The focuser is solid aluminium and of marvellous construction. This does a very good job of removing stray light and I have never needed to improve on it. The inner surface of the tube is covered in rough grooves and then painted matt black. The tube is constructed of thick metal and is utterly rigid. I donвЂ™t know if they work as youвЂ™d need to drive a car at this mount to get it to vibrate and I canвЂ™t see myself doing that any time soon! It has plastic pads on the feet which are supposed to be vibration suppression pads. It is clearly intended to be a telescope you only need to buy once! The mount is fairly basic but to say the least solid and the pillar stand is absolutely solid and is much steadier than any tripod could be.

Their just is nothing to compare with it in its mechanical construction. It is just in a different league to any Chinese or British completion. The build quality of the scope is plainly the best youвЂ™ll encounter in any scope in this price range or in any up to several times more cost. The second box contains the mount and counterweight and is, if anything even heavier than the first! In his review Ed Ting states that this scope when packed actually weighs more than his 20вЂќ Dobsonian and I believe him! This is all packed and bolted down into its proper place onto shaped wooden supports. One of these (about five feet long by one foot deep by 1 and half feet wide) contains the optical tube and pillar stand along with the accessories. The reason for his exhaustion soon became clear! The Tal is packed in two absolutely wonderful Вѕ inch thick, plywood boxes with metal supports and handles. On the day the scope was delivered I returned home a little bit early from work just in time to find an utterly exhausted delivery man packing up the delivery form which my wife had just signed. So, I have owned this telescope for around eight years now which, even with the British weather patterns being what they are, has given me a pretty reasonable number of observations on which to base a review. I usually try to state these during any review where I think they may have a bearing. The only remaining factor is personal viewing tastes (such as, for example, how much chromatic aberration you can accept or how much eye relief you need in an eyepiece).

This gives a much more balanced view of the scope and its real performance. The only way to overcome this is to spend as many nights out with the scope as possible, in all conditions and with as many different eyepieces and so on, as you can. Now, IвЂ™m not keen on reviews which take place over a short period as I believe there are too many factors which can affect judgement. This is my review of the Tal 2 M 6вЂќ Newtonian Reflector.

Reflector 2 review