TAL 100RS
Focal length: 1000mm
Focal ratio: 1:10
Resolving power: 1.16"
Limiting visual magnitude: 12.7m
Magnification, min: 14x
Magnification, max: 200x
Focuser: 50.8mm single-speed Crayford
Dimensions:
Telescope/ mount weight: 23kg
Sometime around early 2010, I had started looking for a TAL refractor. The problem I was having in finding one was that I wanted it complete with
In late spring 2012 I had a Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon event where I received a call from a friend telling me that they had a friend who had a friend that had a friend whom also had a friend... what I ended up with is a phone number of a fellow astronomer from Poland who wanted to know if I was still interested in purchasing a TAL refractor and the kit I was looking for.
After a few phone calls, arrangements were made and the crazy half and I went on a trip to the small village of Chylice, south of Warsaw, Poland where we met with a nice gentleman named Aleksey.
He originally purchased it from Delta Optical: https://deltaoptical.pl/
The telescope and mount were still in their original shipping boxes as he had taken it out and set it up only once just to check everything and then replaced it all.
The outer box was thick cardboard with a layer of foam pellets surrounding the heavy inner double-walled box.
The accessories were wrapped in gun paper and individually boxed; the telescope tube was in a plastic bag mounted in its clamps which were bolted through a 6mm thick piece of birch plywood sized for the box. Very well wrapped and packed!
The telescope is well made and has a very simple but functional look and feel to it.
This is the revised version which was made after the 100R and comes with a 50.8mm single-speed Crayford focuser that has an almost 170mm drawtube instead of the original rack and pinion with its very short 45mm drawtube travel.
If using a 31.75mm diagonal the supplied 50.8 – 31.75mm adapter adds another 20mm to the drawtube length.
The tube is made of rolled carbon steel with a folded seam which is then welded and puttied instead of the more common seamless aluminium and should last for many years. There are only two spots where the weld is rough and can be seen through the thick white enameled paint.
Some people have complained that the tubes are not perfectly round using this system but everything attached inside and out fits properly so I disregard this complaint.
The steel lens cell does not have push/ pull collimation but does have lens centering screws. Issues with collimation have not occurred since owning it though.
Lens tests that I have read place the lens set typically between 1/6th – 1/8th wave. Lens coatings for the RS model are a light green/ aqua in colour compared to the deep violet of the R version.
The lens shield is 180mm long, black plastic which fits firmly on the lens cell but benefits from flocking the shield interior. There is a lens cover with a 50mm
The tube has four baffles installed and the tube interior is painted with a very dark matte black.
The supplied 6×30mm finder scope has surprisingly good optics installed and has a helical eyepiece focuser and an 8° field of view. Unfortunate it is a straight-through model as it shows a pleasing view on its own. There is a 50mm long removable flexible plastic dew shield that when not installed over the lens, fits over the eyepiece end with a cap to protect it as well as another cap for over the optics. The finder scope tube has 2 grooved aluminium rings on it for the adjustment screws to push on so they do not damage the tubing.
The finder base is made of cast aluminium with 6-point alignment and painted in matte black but does require some felt placed on the bottom to prevent damage to the telescope tube’s paint.
The optical quality of the finder is quite amazing and is better than some small telescopes I have owned.
I include a rebuild tutorial by Astrobaby showing the work that goes into such a normally overlooked accessory.
http://astro-baby.com/TAL%20Telescope%2 ... ebuild.htm
The other included accessories are a 31.75mm cast aluminum/ steel sleeved 90° mirror diagonal of quite good quality, it uses a slight taper to the nosepiece instead of an undercut. The mirror is 6mm thick and the diagonal shows good light control and colour rendition. It is rated at 96% reflective. I did have to collimate it before first use but that is a simple job to do.
The 50.8mm – 31.75mm adapter is made of machined steel and is quite heavy. The telescope will become unbalanced if you remove it in use.
The included eyepieces are a 25mm and 6.3mm Plössl which are internally blackened and threaded for standard filters.
TAL claims 52°
There is a thread in reticle which fits any of the 31.75mm Plossl eyepieces, turning it to a cross-hair eyepiece. An ingenious, simple, and handy solution.
The included 2x short barlow has a tapered lens cell so that the edge cannot come into contact with the diagonal mirror. Clear
The included wood tripod and
The mounting plate is part of the mount similar to a Vixen Polaris though shaped and sized more like a small Losmandy plate.
The mount body is cast aluminium with steel sleeves on the axis, the counterweight shaft is bare stainless steel. Knobs and levers are all metal and fairly large so easy to find and use in the dark.
The telescope balance must be quite accurate for the mount’s slow-motion controls to function properly throughout their limited range of 8° though. If unbalanced it will lift off of the drive screw. Overall mount capacity is around 10kg, equivalent to an
One other unique part of the mount is the tube clamps. The bolts holding the rings to the mounting plate swivel through slots in the plate to hold the rings in place. Some people do not like this attachment style but it works well and I find it just another interesting facet of the TAL build mentality.
The two bolts for the tube clamps as well as the two holding the rings to the mounting plate have a locking feature where you tighten the knob down normally and then there is a slotted screw inside the bolt shaft that locks the knob into place so it cannot come loose.
Here is a video showing some of the unique features of the
The mount is a lesson in simplicity to work on. Astrobaby has made an excellent tutorial for maintenance of this mount. The only difference between my mount and Astrobaby is the actual top mounting plate.
Take a look at how Russian military thinking influenced the design and field maintainability of an
http://astro-baby.com/TAL%20Telescope%2 ... 0Guide.htm
The tripod legs are made of Ash and included hardware is steel and aluminium. When set up with legs extended it is 920mm from leg tip to tip and the mounting plate is 1460mm off ground.
Herr Wolfgang Rohr did a test report on a sample and measured the various Strehl ratios:
Blue: 486.1nm – 90.3%
Green: 546.1nm – 93.6%
Yellow: 587.6nm – 95.1%
Red: 656.3nm – 96.7%
This is a comment from a fellow TAL owner in the UK:
The rolled metal tube aids for an almost instant cool down and is relatively heavy, white, built like a Siberian tank, will outlive everyone reading this post and will probably witness the clash of Andromeda and the Milky Way.
Due to government-ordered work creation/ work sharing the TAL refractors took a strange path to be produced at the end of their production. Some feel this may be one of the biggest causes of the production eventually being cancelled due to all three facilities doing military contracts and consumer telescopes being a side project.
Lytkarino Optical Glass Factory (LZOS) manufactured the crown element, Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association (LOMO) manufactured the flint element, with mechanicals made by Novosibirsk instrument-making plant (NPZ) and telescopes were assembled at the Novosibirsk facility. Though all three facilities listed the TAL products for sale, all equipment was actually sold and shipped from Novosibirsk.
OVL (UK) and TALoptics (USA) were the main distributors though most of the world with DeltaOptics (PL) a few years before production stopped.
It seems TALoptics was still selling products by special order until almost 2016.
There is a retailer in Australia that also sold TAL products and was still offering small accessories and various eyepieces until 2018.
If I can find the business name again I will include it at a later time.
The telescope produces exceptionally good views with
TAL production seems to have ceased with the refractors around 2012.
Now that you have read this far, I will include a few images and some of my personal thoughts on the telescope and accessories.
The TAL refractors seem to have a bit of an enthusiastic following at times with some claims being a bit hard to believe, then there are people who make claims of their complete and utter disappointment with them, some of which are also hard to believe.
The TAL 100RS refractors are not magical, they will not show Hubble image views and they will not let you see deeper into space than any other similar-sized quality refractor. They just have a superb, well-figured lens that performs as well as a 100mm
The outstanding thing about them is you could get a quality view at 4-5 times less than what the other manufacturers were selling for at the time
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They have a vintage style to them compared to a modern refractor and it seems to give them a bit of character.
In 2017/18, I decided I needed to sell some of the ridiculous numbers of telescopes, mounts, and accessories I had collected over time. Strangely I decided to put the TAL for sale and a very good friend, after asking me a few times if I was sure I actually did want to sell it, packed it and took it home.
Right after this, I returned to work in Canada. A couple of days later while talking to the crazy half I commented that I probably made a mistake on selling it.
When I returned home six weeks later the TAL was standing in its usual place.
He knew I was going to regret selling it and returned it the next day.
That is a good and understanding friend!
Differences between the TAL 100R and 100RS:
When set side by side the first obvious difference is that the optical tube of the 100R is closer to 100mm longer than the 100RS though the overall length is almost the same.
The 100R used a rack & pinion focuser that had a very limited travel of 40-50mm compared to the 170mm drawtube of the 100RS.
The 100RS was available with either an improved rack & pinion or a new crayford focuser.
A novel innovation that TAL used on their second version of a rack & pinion focuser was the ability to adjust the tension through the focuser knobs.
To add more tension, hold the left focus knob and turn the right knob clockwise.
To loosen tension hold the left knob and turn the right knob counter-clockwise.
I can not think any other manufacturer that has used this approach before.
The lens coatings used are the first noticeable difference, the 100R coatings are a very deep purple while the 100RS has pale green coatings.
Baffling in the 100R was always an issue with poorly fitting and placed baffles.
The light leakage around them could be quite bad.
According to Neil English, the best thing to do is use the 100R lens on a 100RS tube for the best combination.