4" f5 Tele Vue Genesis

I had long heard of the Genesis' reputation for excellence. So, when I came across a used one for sale at a very attractive price, I couldn't resist. This one is an early model with a removable dew shield, rather than the style that slides back onto the optical tube. Optically, it's a 4 inch f5.0 double achromat. I say "double achromat", since although it's apochromatic in performance, physically there are two achromat elements: one at each end of the tube.

It was mounted on an older Celestron (Vixen) standard Polaris equatorial mount, which is more than adequate for visual work with this size scope. I replaced the usual adjustable tripod legs with 5' solid red oak, non-adjustable legs for more stability. It was driven by a single axis drive with a dual speed controller. Once again, this was fine for visual work and a few simple photos could probably have been coaxed from it. However, for real astrophotography, something much more accurate would be needed.

The previous owner attached a couple of metal plates to the clamp ring, so I've was able to mount both a 6x30 finder and a Telrad to these plates, in addition to using them as a mounting point.

In comparison to other scopes, I never really did a serious direct comparison. However, I was unable to tell any great difference between this scope and an Astro- Physics Traveller on the same object at the same time. Any differences I saw were probably "local" in nature, meaning that they could be attributed to seeing, indiviual differences in these particular scopes or my vision. All in all, it wass a great telescope, really nice as a small deep sky instrument. The combination of a Genesis and a 9mm Nagler or 27mm Panoptic is impressive, to say the least.

So why did I sell it? It simply wasn't being used. It seems that (on the GEM) it was large enough to be a little beyond the "grab 'n' go" category, yet when I packed up for a dark-sky site, I always wanted more aperture. The scope performs well on deep sky objects from a dark site - In fact, I've remarked to friends that it was really more of a small aperture, high quality deep sky scope than a planetary instrument. I used it at the Texas Star Party one year to complete my Messier list. B86 / NGC 6520 is glorious in it. Therefore, it made no sense to keep it stashed in a closet at home when someone else could be using it... Have fun with it, Steve!