By John Roberts
One of the hurdles that we amateur astronomers have is that most of us live in or near cities with bright night skies. Our home’s Bortle 8+ skies and round trip drive times of 3-5 hours to reach Bortle 3-4 sites means my 11 inch scope does not get used very much for deep sky objects. Even Bortle 6 skies require a 2 hour round trip and I do not like night driving. We do however, take some trips by air to dark sites out west, or to Canada.
My background – amateur astronomer since 1967. Planetarium intern , Morehead Planetarium, experience with a Spitz A-3 P, past planetarium director (Gengras Planetarium of West Hartford), research assistant with 24 and 40 inch telescopes (Dyer Observatory, and Fan Mountain, Va., college minor in physics/astronomy and four total solar eclipses. I would not call myself an avid observer and many Cloudy Night reviewers are far beyond my expertise. I own a 2.4 inch f 11 Tasco refractor (my first), Unistellar Equinox, SeeStar, and a Celestron 5 inch and an 11 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain (SCT). I ground a good 8 inch mirror in 1978 which went into a terribly unstable home made Dobsonian mount.
In my search for the best portable telescope I can reasonably convey on commercial airlines, I found that a 5 inch SCT (Celestron) can be taken as carry on – at least I did not have trouble on flights to New Zealand and Australia. (Some others have packed a 6 inch SCT in carry on bags.) But I want a larger scope for travel in North America.
Dobsonian ultralights seem the way to go. But I could not find a 10 or 12 inch in the US, except for one made in China which every reviewer says has mount problems that have to be fixed prior to use. (Spending hours doing so is not my preference.) The website for Taurus Telescopes popped up one day, and then I found a very favorable review. I strongly suggest you read it as it is a much more detailed review of the Taurus 14 inch with mirror upgrade. It is by Damian Demendecki, and is on the web and in the magazine Astronomia, (March 2018). Taurus is made in Poland and I selected the 12 inch T300 , their smallest, after discussing with the owner, Adam Salawa about a custom 10 inch which was going to cost slightly more due to design requirements. As it turns out, the 10 inch would have been a lot easier to transport safely on airlines with at least the mirror cage going into a carry on . (Current US carryons are limited to 22 inches by 17, by 9. A padded soft bag works best.
My Taurus is the 12 inch T300, f 5, with regular mirror made of BK-7 glass, (not the Supremax upgrade), installed DSC for Push-To control at ($536), oak stained mount, right angle mirror Dew heater, (about $220) , and a set of covers ($172) , and without a finder. Total cost was US$ 3649 including $405 for shipping to the east coast. To this add 8% customs duty. I purchased it directly from Adam by wiring money to his bank. 30% down is required to begin purchase.
It arrived in a well packed wooden box. Production wait time was about 6-8 weeks. It took about 2- 3 weeks to clear customs, for some reason. Purchase in the European Union carries a Value added tax of around 20%, not the case with USA destinations.
It is easy to put together and the manual is well written, even if in imperfect English in a few places. The only consideration is that, as recommended in the manual, it is best to tighten the struts to the top and bottom cages gradually, and in tandem to obtain a good flat bearing surface between the struts and the cages (especially the top cage). It comes with two cages, struts, rocker arms, rocker box, and shroud. Total weight is 18.5 kg. The heaviest part is 9.1 kg.
Since receiving the scope, direct from Taurus in January, 2024, I have been impressed with the optics and the mount design. The truss is very stable. Telescope movement is smooth and it is not a simple matter to get the friction right for a Dobsonian. This scope has two mount options for the rocker arms, allowing better balance in Altitude depending on the weight of finders, eyepieces, etc. There is also an Azimuth friction adjustment which I did not need to use. You can order counterweights to balance heavy cameras. The scope works very well and looks rather elegant.
The optics appear to be very good, and almost 25% brighter than my 11 inch SCT (Celestron).
I had a bit of a learning curve on the DSC , as that is all new to me. I like the push to as most of my observing seems to be low to mid power and tracking is not so important, yet. I use the Sky Safari App and you need to download their manual…. I considered buying the GoTo apparatus, but decided to add it later, if needed. The scope has a two speed focuser which gives good results for me. Collimation is easy with the three black knobs on top of the mirror cage and three on the right angle mirror. I use a laser collimator and collimation is easy with this scope’s design. I have not done extensive optics testing but my use of the scope is favorable.
I did not buy a finder from Taurus and later purchased a lighted reticle right angle finder. However, I since find that a laser pointer is faster to use. At my height of over 6 feet, the scope is too low so I sawed off part of the box the scope came in so that could add about 14 inches of height. This helps my old back.
The two cages and rocker base will fit into a Pelican Case which is just 2 inches over the airline rule of 62 inch total L+W+D, this is Pelican model 0350. The rocker arms and struts go into a padded duffle bag. I might remove the mirror for flying though, and put it into a carry on . The only problem I have had is that the shroud seems a bit too short. This is not a serious problem, and I have not contacted Adam about this, yet. I will sew on an extension of 1-2 inches and re-insert the elastic band into a new loop.
While I have found that Smart Astrographs like Unistellar and SeeStar can be a lot of fun, especially in cities, viewing the heavens through a real eyepiece is an experience like no other. I am considering buying a second Taurus, the 20 inch f 4.2, or possibly the 24 inch f 3.3 , which at 12,500 Euros is about double the price of the 20 inch. (As you may know, price goes up much faster than size, after a certain aperture).
Taurus makes a fine scope. Adam answered all my emailed questions , and there were many, thoroughly and helpfully. Turns out, I was once only about 5 miles from his shop, when we drove from Krakow to Zakopane, Poland a few years ago. I have found Adam to be honest, helpful, and to design and build very nice ultralights.