd suggest a heater for heat, not a light.
I want one :)
As an engineer watching a video clearly being shared between the coven of astronomers and astrophysicists, I feel like an interloper watching a wonderful, if exotic (lol), ritual.
Also I appreciate the bearing for its clever design and utilization of material, but something about half a bearing really shakes me to my core. It will never complete a rotation :(
Thanx, Ed. Great video as always!
As always your video is excellent and useful...thank you.
At 13:23 is why you leave the primary mirror cover on until last...
My retirement scope! Absolutely jealous you have one to use. Thank you for the very informative review, Ed. One thing not mentioned was how well the collimation holds not only after assembly but also panning up and down. Has Obsession improved the cam latching mechanism?
Yes it’s completely different now. Check my UC review.
Everyone wants one of these things. Very few people can afford one of these.
Excellent review Ed. Very informative and interesting. You mentioned that it is okay to store this scope in a garage. Is it safe to also store a refractor in a garage year round in the Chicagoland area. Thanks and keep up the great work. Ed.
The intro on this video really reminds me of Doug DeMuro! You're both great reviewers.
Nice to be compared to Doug DeMuro!
The term 'Tube in a Box' nails down the aesthetic of Dobsonians in general.
I've got an Explore Scientific 10" Hybrid Truss (Serrurier), which seems to be 1/2 size version of this...would love your review of that one.
Thank you for your informative and inspiring piece on the 20" Obsession Telescope. I have the money, but I'm not sure I have the sky, or that my house here in West Virginia is suited to it.
I'm never going to buy one of these, but really would have liked to be shown a representative image of something you might see with it other than the globular cluster.
M 51 is spectacular!
one day ...
I got this house in the northern suburbs of my city that's a B4-B5 zone ... I'd love to have one of those ☺️
we seldom spend the night over there but man ... I'd find any excuse to if I had a big dob just waiting to be rolled out...
oh, I should mention that I have this portion of the roof of the storage facility reinforced to support a smallish 2-3 m wide obsy ...
so ... waiting for that day ... obsy on remote action and big dob on a roll in and out whenever there for the night :)
Go for it!
Ed: "You don't wanna be going crazy with a high power eyepiece"
Me: "When this baby hits 0.88 millimeters, you're gonna see some serious shit..."
If you didn't get the reference, I'm worried about you
I like the portability of these smaller scopes.
You'll really like the portability of the 25" model!
@@edting This is why nephews were invented!
10:48 The notion of paralytic astronomers is quite an amusing one - that must make collimation challenging, not to mention which object you focus on; the middle one, presumably?
200 lbs worth of happy photon gatherer 😁
I kept hearing "trust" poles, I assumed because of the fear of the secondary falling on the primary.
Great video! I subscribed.
That's funny, chess players use Crown Royal bags for their pieces!
That’s a big telescope you have there!, Ed
They get bigger than this one. I'm trying to get hold of a club member's 25". One issue is getting it here...
@@edting Nice! it begs the question, 5” extra aperture makes a huge difference when we’re talking about the average scopes like refractors and SCT’s but, when comparing big light buckets like a 20 and 25” is it really noticeable? maybe I’m not making sense but I feel like there’s a point where the difference in aperture has to be larger and larger as telescopes get larger and larger.
One thing missing. The images!
No astrophotography; it's a Dob.
Collimating must be a pain. Those truss tubes must be super stiff or the flex would be a major problem
Ed there's a jump scare in this video. Some weird whispery noise right at the top. I heard it scrolling through your videos in a quiet room and I thought a ghost was talking to me.
Hi Ed. Thanks for the video. Tho I would never own one I like to see what's out there and what they're capable of.
Hey Ed, congratulations on another outstanding video.
I recently picked up one of these that was built in the 90s. I would like to upgrade the focuser. It looks like that one has a Feather touch on it. Do you know if that is the one that Obsession provides as an option or if it was purchased aftermarket? Either way, I would love to hear your opinion on it, any recommendations that you might have and the model number.
Thank you Ed!
This one has a Feathertouch focuser on it. It's wonderful, but if you have the JMI DX series, I think those are just fine.
Thank you so much for the video, I bet you can see the surface of Jupiter with that thing. Lol.
Obession used to make a 30" scope but it was discontinued. Wonder how many people have one and it's holding up.
Some day. Some day...
I keep toying with the idea of buying one. As an entirely visual observer, I think I would use it with some regularity. My AD 10 is my equivalent of Ed's Orion XT8 but I think for those special nights at a dark sky location, I would bring a 20+ inch truss Dob along. Now if someone will just give me the 10K!!!
Keep checking the classifieds. The last few of these I saw sold for a *lot* less than $10K.
Which PlaneWave telescope would you recommend for a beginner? Thanks.
The one meter on the alt az fork with field rotator.
Wow, now that's a scope.
He’s like the Doug Demuro of telescopes
That settles it, I need to buy a bigger house so I can get one of these.
Just build a huge garage shed 🤣
Put the rest of the money in the scope
@@sofjanmustopoh7232 I'm hoping to finish building a roll-top I've been slowly picking away at by the end of next summer, but it's for a MUCH smaller setup. I could just barely squeeze it in if I removed the planned coffee station and seats.😁
Absolutely sweet when talking about guilty feelings 😂 that’s true, you’re right 😘 but wow, now I have to find a viable 35 mm for my twenty inches dobson Ian 😂😂😂
I'd be terrified of dropping the mirror, and then I'd be so distracted by the fear of dropping it, I'd drop it, I know me
How would you recommend transporting this beauty to a truly dark sky site?
As shown in the video, the whole thing breaks down to fit in a small SUV. I've seen people fit two of them in a medium sized SUV, pickup, or van.
That’s one big telescope 😳
Not going to lie, that sound of all those turnbuckles at 10:40 on the wood, really made me cringe.
Very cool. I wish I was on your list of star gazing social guests! I assume you are in Hanover area. I am in Hartford VT. I think we are B5ish. Correct? But, there are B2 areas not to far from here.
over $10k ?
To me it is very weird that someone I'm not sure who thinks everything has to be lit up like daytime. In the dark your eyes adjust and I really think you can actually see better. I have always wondered how much better planets look in a 12 inch plus scope. A telrad with telrad charts can't be beat in my opinion. To me the holly grail of observing is Galaxies. That would be the only reason I would want a scope like this. I can see a few with my orion xt10.
I can see a few with my old C6-N, a 6" f5 Newtonian I had the primary mirror refigured and aluminized to .986 Strehl and zero knife edge test. Optical Wave Labs said they got it better because the small mirrors are easier to hit near perfect with. Takahashi quality for $500 including the used scope, kind of as it doesn't hold collimation like a Tak. $900 if you count the manual mount, tripod and Crayford. It is amazing what having near perfect focus can do with a camera zoomed in. Of course I live in New Mexico and Bortle 2 is 30 miles away next to Bortle 1 at the White Sands base helps.
@@MountainFisher I'm on the opposite end of the clear skys spectrum in Tacoma Washington. I had the mirror of my old scope, a orion xt8 recoated with the highest quality aluminum that was available at the time, 2003, and it made an amazing difference. The frist thing I looked at was Saturn and I could easily see 6 of her moons. Also I swear I could see the outer most gap in the rings.
@@johnwright291 another astronomer in Tacoma!? And here I thought I was the only one. Some of us do exist 😁
@@JoshBreakdowns when I run into another amateur astronomer here I feel like I've struck gold. I used to go to pierce collages astronomy nights which were held every other night. I would set up my scope, weather permitting, so people who have never used one could take a look at usally planets. Some people there had high end apo ED refractors and I got a kick out of the fact that the people almost always said my humble orion xt8 dobsonian had the best views. I think its simply because I could magnify more than the largest refractors.
@@JoshBreakdowns correction. I meant to say the astronomy nights were every other week. Just didn't feel like retyping the whole thing.
Can you pls share the secondary mirror size for this 20 ' (and 10' setup).. thnkx
For 20" f5, secondary is 3.1"
Very nice,how many combined weight of the mirror and mirror cell is
and do you need to add counterweight at the bottom ?
Could you please do review Vixen versus Takahashi refractors? And another one AP versus TEC refractors.
Is this a good beginner's telescope?
Nice
has anyone ever made dobnoculars?
My brain:
"Let's hook motors up to it and set it for sidereal motion tracking"
"I don't know what this says about us as astronomers, are we all heavy drinkers"
gosh this channel is the shit!
what the limiting magnitude of that in like bortle 1 to 4?
Oh gosh it's huge.
Obsession makes a beautiful scope but I'm not sure if I want to stand on a ladder for very long. That would be like my fourth scope and I only have one at the moment.
You get used to it. The use of a ladder is an art form.
@@edting good point, being able to relax and get the best experience is something I still work at.
They make short focal ratio dobs now in the f 3.2 to f4 range... with a field flattener you should get good views and only need a stool when near the zenith.
@@tubedude54 those are pretty cool but I think it gets costly for the glass and the correction. F5 is pretty good for my explorer scientific eyes pieces. I have a 10 inch dob and one day a 16 inch might be in the works.
@@MajorBorris As I mentioned in main post I'm looking at the Webster 28". I'd prolly go with the F3.6 version. That would give an eyepiece height of 93" at zenith so a 2 step platform raising me up 28" is all I'd need... not a big ladder. If I went with their F3.3 it lowers the eyepiece 8" but the price goes higher. $18.9k vs $20.4k. The cost is all that's holding me back right now...
This telescope does not have any kind of tracking, right?
So, how are you able to see anything? Any object will leave the field of view within seconds.
What don’t I get?
All of what you say is true. But...it's an Obsession. The motions are buttery smooth. You can drive the thing with your index finger. It's actually fun to move around. If you must have tracking and Goto, you can install the Argo Navis unit.
@@edting The Argo Navis is the finder computer. Servo Cat is the drive system. They are different items that work together. I have just the Argo Navis on mine, I have to push to the objects .100 deg eyepieces work well to alleviate drift times.
Contemplating on a used 20", but concerned about fitting it through my sliding glass door. What are the dimensions of the widest part (rockerbox?)? Person selling says it's 26x26x25 but spec. sheet I looked at said quite a bit larger.
Is the 20" an Obsession? The dimensions depend on how you measure the side bearings. At its max, the rocker box on mine is 27" X 27" X 26". The best situation for a big Dob is to leave it in the garage assembled. Barring that leave it in the garage not assembled. I know one guy who keeps his disassembled in his car. Leaving the thing inside the house usually means it never gets used.
Yes, it's an obsession. If I buy, it's about a 4 hour trip each way. It won't fit my doorway if it's at it's max. Can I reduce it somehow such as taking off handles? I use my upstairs bedroom/veranda which would let me move it only a few yards.