PlaneWave’s hot new astroimaging scope

The new CDK17 telescope offers thermal stability, ease of use, and killer images.

Contributed by Tony Hallas

Published: October 21, 2010

PlaneWave Instruments’ CDK17 is a 17-inch Dall-Kirkham astrograph optimized for astroimaging.

Photo by PlaneWave Instruments

What happens when a group of dedicated astronomers pool their talents to create a new company? You get the products of PlaneWave Instruments.

A few years ago, company founders Richard Hedrick and Joseph Haberman, former telescope engineers at Celestron, got together with optician Dave Rowe and worked out a new telescope design using simple optics that offers superlative performance. Their company now offers Dall-Kirkham telescopes in 12.5-inch f/8, 17-inch f/6.8, and 20-inch f/6.8 versions. As I write this, 24- and 28-inch versions are in the works.

For this review, I tested the CDK17, PlaneWave’s 17-inch f/6.8 model. The “CDK” stands for “corrected Dall-Kirkham” design, by the way. I placed it atop an Astro-Physics 1200 GTO mount in my backyard observatory.

Check out what our readers are saying!

Click here to view some of our reader comments now »

RICHARD D BENO from ARIZONA said:

I have had a PlaneWave CDK 24" telescope mounted on a Mathis MI-1000 fork mount in my Conferring With the Sky Observatory here in the Arizona Sky Village for 2 months now (first light was 9/29/10). It is a truly great instrument that I look forward to many fabulous nights of imaging/observing with.

ANTHONY AYIOMAMITIS from PENNSYLVANIA said:

Gary,

The 12.5"/f8 RC translates to a focal length of 100" (2500mm) and this is an excellent range, for it allows you to pursue many targets which are around 10 arc-mins or thereabouts and which covers many galaxies, nebulae and clusters.

It also means an image scale of around 0.5 to 0.6 arc-secs/pixel and which is ideal in my opinion.

GARY WOOD from NORTH CAROLINA said:

For those of us on the East Coast (high humidity areas) will a fixed position mirror present any difficulties when it comes time to recoat the mirror's surface five to ten years down the road -- only a factory serviceable instrument?

My budget is limited so I may have to settle for the 12-1/2" f/8 CDK.

Want to see more comments?

Users that have full access to this article get to see every comment. See the details below on how to get full acces to this article today!

Subscriber-Only Content

You are currently not logged in. This article is only available to Astronomy magazine subscribers.

Already a subscriber to Astronomy magazine?

If you are already a subscriber to Astronomy magazine you must log into your account to view this article. If you do not have an account you will need to regsiter for one. Registration is FREE and only takes a couple minutes.