Moon
Raker 80mm F15 (Towa/Meade 339)
On a recent visit to Lowell Observatory
in Flagstaff, home of Lowell’s historic 24” Alvan Clark refractor, I was
astonished to find that they’d opened a whole new observing complex for public
outreach – the Giovale Open Deck Observatory.
I was even more surprised to find among
its array of delicious instruments a giant long-focus 8” achromat, a real Steam
Punk refractor – all glossy candy red (burgundy at night)
and polished alloy, set about with various finders and guidescopes. Chosen in the spirit
of the Clark, it looked great but gave good views too.
That beautiful refractor looks Edwardian, but in fact it was
made recently by Moon Raker, famous for their polished achromatic beauties in
smaller sizes. Then, as pure coincidence, I was offered an early pre-production
sample to try with a classic Meade 339 80mm lens.
Magnificent 8” Moon Raker at Lowell Observatory.
At
A Glance
|
Telescope |
Moon Raker
80mm (Meade 339 lens) |
|
Aperture |
80mm |
|
Focal
Length |
1200 |
|
Focal
Ratio |
F15 |
|
Length |
About 1.5m |
|
Weight |
~7 Kg |
Data from Me.
Design
and Build
Moon Raker have developed a signature aesthetic:
all cast and polished metal and glorying in exposed thumbscrews, elaborately drilled
and turned parts and even capstan wheels. In a sense Moon Raker is a reaction,
a counterpoint, to the way astronomy is being taken over by imaging.
This is how Victorian/Edwardian
refractors should have looked. Or perhaps, the way all telescopes would look in
an alternative Steam Punk world with airships and ocean liners instead of
planes and where everything is still powered by great beam engines. If Jules
Verne’s Baltimore Gun Club had built a tracking scope for their lunar
projectile, this is how it would have looked.
Appropriately, Moon Rakers have turned
up in films, including the Netflix blockbuster “Altered Carbon” and featured in
numerous magazine articles. This is a look that taps into how people imagine
astronomy should be, without a computer or a CCD in sight.
This early Moon Raker is perhaps a
little less baroque than some of their later designs, but still looks fabulous.
Optics
Moon Rakers
are typically bespoke and have been made with a range of lenses. Often people
choose classic long focus achromats, but Moon Rakers with apochromatic
objectives have been made too.
In this
case, the choice is a true classic – Towa’s (Meade’s) 339 80mm F15 achromatic
doublet. It’s a lens with a strong reputation for the Moon and double stars,
produced by the famous Japanese Circle-T brand found engraved on many of the
best optics from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
The original
doner scope would have been a long white tube with a black dew-shield, on a spindly
crinkle-black equatorial mount with a tall hardwood tripod – just like my 3”
refractor from 1978.
Classic Towa
80mm F15 objective.
Tube
The tube is
the Moon Raker’s glory and its Achilles heel. It’s a beautiful thing, made from
highly polished, thick-walled alloy tube that is part of the Moon Raker
signature look. Trouble is, it does make this quite a heavy scope for an 80mm,
especially is you attach the matching dew-shield.
Everything
is held on by knurled screws or prominent polished screws. It all contributes
to the Edwardian look, but is functional too.
Functional
the long dew-shield may be (dew is never going to reach that far!), but it adds
so much length and bulk that I often used the scope without it.
Focuser
The focuser
matches the tube, with the same classic polished alloy look with elaborate knobs,
knurled thumbscrews. But in fact, it’s entirely modern – a crayford
with roller bearings and even a micro-focuser, with a wide drawtube and a 2”
visual back, even a rotator.
Mounting
The Moon
Raker came with a pair of matching, highly polished split tube rings. Neither
cast nor CNC, they appear to have been milled and polished by hand and match
the tube perfectly. With ¼-20 threads they’ll fit most Vixen plates.
The only
problem is that this is a truly long telescope. It’s not actually that heavy,
but it’s heavy enough. You need at least a medium sized mount, or any vibes
will carry on forever.
Accessories
This one
came with a matching finder and drilled alloy mount, but Moon Rakers are often
seen surmounted with a matching guide scope, maybe several.
Planetary
achromats suit eyepiece classics like Orthoscopic, Kelners
and Huygenians: Circle-T or Circle-V, Zeiss if you
can get them. For period-appropriate wide field eyepieces, Erfles
are a good choice.
In
Use – Astrophotography
Moon Raker’s
aesthetic suggests visual use first and foremost, especially when built around
a long-focal-length achromat. But this one takes a very nice snap of the Moon,
typical of high-quality traditional achromat, with plenty of image scale and
excellent sharpness and detail.
In
Use – The Night Sky
General
Observing Notes
The Crayford
focuser allowed fine adjustments and I appreciated the rotator. The long focal
length gives a broad focus sweet spot anyway.
Mounted on
the SX2, it is quite stable, even at higher powers, but vibes can still take a
while to settle. The long tube means that, like most long refractors, the
eyepiece can end up in some tricky positions when used near the zenith.
Cool
Down
All that
polished alloy means that cool-down takes a while. But this is a scope with a
vibe from a slower age anyway, a scope to take time over.
Star
Test
The star
test was very good, so much better than some other small Japanese lenses I’ve
seen from this era: the same either side of focus, round evenly illuminated
rings and a perfect Airy disk in focus.
The
Moon
The clue is
surely in the name. The Moon Raker gave excellent views of a day-15 Moon with a
9mm T6 Nagler giving 133x: absolutely crisp, with the promontories, craterlets
and rays (from Proclus) around Mare Criseum picked out in sharp perfection.
I enjoyed
the nearby twin Messier craters with their elongated
shapes and tuning-fork twin rays. Actually formed by a
glancing comet or asteroid impact, I imagined them gouged out by Jules Verne’s giant
canon shell.
Mars
The Red
Planet is an obvious Steam Punk target, given the associations with Edwardian
sci-fi like Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Princess of Mars” series. If protagonist John
Carter (or indeed a prince of Barsoom) had owned a
telescope it would surely have been a Moon Raker. This is how Percival Lowell’s
first scope would look in a Hollywood biopic.
On a
freezingly frosty night of mediocre seeing, the Moon Raker made the best of a
small Barsoom and surprised me. The view was razor
sharp at 120x with a ZAO 10mm and even 200x with a ZAO 6mm still gave a crisp view,
much like a TV-85 with similar levels of contrast and false colour (a trace of
dark red inside focus). I managed to see some albedo markings (Mare Sirenum),
despite Mars being only ~10.5” apparent diameter.
Long focal
length achromats are planetary scopes! Who knew? Seriously, the point is that
the donor Meade lens is clearly a good ’un.
Deep
Sky
A long focus
achromat like this is great for doubles, so I tried it on one that can
challenge objectives of this size – Rigel. True to expectation it was very easy
to pick out the faint companion from Rigel’s blue-white glare at 133x. Both
components of Epsilon Lyrae were also very easy.
The Moon
Raker gave very creditable views of bright DSO favourites like the Great Orion
nebula, the Pleiades, the Double Cluster and Praesepe
too.
Summary
If you love
the look (and to be clear I really do), then you’re probably already sold and
waiting for yours.
The Moon
Raker is a completely functional telescope with a quality objective and
focuser. Yes, it’s a bit (alright a lot) bigger and heavier than the original
Towa 339 would have been, but that hardly matters.
A stunning take on a classic refractor,
both to look at and look through, with a unique artisanal build and well-chosen
components.
