The Ritchey-Chrétien telescope is the most popular optical design used by professional astronomers and astroimagers all over the world. The Hubble Space Telescope itself uses the RC configuration.
All new GSO RC telescopes now come with a focuser upgrade kit allowing you to connect the ZWO & QHY EAF focusers without additional modification.
The Guan Sheng Optical RC's are excellent astrographs with solid build quality and precisely-figured optical surfaces. The concave hyperbolic primary and convex secondary mirrors deliver excellent correction across the field. The low thermal expansion quartz mirrors have a surface correction of 1/12th Lambda PV or better and have highly reflective dielectric coatings ensuring 99% reflectivity.
The telescope is made with a lightweight and rigid carbon fibre truss tube structure and features computer-optimized baffles to eliminate stray light.
The 12" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien comes with a dual-speed 3" 10:1 Crayford focuser with 80mm of focus travel and clear aperture of 68mm. The focuser can be rotated 360 degrees for perfect framing. Includes a selection of 2" & 1" extension rings to make connecting a variety of imaging accessories straightforward.
The rear of the telescope has a tilt plate for precise adjustment of the focal plane with M117 x 1 male threads. The 3" focuser connects to these threads on the telescope-side and has an M77 x 1 female thread on the camera-side. The focuser includes an M77 x 1 male to M74 x 1 male adapter with an internal M69 x 1 female thread.
You can use either the Sharpstar RC 0.8x reducer or TS Optics M68 1x flattener using our Testar TE-GSO-SHARPSTAR.RED-M68 combo adapter, which allows you to connect both the corrector to the focuser and provides an M68 x 1 thread for connection to common imaging equipment.
